Using Xgen in your scene requires a few steps to render your fur properly .
Before sending your scene on the farm which contains XGen features, please make sure to:

1. Create the .abc files by clicking on “Export Patches for Batch Render” in the XGen tab> file.
If your simulation is animated, enter the desired frame range.

You can now create the .vua archive with our plugin RANCHecker V5.

2. Check if the .vua archive contains:

• All the files collectionName.xgen in the scenes folder
• All the files collectionName.abc in the scenes folder
• The correct scene name
• The “xgen” folder at the root of the .vua file, with all your collections and files inside

If something is missing accidentally, you can still add the assets manually inside the .vua archive, at the correct location.

3. Check paths

Check if all the paths inside the .xgen files have been changed automatically to match the farm render path.

The xgProjectPath parameter must indicate the following path: C:/Maya/CurrentJob/
and the texture map xgen mask must indicate: ${PROJECT}sourceimages/…/the file path inside the .vua/…/yourfile.iff

If you need to modify the paths, you can use any text editor.

Xgen Interactive Groom works on the farm without the previous steps because they do not need external files (except for masks and textures).

Only splines caches and Xgen nodes caches require manual adjustment.

• Import your alembic caches in your scene
• Modify caches paths by C:\Maya\CurrentJob\cache\cacheName.abc
• Save then create archive with RANCHecker and DO NOT click on “Submit”
• Open the .vua that you just created, create a folder “cache” and put your caches inside
• Upload archive through web interface.

We recommend to send only a few representative images on the RANCH before the final sequence, to make sure they look as expected and that the cost fits your estimation.

Contact us at contact@ranchcomputing.com us if you have any inquiries.