C4d/redshift tasks hang from floating maxon app licensing

kwinke · March 7, 2023, 10:13pm

We’ve had some issues with consistent tasks getting completed using Deadline with R25 and the past few versions of redshift and the Maxon app with their floating teams licensing. Currently on the latest Deadline release, latest redshift, and R25.121 but I’ve seen the same with a test of C4D 2023 as well.

This doesn’t specifically seem to be a Deadline error, but it only happens when sending these jobs through Deadline…if I manually try and run the Commandline.exe commands to do the rendering, it succeeds each time in getting a license. Local in-app rendering is fine. And I saw 10.2 had some release notes about Maxon App support, so I was curious if anyone else had the same issue I’m seeing. I’ve also opened a case with Maxon about it.

This seems tied to when the task begins and redshift tries to acquire a license. They’re available and it works fine about 75% of the time. But, occasionally when a tasks starts it will hang immediately after Render Begins. At this point, it’s already received the cli license successfully but doesn’t acquire a redshift license, so some licensing is working. On tasks with multiple frames, the same worker might complete a few frames and then hang mid-task this way. It’s not a consistent error. It’s not actually even an error according to Deadline as it just stays waiting and never kills the task or retries unless you manually do it. Everything just hangs.

2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Rendering Phase: Finalize
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Progress: 0%
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Scanning Scene
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Frame 8: Update Start
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Updating Lights
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Updating Environment
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Scanning Materials
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Updating Materials
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Extracting Geometry
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Updating Objects
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Updating Transforms
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Updating Geometry
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Preparing for Rendering
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Registering Objects
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Info: Summary: Lights:5 Meshes:2 Instances:0 PointClouds:0 MatOverrides:0 Proxies:0 ProxyInstances:0 Volumes:0 TraceSets:0
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Frame 8: Update Completed
2023-03-07 13:46:57:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Renderer: Render Begin

This is where it sits and never moves further, I’ve let it sit for 12 hours and nothing is happening. It’s frustrating as if the license would error or fail at this point in the logs, Deadline would try again. And, trying again usually works…I can requeue the task on the same worker and the render will succeed without changing anything.

When it does work correctly, it moves on immediately from this with the license info and starts the task. At this point it’s working correctly.

2023-03-07 13:49:12:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Status: Frame 26: Update Completed
2023-03-07 13:49:12:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Debug: Renderer: Render Begin
2023-03-07 13:49:12:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Info: License for net.maxon.license.app.redshift~commercial-floating valid until Aug 22 2023
2023-03-07 13:49:12:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Info: =================================================================================================
2023-03-07 13:49:12:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Info: Rendering frame 26...
2023-03-07 13:49:12:  0: STDOUT: Redshift Info: =================================================================================================

I’ve had this on multiple different machines/workers, and it’s held across earlier versions of DL/Redshift/C4D/MaxonApp. We don’t have the option to use RLM licensing for our size, but in the past RLM has always worked fine.

I’ve tried with Maxon App licenses as well as setting user/pass info in the config file manually, neither works as it still has to do the checkout of the license each time. I’ve tried locking the licenses to the workers and that also doesn’t consistently work to hold a license.

Any insight if someone has seen Deadline + Maxon App issues before would be appreciated. I’d also be interested to see if there’s a way to have a worker “check” its logfile if it hasn’t received any updates in 10-15 minutes at all, and automatically requeue the tasks. I know you can do this with tasks overall for an allowed runtime, but I don’t want to shoot active rendering that is going on but taking 30 minutes per task. Thanks for any help!

anthonygelatka · March 8, 2023, 9:47am

I think this is a Maxon issue, I feel like everytime the MaxonApp is updated or the subscription renews then the whole thing has to be re-done.

Are you logged in via the MaxonApp, I found on the last update it required the MaxonApp to be logged in, not sure if the commandline license settings are still required now but I tend to run that also.

There is a Maxon developer on this forum (can’t remember the username) but you’re probably best contacting Maxon, I wish they’d just give out RLM licenses and avoid all this.

kwinke · March 8, 2023, 3:09pm

It definitely feels Maxon-y, and the Maxon App logins and access all seem to be ok as this does render successfully a lot of the time. It’s using that Maxon App licensing to get its cli license.

I tested once blocking networking to Maxon servers… and then it failed to get a license and actually failed the task correctly in the logs. So if it fully fails, it fails properly.

But from what I’ve been able to test, running the same command that Deadline is passing and just manually sending that via cmd…it works every time to get the license and render. But via submissions through the workers, it’s very intermittent and just halts mid task in the logs.

“C:\Program Files\Maxon Cinema 4D R25\Commandline.exe” -nogui -arnoldAbortOnLicenseFail true -render “O:\bucket\Tex\2023\redshift_test\redshift_test_v01\redshift_test_v01.c4d” -frame 16 19 -take “Main” -oresolution 1920 1080 -oimage “O:\bucket\Tex\2023\redshift_test\redshift_test_output$prj” -omultipass “O:\bucket\Tex\2023\redshift_test\redshift_test_output$prj” -redshift-log-console Debug

zollska · April 1, 2023, 7:33pm

Hey @kwinke,

I’ve been testin c4d 2023 with vray but i had a few licensing issues errors too.

After some questionably helpful exchange with the maxon support i found out that the maxon app was “confused” because our subscription includes the team render- commercial license and all the accounts had one of these licenses assigned. i don’t know why this is an issue for the clr but after i removed the team render commercial license from the machines they were working fine.
Not sure if this helps with your issue but it might be useful info.