What’s New In Deadline 7.0.0.25 (Beta 1)
Deadline 7.0 is the latest version of Thinkbox Software’s scalable high-volume data management solution. Further extending the functionality of the cross-platform tool, Deadline 7 features significant architectural changes and core technology upgrades, which include an upgraded Qt interface, an updated MongoDB database and FTrack support. Additionally, Deadline 7 is now optimized for more flexible cloud interaction through built-in VMX (Virtual Machine eXtension) capabilities that allow users to leverage private and public clouds.
Here are the highlighted changes:
VMX (Virtual Machine eXtension)
With VMX (Virtual Machine eXtension) built in and pluggable cloud support, Deadline 7 can interact with private and public cloud solutions out-of-the-box, including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure and OpenStack, among others. The new Deadline Balancer application can start and shut down virtual instances on demand based on the jobs in the queue, the current budget settings, or other custom algorithms. Multiple cloud solutions can be used simultaneously, along with classic non-cloud rendernode and workstation rendering.
Updated to MongoDB 2.6.3
Deadline now ships with MongoDB 2.6.3, with version 2.6.1 being the new minimum requirement for Deadline 7. Deadline utilizes MongoDB’s new timestamp feature to significantly reduce the number of write queries performed during normal operation. Not only does this improve performance under heavier loads, but it also allows Deadline to support MongoDB’s Sharding feature. Sharding can be used to create a cluster of MongoDB instances, allowing the database server to scale horizontally by adding more nodes to the cluster.
Deadline’s Replica Set support has been improved as well. Previously, you had to specify each node in your Replica Set when specifying the MongoDB server name. Now, you can also include the Replica Set name.
Updated User Interface
Deadline’s User Interface libraries have been updated to Qt 5, and the Deadline applications now use Qt’s new Fusion theme for a more modern look and feel. The Fusion theme provides better scaling at larger resolutions, and it also provides more color contrast.
The Monitor also uses new progress bars to show the progress for jobs. The progress bars show the state of every task for the job, not just the complete versus incomplete tasks. This allows you to see the overall state of all the tasks at a glance.
Finally, updating to Qt 5 also addresses issues that Qt 4 had with Wacom tablets.
Python Upgraded to 2.7.6
Deadline now ships with Python 2.7.6. Note that this shouldn’t affect any existing scripts that you use with Deadline.
Draft Upgraded to 1.2.0.56290
Deadline now ships with Draft 1.2.0.56290. Note that this shouldn’t affect any existing Draft template scripts that you use with Deadline. Also note that if you are using Draft 1.1 or earlier, you will need an updated Draft license. Below is a list of what’s new in Draft 1.2.0.56290:
Python Version:
- The Python version that Draft requires is now Python 2.7.
OpenColorIO:
- Use config.ocio and ColorSpaces / Roles to create OCIO color processors for color correcting images.
- Create OCIO color processors directly from your favourite LUT files… see opencolorio.org/FAQ.html for the full list of LUT formats supported.
ASC CDL:
- A fully standard-compliant implementation of ASC CDL LUTs. (The clamping steps in OCIO’s ASC CDL implementation is not currently standard-compliant.)
Unicode:
- Draft now supports unicode filenames and text annotations!
- Note: We need to modify the DraftParamParser.py library so that unicode strings aren’t mangled in the Deadline/Draft boundary, but once they’re in, Draft handles them properly.
Licensing Improvements:
- Draft Licences are now more flexible! Most Draft features require only that a license be present. Actual checkout of licenses now happens only while videos are being encoded or decoded.
- “Lost connection to license server” no longer pops up dialog boxes on Windows.
Mono Upgraded to 3.4
Deadline now runs against Mono 3.4 on Linux and Mac OSX, which helps improve stability. This new version is bundled with the Linux and Mac OSX Client and Repository installers.
Mono Included in Linux Installers
Mono is now installed automatically as part of the installation procedure on Linux. It is installed to the Deadline installation folder, and won’t impact any existing Mono installations. Now Mono no longer needs to be installed manually on Linux prior to installing Deadline.
Updated Slave Licensing Model
When running multiple slaves on a single machine, they will now share a single license instead of needing one license per slave instance. In addition, the slaves will only hold onto their license while they are rendering. When they become idle, they will return their license.
