Basic questions about MODO and Deadline

Deadline
1

Hi there,

I’m a long time MODO user, I have a number of servers, both Mac and PC here and I’m checking out Deadline specifically for MODO because, well, MODO’s network abilities are less than stellar.

OK, I’ve installed Deadline on two PCs and one Mac which I alternate testing with a PC for compatibility. Deadline seems to have installed fine and the Monitor can see all the clients including the Mac so all seems to be good there.

I need to know what the “best practices” are for taking a MODO scene and using Deadline.

For example, I have a simple animation of a perfume bottle which takes about 6 minutes per frame to render inside of MODO. It only has a few textures. I took the folder that holds that scene and its textures, and moved it to my network shared drive. Then, in Deadline Monitor, I go to the Submit menu and chose Submit Modo Job and chose the scene from the network shared location. I get the expected dialog and chose the Machines to run it, chose the MODO file and Override Output into an output folder on the shared drive. “Submit MODO Scene” is checked on. I had configured the plug in for MODO to find my 401 “_cl.exe” file and when it hit SUBMIT, I can see in the task manager that the CL version indeed launches. So that’s all good.

However, the entire test scene of 10 frames (normally 6 minutes per frame each), finishes in only a few seconds. When I look at the output folder there are 10 frames in there but when I open them up they are renderings of an empty scene, basically they look like the default gradient that shows up in render window preview when you are in the render tab…no sign of my actual scene (see attached)

Any ideas why?

Best Practices? I assume that all textures and the MODO scene file should be stored together in a folder on the Shared Network Drive. What if I get a scene from someone else that was put together on their system. Normally I can open up the scene and it might ask to find one or two textures and then I can point to them and the scene links them up fine. How would that work in Deadline? Should I always first open the MODO scene natively from the Shared Drive and find the textures if it asks, and then save it, then Submit to Deadline as before? If Deadline can’t find a texture for some reason how would I know?

As far a Mac client goes, I used the following path: /Applications/modo.app/Contents/MacOS/modo -console. How does the Mac client handle saving the final output of the file which is on a Network Shared drive? For example, all the PC’s “Override Output” field is something like "Z:\MODO_Scene\Output\test.tif. But to find that same directory via the mac the path looks something like /SharedDrive/MODO_Scene/Output/. So even if the headless MODO version on the Mac launches, how will it know to save it back to the correct location? Perhaps a dumb question that Deadline has already worked out via Repository.

Should I select any choices for “Build To Force”?

So does it appear that I’m doing everything right? And why am I getting the default gradient rendered in my test scene but not the actual contents of the scene? Is my approach to handling a MODO scene created by someone else correct? Any basic information on how to step-by-step get MODO rendering well with Deadline would be awesome as I would love to implement this program.

Thanks,
Dan

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2

Hi Dan,

The first thing to try would be to not submit the Modo scene with the job. This way, Deadline renders the scene directly from the network, and providing that Modo will look for these textures in its network folder, this will allow Modo to find all its textures. Give that a try and let us know if it helps.

If the statement in italics above is true (about Modo looking for its textures in its network folder), then it should be enough to just place the scene and all of its textures in a network folder and submit. Theoretically, you shouldn’t have to re-link the paths.

Any stdout/errors that Modo prints out would be saved to the render log that is stored with the job. However, I’m not sure if Modo prints out anything in the case of missing textures, which leaves nothing for Deadline to report back to you.

You can set up Path Mapping in the Repository Options. This will allow Deadline to swap out "Z:\MODO_Scene\Output" with “/SharedDrive/MODO_Scene/Output/” when rendering on the Mac. See here for more information:
software.primefocusworld.com/sof … d_Farms.29

Only if you want to enforce rendering with a 32 or 64 bit version of Modo. You might want to start leaving this at “None” for the time being.

If the suggestions I’ve give here help things out, let us know and we’ll be sure to add a “cross platform rendering” section to our Modo documentation to make this process easier for new users going forward.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Your suggestion to turn OFF the Submit MODO Scene with the job seemed to have worked. Now it renders correctly. Awesome. As far as path mapping for the Mac, I will check this out later today and put it to the test as well.

Thanks again for your great answer.

Dan

4

Hi Dan,

No problem, and thanks for confirming that this works. We will definitely make sure to update our docs during the next release with this information.

If you have anymore questions or concerns, just let us know.

Cheers,

  • Ryan