Deadline 6.2.1 Release Notes

Deprecated Deadline 6 Builds
1

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.