OSX 10.9.2
Deadline 6.2
Maya 2014
Hi, pretty sure this has worked fine in previous versions of Deadline but when submitting Maya jobs with layer overrides on frame ranges for Render Layers Deadline seems to be rendering the same frames repeatedly.
I thought that choosing ‘Submit Render Layers as Separate Jobs’ handled this but it doesn’t seem to be working in 6.2.
Test scenario
2 render layers in Maya
Render layer 1 has layer overrides set for start and end frame in Render Settings (1-10)
Render layer 2 has layer overrides set for start and end frame in Render Settings (5-15)
Submit job to Deadline and set ‘task size’ to 1. Check ‘Submit Render Layers as Separate Jobs’.
Deadline submits 2 jobs with 10 tasks per job.
For Job 1, task 1 - Deadline then renders frames 1-10 (should just be frame 1)
For Job 1, task 2 - Deadline then renders frames 1-10 again (should just be frame 2)
…
etc through to task 10.
For Job 2, task 1 - Deadline then renders frames 5-15 (should just be frame 5)
For Job 2, task 2 - Deadline then renders frames 5-15 (should just be frame 5)
…
etc through to task 10.
Obviously not ideal behaviour! Anything we’re doing wrong?
Cheers,
Chris
Actually, looking again. It’s bit weirder than that.
Submit job to Deadline and set ‘task size’ to 5. Check ‘Submit Render Layers as Separate Jobs’.
Deadline submits 2 jobs with 2 tasks for job 1 (1-5, 6-10) and 3 tasks for job 2 (5-9, 10-14, 15).
For Job 1, task 1 - Deadline then renders frames 1-10 (should be frames 1-5)
For Job 1, task 2 - Deadline then renders frames 1-10 again (should be frames 6-10)
…
etc through to task 10.
For Job 2, task 1 - Deadline then renders frame 5-9 (correct)
For Job 2, task 2 - Deadline then renders frame 5-9 (should be frames 10-14)
For Job 2, task 3 - Deadline then renders frame 5-9 (should be frame 15)
Can you try resubmitting these jobs with the “Use MayaBatch” option disabled, and see if the problem still occurs. If it does, can you post a log from a job that shows this behavior? I think we’ve seen this before, and that it was a Maya issue, because Deadline was feeding in the start and end frame properly. We can take a look at the log and confirm if this is the case or not.
Thanks!
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
Turning “Use MayaBatch” off just doesn’t work for us at all when rendering with Vray. It just stalls.
It did make me think I should also test using Software renderer. That seems to work as expected but if I then switch the same maya scene to Vray and submit to Deadline it goes screwy again.
Can’t for the life of me find where the job logs are written? Can you point me in the right direction?
Chris
Sounds like it might be a vray thing…
You can find the logs by right-clicking on the job and selecting View Job Reports.
Cheers,
Ryan
Hi Ryan, Job logs attached.
Cheers,
Chris
JobLogs.zip (24 KB)
Hi Chris,
I unzipped the file you uploaded, but the four files in it don’t have extensions, and if I drop them in a text editor, it’s all binary. Can you send them again as text files?
Cheers,
Ryan
Hi Ryan, I’m just selecting 'Save Selected Reports" in the ‘View Job Reports’ window. Should I copy paste them into a text editor?
Hi Ryan, I’ve copy pasted each task one after the other to each file. i.e. SoftwareLayer1.txt has tasks 0, 1 and 2 in it one after the other.
Where do these logs get saved to? I’m sure I used to know!!
Thanks,
Chris
JobLogs.txt.zip (15.5 KB)
That’s strange. I just tested this here on Windows and OSX and it saved the reports out properly.
Anyways, thanks for re-posting the logs. I took a look and it’s showing that the tasks themselves contain the correct frames. I forgot to mention this before, but since this is the MayaBatch plugin, it will be helpful to see the actual melscript we’re passing to Maya. This can be enabled in the MayaBatch plugin configuration. There is a Log Script Contents To Render Log option that you can enable, and the next time you run the job, grab the logs again and post them. This will confirm if the correct frame is being set.
Thanks!
Ryan
Hi Ryan, found that option and enabled it so here are those logs (just the vray job).
BTW - not sure if this is expected behaviour for saving the logs but I found that if I double click the file that’s created when using “'Save Selected Reports” it creates a folder which contains the .txt files?
Logs.zip (17.2 KB)
Thanks! This confirms that we’re setting the frames correctly. For example, in the first log in the Layer2 folder, this is the mel we’re using to set the frame range:
setAttr "defaultRenderGlobals.startFrame" 1; setAttr "defaultRenderGlobals.animation" true;; setAttr "vraySettings.startFrame" 1; setAttr "vraySettings.animation" true;
setAttr "defaultRenderGlobals.endFrame" 5; setAttr "defaultRenderGlobals.animation" true;; setAttr "vraySettings.endFrame" 5; setAttr "vraySettings.animation" true;
setAttr "defaultRenderGlobals.byFrameStep" 1; setAttr "defaultRenderGlobals.animation" true;; setAttr "vraySettings.frameStep" 1; setAttr "vraySettings.animation" true;
But then VRay goes to render frames 1-10.
For the report saving, when you select a bunch, it’s supposed to create a zip file, and that zip file contains all the selected log files. So double clicking it would unzip it, allowing you to see the files.
Cheers,
Ryan
OK, posted a bug with Chaos and will let you know.
Maybe the report saving is not adding the extension so Finder is not recognising them? Double clicking them works fine but they didn’t display as zip files on my desktop.
Sounds good.
Is Finder perhaps hiding the zip extension? I know Windows hides known extensions by default, can’t remember if OSX does that…
Finder can hide extensions but will display a zip icon if it has .zip in the name whether hidden or not. If you remove .zip in the info panel (see attached) then the files behave in the same way the log reports are.
BTW - it seems Chaos can reproduce this issue - forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread … s-Deadline
Good to hear that Chaos Group can reproduce the problem.
We think the issue with saving the reports is a Mavericks-only issue, and we think we found a workaround that will be included in beta 5.
Cheers,
Ryan