Customizable Styles for Deadline Applications
The new Styles configuration panel in the Monitor options allows you to customize the color of the Deadline applications. Simply specify a palette color and the User Interface will automatically use lighter and darker variants of that color where necessary. In addition, the font style and size can be configured as well.
New Batch Property for Grouping Jobs
A new Batch property has been added to jobs that allows jobs to be grouped together in the Job List. All jobs with the same Batch name will be grouped under that Batch name, and the Batch name can be expanded or collapsed to show and hide all the jobs, respectively. Jobs in the same Batch will also be grouped together in the Job Dependency View. Finally, the properties for the jobs in the same Batch can be modified by simply right-clicking on the Batch item in the Job List or the Job Dependency View.
New Graphs in the Monitor
New graphs have been added to the Monitor. The Jobs panel can show pie charts based on the job pool, secondary pool, group, user, and plugin. The Tasks panel can show graphs representing the task render times, image sizes, cpu usage, and memory usage. The Slaves panel can now show bar charts that show how many slaves are in certain pools and groups. The Job Reports panel can now show a pie chart that shows the percentage of errors generated by each slave.
Customizable Default Layout for Panels in Monitor
A default layout for panels in the Monitor can now be saved, and when a new panel is opened, it will use the saved default layout. So now you can set up your favourite default layouts for the Job list, Task list, etc and not have to worry about setting them up again when you open new panels.
In addition, you can now save the layout from a panel to disk and load it in again. This allows you to share a layout from your Monitor with someone else.
Job Dependency Improvements
Job dependencies are now more flexible than ever. Individual dependencies can have notes attached to them, and they can also have their own overrides for the Frame Offset and Resume On… settings.
The Job Dependency view in the Monitor has also been updated to show these per-dependency settings. In addition, there is now a new feature in the Dependency View that allows you to test the dependencies and see which ones pass and which ones do not. Finally, the look of the nodes in the Dependency View have been updated.
Limit Improvements
Limits are now much more flexible than they were before. Previously, one Limit Stub per Slave was used up when a Slave rendered a job that required that Limit. This is still supported, but now, a Limit can be configured so that one Limit Stub per Task is used up, or one Limit Stub per Machine is used up.
The per Task option is useful if you are rendering with an application that requires one license per instance, and you are rendering more than one concurrent task at a time. The per Machine option is useful if you are rendering with an application that only requires a single license per machine, regardless of how many instances are running on that machine.
Improvements to Pool and Group Management
The Slave list in the Pool and Group Management dialogs can now be filtered, and all columns in the list are now available. In addition, you can now right-click on specific slaves in the Slave list in the Monitor to modify Pools and Groups for the selected slaves only.
Suspend Tasks
Deadline now supports the ability to suspend and resume individual tasks. This can be useful if you want to postpone or skip the rendering of specific tasks.
Slave Scheduling Improvements and Idle Detection
Deadline’s Slave Scheduling feature has undergone a major overhaul. Previously it was part of Power Management and controlled by Pulse, but now it is a standalone feature that is controlled by the Launcher application that runs on every Client machine. This means that Pulse is no longer required to use the Slave Scheduling feature.
There are also new features that have been added to Slave Scheduling. If a slave is scheduled to start on a machine, a notification message will now pop up for 30 seconds indicating that the slave is scheduled to start. If someone is still using the machine, they can choose to delay the start of the slave for a certain amount of time. Another addition is the new option to enforce the slave schedule. If enabled, the Launcher will keep restarting the slave if it is shut down during a period of time that it is supposed to be running.
Finally, Slave Scheduling can now be configured to launch the slave if the machine has been idle for a certain amount of time (“idle” means no keyboard or mouse input). There is also additional criteria that can be checked before launching the slave, including the machine’s current memory and CPU usage, the current logged in user, and the processes currently running on the machine. Finally, this system can stop the slave automatically when the machine is no longer idle.
Note that Idle Detection can be set in the Slave Scheduling settings, or on a per-slave basis in the Slave Settings dialog in the Monitor. It can also be set in the new Local Slave Control dialog so that users can configure if their local slave should launch when the machine becomes idle.
Job Dequeueing Mode
Slaves now have a new Job Dequeuing mode that controls which jobs a slave dequeues based on how the job was submitted. By default, a slave will dequeue any job, but it can be configured to only dequeue jobs submitted from the same machine that the slave is running on, or submitted by specific users.
