IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR ALL USERS:
Please read the following threads for important information regarding Deadline 6.1:
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=4484
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=4483
Downloads
Installers: thinkboxsoftware.box.com/s/0o7batns93ssqqcqglbt
Documentation: thinkboxsoftware.box.com/s/8029p98jynab1jehgfl7
Note that the Deadline 6.1 user guide and scripting references have been updated, and the user guide is almost complete. The user guide is just missing these key sections:
- Job Dependency View (under Controlling Jobs)
- Farm Reports dialog usage (under Repository Statistics)
- 3ds max multiregion rendering (under 3ds Max)
What’s New In Deadline 6.1.53566 (Beta 10)
This release includes some key performance improvements in the Monitor. The row generation for the lists is now done in a proper background thread, so it shouldn’t impact the interaction with the UI like it has in previous releases.
This release also separates the pending job scan from the rest of housecleaning so that long housecleaning operations don’t affect the pending job scan interval.
Finally, the weighted scheduling system has been overhauled. For the weighted options, you can now specify floating point values for the different multipliers, and they can be negative or positive. Deadline then sorts by this weight so that jobs with the largest weight value have the higher priority. For example, if you set a negative weight value to the number of job errors, a job with more errors will end up having a lower overall weight so that precedence is given to other jobs in the queue.
General Improvements
- The weighted scheduling option has been changed so that the job with the largest weight gets top priority.
- The weighted scheduling option now uses floats, and the weights can range from -10,000 to 10,000.
- Fixed a bug on Windows that prevented the Deadline applications from closing their listening socket on shut down when a child process belonging to that application is still open. This problem can still affect the Slave application, but unfortunately we can’t do anything about it because the Slave must pass its open handles to the child process in order for standard output redirection to work.
- Pending job scanning has been separated from housecleaning so that its interval isn’t affected by the rest of the housecleaning process.
- Pending scanning can now be run in a separate process instead of housecleaning. This setting can be set in the Job Settings page in the Repository Options under the Cleanup tab.
- Removed the House Cleaning page from repository options since it’s no longer needed.
- The length of an archived job .zip file name is now capped to avoid running into issues when the file name gets too long.
Installer Improvements
- Fixed a bug in the Repository installer that could prevent the creation of the dbConnect.xml file if the repository folder path ends with a backward slash.
Launcher Improvements
- The Remove Slave Instances window’s selection mode is now consistent with other list controls in Deadline.
Monitor Improvements
- Improved performance by moving the row generation code for lists into a proper background thread that doesn’t impact the UI.
- When sorting by state in the job list, the “Rendering” state is now sorted by number of tasks being rendered for the job.
- Added new Weight column to job list that shows the job’s weight when a Weighted scheduling algorithm is being used.
- Fixed a bug where Jobs deleted from the Monitor couldn’t be un-deleted.
- Added a right-click menu to the job quick filter to expand or collapse all filter sections.
- Fixed a bug with whitelists/blacklists in the job candidate filter (it was a case sensitivity issue).
- Slave pinging now uses the slave’s host name or IP address override if necessary.
- When the date changes, all data models are invalidated so that any date-based filters are reapplied.
- Fixed some bugs in the Copy Output Path menu for chunked tasks.
- Fixed a bug were multiple Secondary Pool quickfilters would get added to the job list.
- Job dependency view now asks for save when monitor is closed if it has uncommitted changes.
- Added ability to elide job title text in job dependency view, and added tool tips for elided titles.
- Job dependency view saves state of minimap, title elide and selection mode between sessions.
- Updated buttons and right-click menus in job dependency view to include status tips for all items.
- Fixed a bug in the job dependency view which stopped updates after you switched jobs.
- Fixed some positioning issues with some buttons in the job dependency view.
- Added ability to see “Resume on” and “Frame dependencies” in nodes in job dependency view (enabled by default).
- In job dependency view, the entire node now accepts a dropped connection.
- Added ability in job dependency view to right click and add a job.
- The options to add a job, script, or asset in the job dependency view now creates the node where the right-click occurred.
- Rearranged right-click menu in job dependency view, and moved job specific menu items to a new sub menu.
- Fixed a tooltip typo for the minimap in the job dependency view.
Slave Improvements
- The slave now attempts to flush the stdout of the rendering process one last time before checking its exit code.
- When the slave gets the output image size, it just resets it to -1 if no output images could be found.
- Log reports for a job now list the CPU and RAM usage information at the bottom.
- Fixed tab orders in Slave UI.
- When a slave cancels a task because it can’t be found, it now prints out more information explaining why.
- The slaves now print out the scheduling logic they are using.
- Slave no longer refreshes network settings between tasks to reduce network traffic.
- When the slave can’t get a license, it now shows a better message in the License field in the slave UI and the slave list in the Monitor.
Pulse Improvements
- Fixed a bug that could cause Pulse to requeue orphaned tasks that aren’t actually orphaned. This was happening because it could be using out-of-date information.
- Fixed tab orders in Pulse UI.
Scripting Improvemetns
- Fixed the standalone Python API to pass python objects instead of JSON strings.
- Fixed up some standalone Python API classes that expect one object back to return the object instead of a list containing just the one object.
- Added some additional cloud classes to the script API reference.
- Removed manual garbage collection from Deadline’s scripting manager when cleaning up scopes.
- Python print statements in monitor scripts no longer create empty new lines, and are prefixed with “PYTHON:”.
3ds Max Improvements
- Added option to plugin configuration to kill WSCommCntr.exe executables during rendering.
- Fixed some typos in the 3dsmax.options file.
- The Show Slave Info option in the Limit tab in SMTD now works again.
- Fixed a render elements path bug when doing multiregion rendering in SMTD.
- Increased the overall label width in 3dsmax monitor submitter to avoid cut-off issues on OSX.
- Fixed a bug that caused simple socket timeout connections whenever the Lightning SetProgress function was called.
After Effects Improvements
- Added an option to fail After Effects jobs if there is another After Effects GUI process running.
- Fixed an error that occurred when searching for the render executable path for CC version 12.1
- The integrated submitter now includes output paths for all output modules in the render item instead of just the first.
- Cleaned up the layout in the integrated submitter a bit.
Composite Improvements
- Updated the plugin icon with the Composite 2014 icon.
Houdini Improvements
- Added support for Houdini 13.
Mantra Standalone Improvements
- Added support for Mantra 13.
Maya Improvements
- Updated the plugin icon with the Maya 2014 icon.
- Reordered the layout of the Draft assembly options in the integrated submitter.
- Maya integrated submitter was missing the Additional Args option for Draft.
Nuke Improvements
- Fixed a bug that caused Nuke to hang indefinitely if an error occurred while in batch mode.
Softimage Improvements
- Updated the plugin icon with the Softimage 2014 icon.
- Reordered the layout of the Draft assembly options in the integrated submitter.