Overview

Golaem deployment is done in 4 steps:

  • License Management: if using floating licenses, a license server must be setup
  • Artist's Workstation setup: Golaem should be installed and reference the license server to get a valid license
  • Assets Deployment: if using the Golaem Character Pack, it should be installed on a network share, reachable by the artist workstation as well as all render nodes
  • Render Farm setup: Golaem should be installed on the farm (either locally or through a network install), and the Render Farm Manager should be configured so that Maya and the renderer can load Golaem plugins

All these steps are explained below.

License Management

Note that if Golaem is launched with no license, it will still render. No Golaem license is needed to render on an unlimited number of computers. Check here to know when a license is required.

If using floating licenses, a license server must be setup, or an existing RLM license server configured.
 
This server (or a node-locked license) will then be referenced by Artists' workstations (and NOT by the render nodes) in order to get a license token when Golaem is launched.
 
Check the License Setup section for more details.

Artist Workstation Setup

Golaem needs to be installed on the workstation of each artist handling crowd simulation.

The standard installation procedure is described here. 

For details about how to perform a silent install, or extract files instead of using the installer, see Advanced Installation

See also the License Setup for more details about how to setup the license on the artist workstation.

Character Pack Deployment

The Golaem Character Pack is a pack of casual maya character meshes, textures and shaders, with lots of props and motions enabling faster crowd shots creation. It is provided free of charge to Golaem customers.
 
The Golaem Character Pack references all files by their absolute path. As the Golaem Character Pack includes files needed for both rendering and authoring, it should be reachable by artists' workstation as well as render nodes, using the same path. This path is the installation path given to the installer, and should be the same as the path used by artist's workstations or render nodes (else, see dirmap command)
 
It is recommended to install the Golaem Crowd Character Pack on a shared network drive (e.g. \\myserver\myshare\), mounted on both artists' workstations and render nodes (also as \\myserver\myshare\ in our example). 
 
If installed directly on the artist workstation (e.g in their C:\Program Files\Golaem\... directory), local render will be fine, but when the scene will be sent to the farm, files will be unreachable and render will fail.
 
If installed on each render node, if artist needs to modify one file in the Character Pack (and they probably will, either asset repartition, shaders, or textures...), it will be needed to re-deploy the modified Character Pack on ALL nodes, which is both cumbersome and error prone.
 
For more details about the Character Pack see Installing the Character Pack

Render Farm Deployment

To be able to render a Golaem scene on the Render Farm, all render nodes must be able to load the Golaem Maya Plugin and the renderer specific procedural plugin.

These files can either be installed:

  • locally (as they could be installed on an artist workstation, see above). 
  • or on a network share

Whether installed locally or through a network share, both Golaem Maya Plugin and procedurals should be referenced through environment variables in order to be able to be loaded by Maya and the renderer.

See Configuring Render Farm Manager for a complete description.

NB: No license needs to be set for the render nodes (and it should not be set as it will steal tokens used by artist's workstations).