Cannot render Blackmagic Fusion 9

Hi there, I am pretty new to Fusion and relatively new to Deadline as well, as I’m hoping I’ve done something wrong myself here. I attempting to send a Blackmagic Fusion 9 job to Deadline 10.

I just updated the repository to 10.0.23.4.

First of all, is it even possible to render using the free version of Fusion? i’m not clear on that. I’m waiting on my dongle for Fusion Studio. The render executable is set in the repository settings as C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\Fusion 9\Fusion.exe

In any case, Deadline seems to make some headway into the render process, but fails once it invokes the script interpreter, Fuscript. The Fuscript log is below.

2019-01-29 10:36:28:  0: INFO: Process is now running
2019-01-29 10:36:29:  0: STDOUT: Fusion Script Interpreter
2019-01-29 10:36:29:  0: STDOUT: Copyright (C) 2005 - 2017 Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd.
2019-01-29 10:36:29:  0: STDOUT: Connecting to Fusion...
2019-01-29 10:36:30:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 29 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:31:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 28 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:32:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 27 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:33:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 26 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:34:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 25 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:35:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 24 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:36:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 23 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:37:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 22 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:38:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 21 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:39:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 20 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:40:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 19 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:41:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 18 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:42:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 17 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:43:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 16 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:44:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 15 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:45:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 14 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:46:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 13 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:47:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 12 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:48:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 11 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:49:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 10 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:50:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 9 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:51:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 8 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:52:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 7 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:53:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 6 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:54:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 5 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:55:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 4 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:56:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 3 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:57:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 2 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:58:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 1 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:59:  0: STDOUT: Connection timeout in 0 seconds
2019-01-29 10:36:59:  0: STDOUT: ...30\plugins\5c50725d6a3b8b820087f83c\StartJob.eyeonscript:33: attempt to index global 'df' (a nil value)
2019-01-29 10:36:59:  0: INFO: StartJob returned exit code 0

As I understand it, the free version is not capable of network rendering.

1 Like

This is a new one for me. Nothing from the support ticket history and I didn’t find much on Google with fusion "attempt to index global" "df".

For fun, try and run fuscript.exe from the fusion installation directory and see if it throws any errors. Looking at our code, we’re relying on Fusion itself to start fuscript and it may be masking some problem there.

Installing Fusion Render Node made this work. AFAIK you can’t render with normal Fusion. I think errors about missing globals are because they only exist in Fusion Render Node.

I might suggest putting in the documentation of Fusion for Deadline a reminder that you can only use Fusion Render Node to do renders, and to install that, you need a full copy of Fusion Studio on your network (it serves a rendering license to all the render nodes). But perhaps that is obvious to most Fusion users (I am a newbie).

2 Likes

Agreed. It’s not immediately obvious but it does say this in the FAQ section:

The Fusion plugin starts the Fusion Render Node in server mode and uses eyeonscript to communicate with the Fusion renderer. Fusion and the comp remain loaded in memory between tasks to reduce overhead. This is usually the preferred way of rendering with Fusion.

Then we imply that you can use the non-render node mode here:

You can use workstation licenses to render, you just need to do a little tweaking to get this to work nicely. In the Plugin Configuration settings, you need to specify two paths for the render executable option. The first path will be the render node path, and the second will be the actual Fusion executable path. You then have to make sure that the render node is not installed on your workstations. Because you have specified two paths, Deadline will only use the second path if the first one doesn’t exist, which is why the render nodes can’t be installed on your workstations.