What’s New In Deadline 6.2.1
These are the accumulated release notes from every 6.2.1 beta release. If you want to see the release notes for a specific 6.2.1 beta release, click on the release’s corresponding thread in the Builds forum:
viewforum.php?f=85
This release fixes some bugs and adds a few minor new features, including support for After Effects CC 2014, Cinema 4D 16, Fusion 7, Nuke 9 and Realflow 2014.
Note that if you are already running Deadline 6.2, you do not need a new license to run Deadline 6.2.1.
General Improvements
- Sequential jobs are no longer dropped for higher priority jobs. Once a slave picks up a sequential job, it will keep rendering it until the job is complete or the render is canceled.
- Added a job task buffer value that can be applied to balanced or weighted algorithms to help prevent slaves from jumping between jobs to keep things balanced.
- Fixed a bug that could cause interruptible jobs to be interrupted for another job of equal priority.
- Fixed a bug that allowed regular tasks to be dequeued before a job’s pre-job script was complete.
- Improved the performance of how job tasks are updated in some cases.
- Added new OnTaskTimeout option to mark a task as complete.
- Added optional timeout option for the Starting phase of a job.
- All housecleaning operations are now performed during each housecleaning interval.
- Added housecleaning options to have the housecleaning and pending job scan operations write to a separate log file when they are run as a separate process.
- Unexpected mongodb exceptions now include the stacktrace and exception type.
Launcher Improvements
- The launcher now waits 5 minutes after starting before it starts checking if it should restart a stalled slave. This ensures that if the launcher is set to launch the slave at startup, and that slave previously stalled, the slave will have a chance to cleanup after itself. Otherwise, the launcher might try to launch the slave multiple times.
- On Linux, Deadline’s init.d script now shuts down the slaves and the launcher during a reboot/shutdown, which ensures the slaves check their licenses back in.
- On Linux, fixed some other issues in Deadline’s init.d script.
- When running as a service on Windows, the Launcher now properly shuts down the Slave when the machine is shut down.
Monitor Improvements
- Added Monitor option to enable slave pinging (it’s now disabled by default).
- Added 4 decimal places to the weighted job settings in the Repository Options.
- Deleting jobs from the monitor now logs to the repository history.
Slave Improvements
- Fixed a startup bug on Linux and Mac OSX that could result in multiple slaves with the same name starting up on the same machine.
- When searching for a job, we no longer prune jobs that have a QueuedChunk count less than or equal to 0. This helps ensure that if a job’s state gets messed up, queued tasks will still be dequeued for that job.
- Fixed a bug that caused the slave to reload its limit objects from the database every second. Now it’s only done when the slave reloads its job object (which is about every 2 minutes).
- Improved speed and reduced database load when a slave is processing limit groups while searching for a job to render.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Job failure detection settings from being applied when a plugin failed to sync its files.
Command Improvements
- Added command line option to DoHouseCleaning to choose which mode to run.
Scripting Improvements
- Fix a bug that prevented module import errors from showing the actual Python error.
- Fixed a bug that prevented JobUtils.CalculateJobStatistics() from working in non-Monitor scripts.
3ds Max Improvements
- Added workaround to prevent 3ds Max 2015 from crashing when it’s rendering as a service.
- Backported some RTT and other miscellaneous fixes from Deadline 7.
- SMTD - Add [PREVIEW] job ability to enable/disable its parent dependency to the [REMAINING] frames job.
- Added some new sanity checks to SMTD.
After Effects Improvements
- Added support for After Effects CC 2014.
Arnold Standalone Improvements
- Added the -dp flag to the render arguments to speed up the rendering.
Cinema 4D Improvements
- Added support for Cinema 4D 16.
- All multi-pass paths are now included when submitting from the integrated submitter, allowing you to open these output files from the Monitor.
- Fixed a bug in how the integrated submitter gets the output file name in cases where the output name scheme doesn’t start with a period.
Draft Improvements
- Added Path Mapping support to the Draft tile assembler.
- Fixed some issues and added more logging to Draft Tile Assembly jobs.
Fusion Improvements
- Added support for Fusion 7.
- Updated the Fusion plugin icon.
Houdini Improvements
- Fixed some bad logic when checking the output file in the houdini submitter.
- Fixed an error when loading the sticky SubmitSuspended property in the integrated houdini submitter.
- The integrated submitter now includes the current ROP name with the job name.
- Improved Arnold for Houdini support.
Mantra Standalone Improvements
- The “mantra: Bad Alembic Archive” error message is now caught during rendering.
Maya Improvements
- Fixed an Arnold for Maya verbosity flag bug.
- Fixed some issues when using tile rendering with VRay.
- The Draft Tile Assembler now works when submitting each camera as a separate job.
- VRay render elements are now supported when using the Draft Tile Assembler.
- Arnold AOVs are now supported by tile rendering.
- Fixed the default Maya executable paths on OSX.
- Updated the integrated Maya submitter to properly work with Arnold deepexr files.
- Fixed some Vray related bugs in the integrated Maya submitter due to differences between Vray 2 and Vray 3.
Mental Ray Standalone Improvements
- Added plugin configuration option to treat exit code 1 as error or success.
modo Improvements
- Fixed a bug in the integrated modo submitter that prevented it from working in modo 801.
Nuke Improvements
- Added support for Nuke 9.
- Added new Render in Proxy Mode option to the Nuke submitters.
- Fixed an error that could occur if PrepForOFX is not defined in the Nuke.dlinit file.
- The integrated Nuke submitter now includes output paths for all Views so that they can be viewed from the Monitor.
- The integrated Nuke submitter now displays a warning if you are trying to submit a job that has no Views.
- Updated the names given to the Knobs created by the integrated submitter, which seems to address some instability issues that could come up.
- The secondary pool setting is now sticky in the integrated submitter.
- Fixed a bug that could crop up when setting the environment in the nuke submitter prior to launching deadlinecommand.
- Updated Nuke plugin to properly handle frame counts in batch node when given write node names.
Python Improvements
- Path separators for the script path are now set per OS after Path Mapping has taken place.
Realflow Improvements
- Added support for Realflow 2014.
- Improved Hybrido simulation progress reporting.
Vray Spawner Improvements
- The default Vray spawner paths for 3ds Max Design are now included.
- Fixed a typo in the Vray spawner path for Maya 2015.