16bit Tiff

Deadline
1

I am running deadline 6.1 and submitting through Max 2014.
when my users send jobs as 16bit Tiff and alpha channel the files are coming out as 8bit Tiff and no alpha channel.

We are using the max frame buffer with vray. we are testing what the results are if we use the vray frame buffer now.

any tips?

2

Hey Troy,

Can you provide a sample scene that has this issue, as well as reproducing steps, so we can try to reproduce and identify? Thanks.

3

This scene should create the issue for you
if you render the scene with the current settings, we cant get a 16bit tiff with alpha channel out of this through deadline. If we render locally it works. If we do a V-ray DR it works.
Deadline-TestFile.zip (37.1 MB)

4

Thanks Troy! Bobo’s taking a look.

5

We believe now that it may not be a deadline issue, we do appreciate the time to check it out though as we didnt start seeing this behavior until we deployed deadline, however it may be a correlation and not causation in this case.

6

Bobo explained this to me on Thurday. Sorry for not posting back.

What the problem seems to be is that Max doesn’t override the default values for TIFs properly from the scene files and instead pulls the values from “C:\Users[user name]\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2014 - 64bit\ENU\en-US\plugcfg\tif.cfg”.

That’s a binary file, so until Autodesk fixes this, you will actually need to change the settings within Max on the render nodes. Not really feasible, but maybe you can deploy the modified file?

I’m told we hit the same problem way back with OpenEXR prior to Max 2010. I think someone needs to tell Autodesk about this one too.

7

Perhaps a PostLoad or Pre-Render Script which set the options to 16bit might work…

8

It’s for reasons like this, I use to always run 3dsMax in root mode instead of user-centric mode. One set of cfg files for all users.
forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=467170

9

Thanks for the info.
I will add this to the list of things I want to tell autodesk that they probably know already and added to the “feature” list for the next release.

10

Hi everyone,
I know that this post is old but we’re having a similar problem with the custom script we wrote for our office.

It does seem like the problem was fixed in your 3dsmaxtoDeadline submitter though as when sending files to render with Deadline’s default script, the files do save properly.

Would you guys mind sharing what you did to make it work properly?

Thanks!

Chris

11

I’ll ask around. I’m honestly not sure myself on this one.

12

Thanks!

13

Hi Edwin,

Did you have a chance to ask around you about our problem?

Chris

14

Sorry, yes I did!

I’m told the secret sauce was this:

SMTDFunctions.RebuildRenderElements()

That lives in SubmitMaxToDeadline_Functions.ms in the submission folder for Max.

15

Perfect and as usual thanks for your quick reply!
I’ll give this a try.
Chris

16

Hi Edwin,

I’ve been looking into this function and I’m not sure it does what I want… It seems like it just recreates the render elements (I’m not sure what the reason is for that…)

I’m just trying to save my beauty pass as 16bits and saving the alpha mask in it.
For that I’m using tifio.setType #color16 and tifio.setAlpha #true.
If I set that in maxscript then render locally, it works, if I send it to deadline with your deadline script, it works, but if I send it with my script it saves the image at 8bits with the alpha off…

In order to make sure that the error was not coming from my script (which is long), I recreated a small script which just set the vray output path, change the tifio to 16bits, turn on alpha and send the render to the queue. (See below)

[code](
global SMTDSettings
global SMTDFunctions

local theNetworkRoot = @"\vrayserver2\DeadlineRepository8"
local remoteScript = theNetworkRoot + @"\submission\3dsmax\main\SubmitMaxToDeadline_Functions.ms"
local localScript = getDir #userscripts + “\SubmitMaxToDeadline_Functions.ms”
if doesFileExist remoteScript do
(
if SMTDFunctions == undefined do
(
deleteFile localScript
copyFile remoteScript localScript
fileIn localScript
)

SMTDFunctions.loadSettings()
SMTDSettings.JobName = maxFileName + " [SIMPLE MXS SUBMISSION]" 
SMTDSettings.Comment = "Created using the simplest Deadline submission script imaginable."
SMTDSettings.Priority = 80
SMTDSettings.ChunkSize = 10
SMTDSettings.LimitEnabled = true 
SMTDSettings.MachineLimit = 5

renderers.current.output_splitfilename = "\\\server\WORK\\test.tif"
tifio.setType #color16
tifio.setAlpha #true


local maxFileToSubmit = SMTDPaths.tempdir + maxFileName
SMTDFunctions.SaveMaxFileCopy maxFileToSubmit
    
local SubmitInfoFile = SMTDPaths.tempdir + "\\max_submit_info.job"
local JobInfoFile = SMTDPaths.tempdir  + "\\max_job_info.job"

SMTDFunctions.CreateSubmitInfoFile SubmitInfoFile
SMTDFunctions.CreateJobInfoFile JobInfoFile  
                            
local initialArgs = "\""+SubmitInfoFile+"\" \""+JobInfoFile+"\" \""+maxFileToSubmit+"\" " 
local result = SMTDFunctions.waitForCommandToComplete initialArgs SMTDSettings.TimeoutSubmission







local renderMsg = SMTDFunctions.getRenderMessage() 
SMTDFunctions.getJobIDFromMessage renderMsg
    
if result == #success then 
(
    format "Submitted successfully as Job %.\n\n%\n\n" \
    SMTDSettings.DeadlineSubmissionLastJobID renderMsg
)
else 
    format "Job Submission FAILED.\n\n%" renderMsg

)
)–end script
[/code]

In this configuration, the output is still 8 bits…

Let me know if you have any question!

Thanks,

Chris

17

Hi,

The issue is that you are setting the TIF image file format settings locally on the machine submitting the job to Deadline. Autodesk define the image file format settings locally instead of embedding them in the file, so to apply certain image format settings to a job going through a renderfarm manager, then we need to set these on the “rendering” machine. Are you submitting a custom MAXScript job to Deadline? If so, you can use your script that you submit with the job to apply these settings. If not and you are building a custom submitter script, but still submitting and expecting to render via our Lightning plugin, then you will need to submit a preTask script to apply the required image file format settings.

tifio.setType #color16 tifio.setAlpha #true

18

Ok Mike,
I’m not sending a custom masxscript job to deadline but building a custom submitter script so I guess I’ll go with the pretask option.

Thanks for your quick answer!

Chris

19

No worries. Ask again, if you need more help.
M