The Job Dequeuing Mode can be configured in the Slave Settings dialog in the Monitor. It can also be set in the new Local Slave Control dialog so that users can configure if their local slave should only render their own jobs, or if they want to help another user render their jobs.
Local Slave Controls
The Monitor and Launcher applications now have a new dialog that can be used to control the slave running on the local machine. It can be used to start and stop the slave, or connect to the slave’s log. This is useful if the slave is running as a service on the machine.
In addition, you can set up the slave to launch if the machine has been idle for a certain amount of time (“idle” means no keyboard or mouse input). It can also stop the slave automatically when the machine is no longer idle. Note that this feature only works on Windows and OSX machines.
Finally, the slave’s Job Dequeuing Mode can be configured here. By default, a slave will dequeue any job, but it can be configured to only dequeue jobs submitted from the same machine, or submitted by specific users. This is useful if a user wants their slave to only render their jobs, or they want to help another user render their jobs.
Note that the Idle Detection and Job Dequeuing Mode settings can also be changed by administrators for all slaves. In addition, the Local Slave Controls feature can be disabled by administrators if they don’t want users to be able to control their local slaves.
Render As User
A new option has been added to Deadline to render jobs with the account that is associated with the job’s user. The account information can be configured in the Deadline user settings. On Windows, the user’s login name, domain, and password are required. On Linux and Mac OSX, just the user’s login name is required, but the Slave must run as root so that the Slave has permission to launch the rendering process as another user.
Improved Slave Statistics
Additional statistical information is now gathered for individual slaves, including the slave’s running time, rendering time, and idle time. It also includes information about the number of tasks the slave has completed, the number of errors it has reported, and its average Memory and CPU usage. Like job statistics, Pulse does not need to be running to gather this information.
New Events and Asynchronous Job Events
New events have been added to the Event Plugin system. The first is the OnHouseCleaning event, which triggers whenever Deadline performs Housecleaning. This allows you to set up event plugins to do custom cron-job style operations within Deadline.
In addition, there are four new events that trigger when a slave changes state: OnSlaveStarted, OnSlaveStopped, OnSlaveRendering, and OnSlaveStartingJob. As an example, an event plugin could be written to have slaves automatically add themselves to Groups when they start up based on some custom criteria, or an event plugin could be written to have slaves perform maintenance checks when they become idle.
Finally, there is now an option to process many types of job events asynchronously. The benefit is that job events will no longer slow down batch operations in the Monitor (for example, deleting 1000 jobs will be much faster if you are using event plugins because those events will be processed later). These job events are queued up in the Database and Deadline’s Pending Job Scan will process them at regular intervals. Because they are placed in a queue, they will still be processed in the same order that they were triggered. Note that if this option is enabled, some events are still processed synchronously, like the OnJobSubmitted and OnJobStarted events.
Auto Configuration Overhaul
The Auto Configuration feature has undergone a couple of significant changes. The first is that all Deadline applications can now pull the Auto Configuration settings, instead of just the Slave. This means that Auto Configuration can now be used to automatically configure workstations, not just render nodes.
The second change is with how Auto Configuration works. Previously, all Auto Configuration settings were pulled from Pulse. Now, only the Repository Path is pulled from Pulse, and the other settings are pulled when the Deadline application connects to the Repository. The benefit to this is that most of the Auto Configuration settings will work without Pulse running.
Finally, Auto Configuration rule sets can now be enabled or disabled, so you no longer have to delete a rule set if you want to remove it temporarily.
Region Awareness
Regions can now be configured in Deadline, and users and slaves can be assigned to a specific region. Currently, this is useful for Path Mapping, and allows you to map paths differently based on the region that the users or slaves are in. Note that when VMX launches a slave, it will automatically be added to the region associated with the cloud provider settings.
Grid-Based Script Dialogs
New grid-based functions have been added to the DeadlineScriptDialog class which makes it easier to create custom dialogs. Instead of setting the width and height when adding new controls to a row, you can instead add them to a grid and indicate which row and column the control should go in. Optionally, you can also indicate how many rows and columns the control should occupy. By being part of a grid, the controls will now grow and shrink dynamically based on the size of the dialog and the size of the font.
FTrack Integration
The Deadline/FTrack integration enables a seamless render and review data flow. When Deadline starts a render, an Asset Version is automatically created within FTrack using key metadata. When the render is complete, Deadline automatically updates the created Version appropriately – a thumbnail image is uploaded, components are created from the Job’s output paths (taking advantage of FTrack’s location plugins), and the Version is flagged for Review. In doing so, Deadline provides a seamless transition from Job Submission to Review process, without artists needing to monitor their renders.
