When I submit a job from 3ds max 2018 + vray 3.6 (with SMTD), if using DBR options, I usually have a problem with the buckets rendered on the slave computer.
Deadline is installed (slave and repository) on the workstation and there’s also a deadline slave on a render node.
If I check the option “Transfer missing assets” within the Distributed Rendering options on the Render Dialog, It works fine, but the problem is that deadline sometimes disables this option when submitting the render.
I don’t know if there’s a workaround, if not, the “transfer missing assets” options could be inclulded on the SMTD DBR render options.
NOTE: the reason this setting is disabled by default, is you don’t want a large number of machines running Slave to all try and pull a large number and large sized texture/geo files from a single desktop workstation machine. If you really must have this setup, then we recommend making sure the MASTER/host machine does not do any actual rendering and just concentrates on the communication/brokering of X number of Slaves running DBR and talking back to the MASTER. If you do render with the MASTER and start getting hung buckets, stalled machines, weird stuff happening…then I’ll be re-highlighting this same paragraph!
This is basically the same problem we’re having here, except with the " Submit Vray DBR to Deadline".
I found the “Transfer Missing Assets” for the “Submit Max to Deadline” under the 3dsMax/3dsCmd options, but not under the “Vray Spawner” plugin options. Is there any option for this? or a script I can modify?
I assumed the DBR process would handle its own transfer of assets over their custom protocol… Certainly Swarm is doing that one. I’m actually not sure, so if anyone is aware, let me know.
The trick that makes submitting assets work in Max is that if your assets are sitting next to the scene file, they’ll be read from that location if they can’t be found in their original home. If you were to try and do this for another application, you’d have to re-write the scene before it’s submitted with the job so the assets are properly referenced.
All that said, assuming Max is lifting the assets up for V-Ray it should be doable.
I know it’s doable, just not sure how to get deadline to set the Vray DBR setting, or to leave it alone.
The only work around we can find for now is to start the “DBR with Deadline”, wait for the nodes to connect, go to the Vray DBR settings in the 3dsmax Render dialog and check the “Transfer missing Assets” manually.
This setting gets reset every time “DBR to Deadline” starts up or refreshes.
As i mentioned in my first post. we found the setting for the “Submit Max to Deadline” DBR off-loading for rendering on the farm.
(3dsMax/3dsCmd plugin)
But this does not seem to work with “Submit Vray DBR to Deadline” which is used for local rendering with DBR.
I tried looking through the “3dsmaxVRayDBR2Deadline.ms” for any clues, but I couldn’t find anything for transferring missing assets.
Ah. For interactive local DBR, we store and restore any V-Ray settings between usage of our GUI. So, we capture all those V-Ray settings when the DL is opened and then restore those settings when you close the DL UI. Does that explain what your seeing here? Are you using the latest version of Deadline?
And sort of, it’s during usage of interactive local DBR, the Vray DBR setting for “transferring missing assets” gets unchecked. We need it to stay checked at all times.
We simply capture and store all current settings as the GUI opens. Is this checkbox enabled or disabled prior to you opening the V-Ray DBR UI from Deadline? If its enabled prior to the submitter UI opening, then it should be set to that same state when you close our submitter UI. Is this not happening just for this one setting? I just tested and it works for me.
After some more test, here are the steps i am taking:
Open DL DBR submitter / Vray settings good
Press “Reserve Servers” button / Vray settings good
Render image / Vray settings good
Press “Release Servers” button or closing the window / Vray Transfer Missing Assets unchecked
Press “Reserve Servers” again / still unchecked and stays unchecked
As soon as I press that button, the Transfer Missing Assets gets unchecked, and stays unchecked.
So when I press the the Reserve Servers button again and/or close the window, it stays unchecked.
