I have been experimenting with a custom deadline submission tool using maxscript. I am using the example from the Custom MAXScript Submission tutorial, located below, as the bases for my tool in the making:
The problem I am trying to solve is this…override the vray_output_rawFileName …I want to be able to submit a job to dealine and override any path or filename that is present in the render dialog box.
There’s one way I have had success with is passing an external .ms file as a PostLoadScriptFile that runs after the file loads on the render node but before rendering starts, that updates the path and filenme…this method works but could get inefficient really fast when sending multiple jobs at once (which is what my ultimate goal is). Any suggestions are greatly appreciated =)
I’m back on my Maxscript bs…Still looking for a way to override the .output_rawFileName : string while submiting render jobs to Deadline using a custom script. I’ve been starring at this thread for over 3 years, getting hungry, plus I need a shower, dental/doctor visit and some sunlight .
Hmmm…I have no idea how this post was missed for 3+ years. Anyway, moving on…
The V-Ray RAW filename path is built-up by all the logic in _Functions.ms within the SMTD code. Reviewing this code or re-engineering it would be somewhat painful. You can always submit a job via SMTD manually. Right-click on it in Monitor, modify job props, click on Submission Params section and then export back out the 2 x job files. Using these, you could re-submit the job or more importantly, re-produce in your custom submission code whatever you wish to achieve. Note, that quite a bit of extra support in SMTD has been added in Deadline 8.1 beta, where I believe many of the “Pathing Options” in SMTD now fully support the various V-Ray specific ways of handling file pathing, combined with all the different types of job workflows that is possible to submit from SMTD to Deadline. Depending on your version of V-Ray, you might need: “output_rawFileName” or “output_rawfilename”. Does your custom submitter only need to support one particular workflow job submission?
From my point of view, the issue here is that the tutorial was meant to be about the “simplest submitter possible”, so it used the two SMTD functions for creating the JOB files. This means that all the logic SMTD has for handling V-Ray paths etc. is reused, with zero flexibility. However, you could do one of these things:
You could modify the V-Ray render settings before the MAX file is saved for submission and the JOB files are generated, and then restore the MAX file to its original state. This way, you are not talking to SMTD, but to V-Ray, SMTD picks up the changed info and performs the submission, and then you restore V-Ray to how it was before the submission.
You could still use the old functions to generate the job files, and then, before performing the submission, you could read them back, modify the necessary lines to get your overrides in, and resave them to use in the submission call.
You could re-implement the functions to do what you need (by copying and pasting from the SMTD code as needed). This would give you a lot of flexibility, but knowing how complex they have become over the years, it might not be for everyone. (I know my way around both SMTD and MAXScript, and probably still would not do that ).
Unless I am missing something… do you see any reason the first approach would not work?
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