Jigsaw for Maya and modo
Jigsaw, which was previously only available for 3ds Max, is now available for Maya and modo. It gives you more control over the tiles and/or regions that you are submitting to Deadline. This feature uses Thinkbox Software’s Draft library to assemble the final image instead of the old TileAssembler.exe application. Note that Draft requires a license, so contact Thinkbox Sales if you don’t already have a Draft license.
Support for Salt and Puppet
Application and Event plugins have been added to support the Salt and Puppet automation applications. Jobs can be submitted to the application plugin to update software and machine configurations on specific machines, while the event plugins can be used to update all of your machines when the slave running on them becomes idle.
General Improvements
- Added the new VMX (Virtual Machine eXtension) system to Deadline.
- Upgraded Python to version 2.7.6.
- Added FTrack support, and updated many job submission scripts to connect to FTrack.
- Added new event to Event Plugins that triggers every time Housecleaning is performed. This is useful for performing custom cron-job style operations within Deadline.
- Added new events to Event Plugins that trigger when a slave starts, stops, starts rendering, and becomes idle.
- Added option to process many of the job events asynchronously to improve performance (particularly in the Monitor).
- Added application and event plugins for Puppet and Salt automation applications.
- Users, slaves, and pulse can now be added to regions, which affects how Path Mapping is performed for them (regions can be configured in the Repository Options).
- Path mapping can now be associated with regions so that different path mappings can be set for different regions.
- There is now an option in slave scheduling to keep the slave running during scheduled hours.
- Housecleaning and the Pending Job scan are now performed on a more regular basis by the Slaves when Pulse isn’t running.
- During the Pending Job Scan, the task dependency check now handles a missing main function in the dependency script properly.
- Fixed a typo where the Pending Job Scan would refer to itself as Housecleaning.
- Fixed an encoding issue when saving and loading job and slave reports.
- Added new slave statistics gathering that logs more information about individual slaves.
- Added new vCenter Cloud plugin.
- Limits can now be configured with different usage levels. They can be per task, per slave, or per machine. Previously, they could only be per slave.
- Bumped up the maximum thread/cpu setting limit in the submission scripts.
Installer Improvements
- Mono is now shipped with the Linux installers, so it is no longer required for Mono to be installed prior to installing Deadline.
- Added the major version number to the shortcuts created on windows, and to the uninstaller shortcuts created on all operating systems.
- Added command line option to Client installer to set the NoGuiMode setting.
- When setting up the database, the Repository installer now checks to make sure the database version is the minimum supported version.
- The Repository installer now checks to make sure it’s not installing over an existing repository that’s a different version.
- The Repository installer now sets the default database name to include the major Deadline version number.
- The Repository installer now creates a repository.ini file in the repository install directory which contains the Version information.
- The Windows Repository installer now ships with both the standard and legacy versions of MongoDB. The standard version will be installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, and the legacy version will be installed on older versions of Windows.
- The Repository uninstaller now removes all subfolders except for the “custom” one.
Repository Improvements
- Archived jobs are now stored in subfolders based on the year and month they are submitted.
- Job reports are now stored in a subfolder with the job’s ID, which improves performance when deleting reports for a job.
- The License Server is no longer installed in the Repository. It can be downloaded from the Thinkbox website.
Database Improvements
- Upgraded minimum MongoDB requirement to 2.6.1 (although the Repository installer ships with 2.6.3).
- Deadline now uses MongoDB’s new timestamp feature to reduce the number of write operations it performs.
- Using the new timestamp feature allows Deadline to support Sharding.
- A Replica Set Name can now be specified when configuring the database connection settings.
- Improved how passwords are saved in the database.
Job Improvements
- Individual tasks for jobs can now be suspended or resumed.
- Added ability to render jobs using the account for the user that submitted the job.
- Job dependencies are more flexible, and can have per-dependency overrides and notes.
- Added new OnTaskTimeout option to mark a task as complete.
- Added optional timeout option for the Starting phase of a job.
- Added a job timeout option to calculate the task timeout based on the number of frames for the current task.
- Jobs with custom plugin locations specified no longer need the custom plugin to be in the repository to be submitted and resubmitted.
- 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 where pre job scripts were not necessarily finishing before regular tasks were started.
- Failed jobs with a post job script no longer remain stuck in the queued state.
- Added option to submit a job with a start time delay by specifying a JobDelay=dd:hh:mm:ss value in the job info file. The delay value is represented by the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds, all separated by colons.
- Fixed a bug when undeleting a job that could cause the job’s task counts to be incorrect.
Client Application Improvements
- Upgraded user interface libraries to Qt 5, which fixes some known Wacom Tablet issues.
- The Deadline applications now use the new Qt Fusion theme for a more modern and scalable look.
- All Deadline applications can now update the Auto Configuration configuration settings, instead of just the slave.
- All Auto Configuration settings, except for the Repository path, are now pulled directly from the Repository. Only the Repository Path is still pulled from Pulse.
- The color and font used in all Deadline applications can now be customized from the Monitor.
- All Deadline application command line arguments now support any number of leading dashes (for example, “deadlinemonitor -console” or “deadlineslave --help”).
- Added a NoGuiMode setting to the deadline.ini file. It’s set to False by default, but if True, then the launcher, slave, and pulse will always run in nogui mode, regardless if the -nogui flag is passed or not.
- All logs for the Deadline applications and for jobs now have timestamps.
- The LaunchPulseAtStartup and LaunchBalancerAtStartup settings are now stored in the system deadline.ini file, not the per user one.
- The Monitor, Pulse, and Balancer listening ports and process IDs are now stored in separate ini files, not the system deadline.ini file. This means that a symlinked deadline.ini file can now be shared between multiple machines.
Launcher Improvements
- The Launcher now controls the the scheduled starting and stopping of slaves.
- The Launcher displays a popup message when a slave is scheduled to start, allowing a user to delay launching the slave if they are still using the machine.
- The Launcher can detect if the system is idle and launch the slave. It can also stop the slave when the system is no longer idle.
- Added new Local Slave Settings dialog to the Launcher menu to control the local slave and configure its Idle Detection and Job Dequeuing Mode settings.
- The Launcher system tray icon now shows the Deadline version number in the tooltip.
- 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.
- Added new “-shutdownwithslave” command line option to launcher, which will shutdown any running slaves first before shutting down the existing launcher.
- 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.
- The Restart Slave If Stalled option is now disabled by default.
- Fixed some bugs in the Launcher init script on Linux.
Monitor Improvements
General
- The UI Lock can now be toggled on and off using the Shortcut “ALT+`”.
- Font sizes are now consistent for all column headers in the lists in the Monitor.
- Added new graphs to the Monitor.
- There are no longer artifacts in the images when saving graphs to disk.
- Default list layouts can now be saved for each panel in the Monitor. These defaults are used when new panels are opened.
- List layouts for each panel in the Monitor can be saved to disk and opened again later.
- Added ability to add Separators when customizing Script Menus.
- The Monitor now gives the user the option to save the Location and Size when pinning a layout or saving a layout to disk.
- When right-clicking on the column headers for a list to show hidden columns, the column will now appear where the mouse cursor is instead of at the end.
- Added search history to the search boxes in the Monitor. The search history can be cleared from the down-arrow menu for each list.
- The default size for the Manage Pools and Manage Groups dialogs are now bigger.
- The Slave list in the Pool and Group Management dialogs can now be filtered, and all columns in the list are now available.
- Fixed a bug when deleting groups and pools from the Manage Pool and Group Dialog that was preventing deletion of a single pool or group, or deleting them all if one was selected for deletion.
- The Slave Scheduling feature has been broken out of the Power Management dialog and now has its own configuration dialog.
- Added new Repository Options panel to create regions.
- In Repository Options, moved the database threshold to the Notifications panel, and grouped it with the database email address setting.
- Added an option to the Email Notification panel in the Repository Options to enable/disable auto-generating email addresses for new users. If enabled, the email address will be based on the SMTP server unless a postfix override is specified.
- The statistics panel in the repository options now has all of its settings in a group box.
- Added a toggle to the FarmOverviewReport to switch between percentages and counts for the graphs.
- Repository options dialog now notes that it can take up to 10 minutes for the settings to propagate.
- Improved the tooltips in the Repository Options dialog.
- Fixed a typo in the House Cleaning panel in the Repository Options.
- Updated Repository Options, Job Properties, