This article will guide through the process of submitting an Unreal project to our farm. It may appear a bit involved but it's very simple really. Please follow the following steps. It is highly advised to submit a simple test scene for your first try and not your final project. We are utilizing Unreal's Movie Render Queue feature, you can read about its workflow HERE.
01 - SETTING UP THE SCENE
01.01 - OUTPUT FOLDER PATH
Output folder path set in Unreal must be constructed in the following manner:
H:\<PROJECT FOLDER NAME>\outputFolder1\outputFolder2\...
for example (it can't be other drive than H:):
H:\GM_Unreal_Test\_out
01.02 - FRAME RANGE
Limit the frame range in the config (rather than just relying on the range limit in the sequence).
01.03 - ASSETS
Please note all assets must be within the project folder linked with relative paths. Don't reference any assets with absolute paths.
01.04 - QUEUE CONFIG
After all settings are set please save the entire Movie Render Queue's Movie Pipeline Config list (you can still use Master Configs that are the configs for the given sequences only but Movie Pipeline Config is required). For our example we'll save it under:
/Game/MPQ_GMTEST_1to1000 (= <PROJECT FOLDER ROOT>\Content\MPQ_GMTEST_1to1000)
02 - SETTING UP THE CLI TOOL AND JOB SUBMISSION
02.01 - CLI TOOL (Command Line Interface Tool)
Download the needed GridMarkets CLI Tool from HERE. Place the gridmarkets-cli.exe somewhere, let's try this for our example: C:\_ENVOY\gridmarkets-cli-win64\gridmarkets-cli.exe
02.02 - CHECKUP
Make sure Envoy is running and you are logged in in the portal (with Password and NOT the Access Key).
02.03 - SUBMISSION STEPS
02.03.01 - Open shell (C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe), construct and execute the following command based on this template: <PATH TO THE CLI TOOL> submit --project-name <PROJECT FOLDER NAME> --job-file <PATH TO THE PROJECT FILE>
for example:
"C:\_ENVOY\gridmarkets-cli-win64\gridmarkets-cli.exe" submit --project-name GM_Unreal_Test --job-file "C:\projects\GM_Unreal_Test\GM_Unreal_Test.uproject"
Please mind the fact that as of yet we don't parse your project to filter out unused assets. So if you have some heavy files present that are not needed it's advised to move or delete them from the project folder.
02.03.02 - CLI Tool starts and will ask you couple of things:
Select product: unreal
Submission name: (sets current time and date by default - you can type whatever you want there but please use only ASCII characters)
Input command-line arguments string: construct it based on this matrix - please make sure all paths in the command-line are pointing to assets from /Game (<PROJECT FOLDER ROOT>\Content\) location: "<PATH TO THE MAP>" -game -MoviePipelineConfig="<QUEUE CONFIG SAVED IN 01.04>" -Log -StdOut -allowStdOutLogVerbosity -Unattended -windowed -RenderOffScreen for example: "/Game/Minimal_Default1" -game -MoviePipelineConfig="/Game/Cinematics/MPQ_GMTEST_1to1000" -Log -StdOut -allowStdOutLogVerbosity -Unattended -windowed -RenderOffScreen
Use Windows: Yes
Do you want to download the results: Yes
Specify the local folder path to download results: it's the path for the frames to be downloaded on your local machine, use always backward Windows slashes here ("\"), for example: C:\projects\GM_Unreal_Test\_outputFromCLIToolSubmission
Specify the folder path where results get created on our side (based on the output set in the scene, described above in 01.01): use only Linux backward slashes here ("\"), match the following template: /<PROJECT FOLDER NAME>/... for example:
/GM_Unreal_Test/_out
Please be careful while rendering more than 1 sequence to the same folder and defining download path. The path defined here will download all files and folders below it.
02.03.02 - CLI Tool starts and will ask you couple of things:
Select product: unreal
Submission name: (sets current time and date by default - you can type whatever you want there but please use only ASCII characters)
Input command-line arguments string: construct it based on this matrix - please make sure all paths in the command-line are pointing to assets from /Game (<PROJECT FOLDER ROOT>\Content\) location: "<PATH TO THE MAP>" -game -MoviePipelineConfig="<QUEUE CONFIG SAVED IN 01.04>" -Log -StdOut -allowStdOutLogVerbosity -Unattended -windowed -RenderOffScreen for example: "/Game/Minimal_Default1" -game -MoviePipelineConfig="/Game/Cinematics/MPQ_GMTEST_1to1000" -Log -StdOut -allowStdOutLogVerbosity -Unattended -windowed -RenderOffScreen
Use Windows: Yes
Do you want to download the results: Yes
Specify the local folder path to download results: it's the path for the frames to be downloaded on your local machine, use always backward Windows slashes here ("\"), for example: C:\projects\GM_Unreal_Test\_outputFromCLIToolSubmission
Specify the folder path where results get created on our side (based on the output set in the scene, described above in 01.01): use only Linux backward slashes here ("\"), match the following template: /<PROJECT FOLDER NAME>/... for example: /GM_Unreal_Test/_out
Please be careful while rendering more than 1 sequence to the same folder and defining download path. The path defined here will download all files and folders below it.
Select machine type: pick the machine you need (you can also use the Hourly Render Calculator to check for the configurations)
Enter the number of machines to use: for now you can only use 1 per job - please note that in order to use more please just save several configs per sequence, each with different range.
Enter a value greater than 0 to set credit budget: credits budget -> set 0 for no budgeting or type in some amount of credits, job will be killed after reaching the limit set here
Confirm to upload all files: choose Yes if you have some new files present locally that are not present on our side, choose No if you just want to go to scene submission without checking any files (only the *.uproject file gets uploaded). In case of choosing to upload all files please make sure no obsolete and not needed heavy files are present - like for example old output folders.
Confirm to submit project: carry on with submission, after that you should see files being uploaded in Envoy portal (please refresh the page if you can't see any progress).
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