I wondered if someone could answer a query I have…
I have a 3ds Max scene with 6 cameras set up. The scene has been setup up in the batch render dialogue to render each camera view. What I’d like to know is is it possible for me to submit this job to Deadline and for it to distribute each camera view to a render slave?
I used to use Backburner and when I submitted a batch render, each machine would take on a camera view, where as with Deadline it only seems to assign one machine for the whole job.
Am I missing a checkbox or something along the way? Thanks
Hi,
If you’re submitting your 3dsMax job from within 3dsMax using Deadline’s SMTD interface, then you need to click on the “Misc” tab on the far right and enable “Use data from 3dsMax Batch Render”.
The number of views to be submitted should be updated at the bottom. Force it to be updated by clicking on the “Update Info” button.
During submission, your 3dsMax might look like its hanging as its submitting the same Max file over and over for each batch render job.
Don’t worry, its working
Mike
Another question you’ll probably be able to answer. When I do what you’ve suggested I remote into my render slaves and see that they’re trying to open up 3ds Max in workstation mode. is there anyway i can assign my own machine to operate in workstation mode so the render slaves just operate through the Vray server scene?
my bad. I described how Deadline used to work!
So, the current workflow is as follows:
Submit your 3dsMax file with Nth batch render ‘views’ in it.
Then assign/run this job on a machine which is capable of pulling a workstation license of 3dsMax. (SMTD > “Render” > “Force workstation Mode” enabled) if necessary.
Subsequent ‘child’ jobs then submitted back into the queue, can be assigned any machine you like as they won’t require a workstation license.
Hopefully, this makes sense. It’s not the easiest workflow in the world!
Hi Mike, when I do that I notice that my render slaves are still trying to open a license version of Max even though I’ve submitted the job via my workstation with an active license. I assume the render slaves should be opertaing without a license, so am confused as to why they’re trying to open with one.
I’ve clicked “Force Workstation Mode” when submitting from my workstation but the render slaves are still trying to open a license of Max.
Hi,
I’ve been speaking with Bobo on this topic and I went and got myself confused today between Batch Rendering and Tile Rendering and a subset of its old setup known as “Master Job Submission - Tile Rendering” which no longer exists.
Anyway, to cut a long story short. Quite simply, in the SMTD interface it states “IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS OPTION REQUIRES A SLAVE TO RUN IN WORKSTATION MODE”. Which means that if you only have 3dsMax licenses on your workstations and don’t have the luxury of licensing (float license) your rendernodes, then you will need to restrict your Batch Render jobs to your workstations only. Pools/Groups/Limit Groups can all help you to achieve this restriction depending on your pipeline setup.
Sorry for the confusion.
Mike
Looks like we might have to reword the message in the UI, as it can be interpreted incorrectly.
It should probably be something like:
“This option will submit one Master Job which will require a 3ds Max license.”
This way, the words “Workstation Mode” won’t be in the note and nobody will come to the conclusion to enable Force Workstation Mode which would affect the actual rendering tasks.
Only ONE machine that runs the Master Job and performs the spawning of the actual render jobs will need a Max license.
I see what you mean. Thanks very much for clarifying that up. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of our render slaves having licenses but we do have 2 different groups set up as “workstations” and “render nodes”, so I’ll just use the workstation group if I require to do batch rendering.
Thanks for your help.
Even if it is your own workstation (running the Slave application) that picks up the Master job and performs the submission of the actual batch jobs, it still releases your main Max session to do other things so you don’t have to wait for all batch jobs to go out.
That was one of the main reasons we went with a Master job.
The other, even more important one, was that Batch rendering allows for Scene States and Render Presets to be applied to the current scene, modifying it in the process. If we were to do these using your currently opened scene, we would have to 1. save a temp file of the scene as is, 2. apply the batch render changes to the scene, 3. save it again to a temp. file to submit to Deadline, 4. repeat 2. and 3. for the every batch render, 5. reload what was saved in step 1 to restore the original state.
With the typical scenes we worked on my last VFX project (2+GB .MAX files), and with 20+GB .MAX files used in some other studios, this could amount to several HOURS of saving and loading operations. So we decided to move that load to a Deadline machine running in Workstation mode to free you up to do more creative things…
