Can Deadline 8 or otherwise do this?

Deprecated Deadline 8 Discussion
1

I’m using Redshift with Softimage. I need to bake out a bunch of Rendermaps, which requires me to call a script from inside Softimage - meaning I can only render on 1 machine without having to manually load Softimage on each machine & set a render range via the script.

I was curious if Deadline can get XSIBatch to call this script so I can generate animated rendermaps on the farm instead.

Here’s the script:

[code]RenderMapSequence( 1, 100 );

function RenderMapSequence( FrameStart, FrameEnd )
{
var oPlayControl = Dictionary.GetObject( “PlayControl” );

for ( var j = FrameStart; j <= FrameEnd; j++ )
{
    var FrameCurrent =  j;

    // advance timeline
    oPlayControl.Parameters( "Current" ).value = FrameCurrent;

    // bake all
    Redshift_BakeMaps("*")
}

} [/code]

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Paul

2

Hey Paul,

It looks like our Softimage plugin supports script jobs, however this functionality has not been exposed to either of the submitters. It can still be accessed by submitting your own job using the plugin info parameters ScriptJob=True, ScriptMain=,ScriptArgs= and the script as an auxilliary file. The Script will then have to open the scene if you want it to work on a scene.

Let me know if you need an example of how to do this, or I can whip up a quick script to submit a job like this.

Grant

3

To be honest, it’s way beyond my abilities to do anything with it.

The script is a rewrite of one that was built for Mental Ray and posted to the Softimage mailing list.

Essentially instead of actually rendering anything, I need to call this function on each frame so I can generate animated rendermaps.

If you guys can make it work in Deadline it’d be a lifesaver! Right now I have to babysit the machine that’s running the script in case it crashes. Just having Deadline being able to monitor it and alert me if something’s wrong means I don’t have to stay at the office 24/7.

Thanks!

Paul

4

Hey Paul,

Attached is a zip that contains 2 files one is a slightly modified version of the script that you were running (I added the ability to open up a scene and to print what frame it is working on). The other file is a quick python submission script that you can run to submit softimage Script jobs.

To run the script you will want to call (from a cmd line) python SoftImageScriptJobSubmitter.py <Args in the form of -ArgName Val>. For example python SoftImageScriptJobSubmitter.py renderMapSequence.js OpenSceneAndMapSequence -Scene “MyScene.scn” -FrameStart 1 -FrameEnd 5.

Let me know if you have any issues with this.

Grant
SoftimageRedshiftScript.zip (1.77 KB)

5

So is this then submitted from the Deadline Monitor using “Submit Python Script to Deadline”?

Thank you very much for the help!

6

You can submit it using the python monitor submitter or if you have python installed on your machine you can run the script from the command line.

Grant

7

It looks like perhaps either Softimage or Redshift don’t support this in batch mode. Deadline shows the script running & being successful but I get nothing. It also only seems to work on my local machine - all other machines fail.

It’s too bad Softimage is dead because I can’t really justify asking for this function to be added to the Softimage submission script that plugs in to Softimage itself.

Oh well - Autodesk knows best, right? :cry: