[b]Important[/b]
Due to ongoing changes in the installers and the way we do auto-upgrades of Deadline, you must reinstall the Repository and Clients again. You DO NOT need to reinstall the MongoDB database.
If you have installed beta 6 or earlier, you MUST uninstall it first to remove the Deadline 6 bin folder from your PATH environment variable. After uninstalling, you should also manually remove the system deadline.ini file if it still exists. These are the locations of this file:
- Windows: %PROGRAMDATA%\Thinkbox\Deadline6\deadline.ini
- Linux: /var/lib/Thinkbox/Deadline6/deadline.ini
- Mac OSX: /Users/Shared/Thinkbox/Deadline6/deadline.ini
The need to uninstall the client first is necessary in this case because of changes we’ve made to allow different major versions of Deadline to run at the same time. This process should not be required again once you are running beta 7 or later.
Downloads
What’s New In Deadline 6.0.49986 (Beta 10)
This release fixes a bunch of bugs and adds a few more features that were missing. In addition, all the remaining plugins and scripts from Deadline 5 have been ported to Deadline 6 with a few exceptions (ie: we are currently planning on discontinuing some plugins like Gelato, QuicktimeFusion, ParticleIllusion, etc).
Here are the highlighted changes.
Breaking Change Between Beta 9 and Beta 10
We discovered that the job’s plugin info settings and extra info settings were getting mixed up in the database. This has been fixed, but this results in a breaking change which will prevent jobs submitted from beta 9 from working with beta 10. If you try to render a job from beta 9 or earlier with beta 10, you will get errors because Deadline won’t be able to find any plugin info for the job.
In addition, we made a minor change to how reports are stored in the database. This was necessary to allow the deletion of individual reports. This means that job or slave reports that were generated in beta 9 or earlier will not be able to be deleted from the Monitor. They will still be deleted when the job or slave is deleted from the Repository. While this isn’t so much a breaking change since report deleting wasn’t supported in beta 9 or earlier, we still thought this was worth mentioning.
Job Environment Variables
Environment variables can now be specified for a job, and these variables will be set for the rendering process when the job is rendered. The can be set or changed in the job properties dialog, and they can be specified in the job info file during submission in a similar fashion to the extra info properties:
EnvironmentKeyValue0=mykey=myvalue
EnvironmentKeyValue1=anotherkey=anothervalue
EnvironmentKeyValue2=atheirdkey=athirdvalue
...There is also an “IncludeEnvironment” option that takes either True or False (False is the default). If set to True, then the current environment variables will automatically be set for the job:
IncludeEnvironment=TrueThis can be used in conjunction with the EnvironmentKeyValue# options, but note that the EnvironmentKeyValue# options will take precedence over any current environment variables with the same name. Finally, there is a “UseJobEnvironmentOnly” option that takes either True or False (False is the default):
UseJobEnvironmentOnly=TrueNormally, the job’s environment variables will be merged with the current environment on the rendering machine (with the job’s variables taking precendence). However, if UseJobEnvironmentOnly is set to True, then ONLY the job’s environment variables will be used.
Script Menu Configuration
In the Repository Options, you can now customize the script menus. You can enable or disable specific scripts, give the scripts more user-friendly names, or specify an icon that will show up in the script menu. You can also create submenus and place the scripts in themm.
General Improvements
- The job’s plugin info and extra info properties are no longer mixed up. This is a breaking change which will prevent jobs submitted from beta 9 from working with beta 10.
- All objects (jobs, slaves, etc) that use the LastWriteTime field are now guaranteed to have that property defined in the database. This is to avoid the potential for this field to be missing.
- Icons have been added to all Deadline applications.
- Job failure detection is now enabled by default for new installations. The default failure limit is still 100.
- Render executable paths for plugins can now be relative. If they are, Deadline searches the current directory and the PATH environment variable to build up the full path.
- If a job is suspended, a requeue report will now be created for any tasks that were rendering at the time.
- There is now a configurable upper limit on the number of tasks that can be created for a job. The default is 10,000 and can be set as high as 30,000 in the Repository Options.
- Normalized render times are now included in the statistics that are logged by Deadline.
- Jobs now have a new Environment Variables property. They can be specified at submission and modified from the job properties dialog in the Monitor.
- All plugins that support local rendering will no longer throw an error if the local output folder is empty. This is to prevent false positives when the renderer is writing output to a different location.
- Replaced the ‘()’ characters in the application log files with hyphens so that they’re unix-friendly.
- Updated to most recent MongoDB drivers.
Installer Improvements
- When installing a new Mongo installation, we now pass the -quite argument to mongo to reduce verbosity in the log, and a new log will now be created when mongo is restarted.
Monitor Improvements
- The job properties dialog now shows the job’s ID in a read-only text field. This makes it easier to copy the ID from the Monitor if you need it.
- The loading of job or slave reports is much faster now. Before, there would be a 1-2 second delay before the reports were displayed.
- Job and slave reports can now be deleted from the Monitor. Just use the right-click menu in the report lists.
- In the filter dialog, the first filter added is now properly aligned to the top of the list.
- The “Ping” column in the slave list is back, and will show if the slave’s machine is online or not. Pinging is performed in a background thread, so it can take a minute or two after restarting the Monitor for each machine to be pinged.
- A progress bar is now shown in the progress column for the job and slave list.
- The taks list filter counts now update properly when using the Search box to filter out data.
- Fixed the “wrapped C/C++ object of %S has been deleted” errors that could occur after closing lists in the Monitor.
- The dialogs for creating new Drive or Path Mappings in the Repository Options now use a button box so that their button layout is based on the current operating system.
- Double-clicking a job will now bring up the job properties dialog.
- Double-clicking a slave will now try to remotely connect to its slave log.
- Double-clicking a task will now open the image for the task and/or remotely connect to the slave log. This behavior can be configured in Tools -> Options.
- Fixed a freezing problem when the Monitor lost connection to the database.
- The times in the last status update column now update for offline/stalled slaves.
- The panels in the job properties dialog now grow when the dialog is resized.
- The panels in the repository options dialog now grow when the dialog is resized.
- The “Explore Output” option now works with UNC paths on Windows.
- There is now a default icon for the job list for plugins that don’t have an icon.
- Added option to connect to slave log to the Task list’s right-click menu.
- Added option to connect to slave log to the Job/Slave report list’s right-click menu.
- Added right-click option to view a job’s or slave’s history log (although the actual writing of the history isn’t fully hooked up yet).
- The task list now properly displays tasks for tiled jobs.
- In the Machine Limit panel in the job properties dialog, the blacklist/whitelist options are now under the list on the right, and the text above that list updates accordingly.
- The chunked image viewer dialog for the task list should be working properly now.
- The Scan For Missing Output option in the job right-click menu should be working properly now.
- Copy & pasting from the Job Details list should be working properly now.
- Resizable dialogs now retain their previous size.
- REGRESSION: The right-click Notify Me On Completion option for the job list now works again.
Pulse Improvements
- The web service now authenticates properly.
Slave Improvements
- Fixed the “GetLastVersion error message in QtCommercialChart.dll” error some people were getting.
- If a task is canceled, a requeue report is now generated.
- The “stop/restart after current task is completed” behavior now works properly again. Before, the slave would just cancel its current task.
- Fixed a bug that caused the slave to report a NullReferenceException instead of the actual rendering error on Linux/OSX.
Command Improvements
- The -SelectLimitGroups command no longer dumps the selected and unselected counts to stdout. This was causing issues with the integrated submitters that used this command.
Scripting Improvements
- Added functions to RepositoryUtils to get job and slave reports (documentation coming soon).
- Added a function to calculate statistics for a job (documentation coming soon).
- The LabelControl in the DeadlineScriptDialog now supports hyperlinks. Just specify the tag in the label’s text.
- The ComboControl in the DeadlineScriptDialog will now default to the first item in the list if the previously saved item is no longer in the list.
3dsCmd Improvements
- Removed reference to Viz from Monitor submitter (since Viz isn’t supported anymore).
3dsmax Improvements
- Added a timeout when running the customize.ms script during startup.
Anime Studio Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
CommandScript Improvements
- The executable no longer needs to be an absolute path. If it is relative, Deadline searches the current directory and the PATH environment variable to build up the full path.
- Fixed a submission warning about groups when there were actually slaves in the specified group.
Composite Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
- Renamed from Toxik.
Job Transfer Plugin Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Luxrender Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Mantra Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Maxwell Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
- Resuming renders now work with Local Rendering enabled.
- The sampling level for co-op jobs is now computed at render time instead of submission time.
- Added option to ignore missing MXI files during a merge.
- Added option to combine co-op jobs into one job (the default behavior now).
Maya Improvements
- Fixed an “obsolete -renderType warning” in the integrated submitter.
Messiah Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
MetaFuze Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Naiad Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Nuke Improvements
- Shotgun settings for the integrated submitter now show up in their own Deadline tab in Nuke’s project settings.
PRMan Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Quicktime Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
RealFlow Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
REDLine Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
- Renamed from REDAlert.
Rendition Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Rhino Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
RIB Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
RVIO Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Shake Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
Softimage Improvements
- Fixed a bug that caused the integrated submitter to fail after the job is initially submitted.
Terragen Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.
VRay Standalone Improvements
- Path mapping can now be performed on the contents of the vrscene file. This can be enabled from the VRay plugin configuration.
Vue Improvements
- Converted for Deadline 6.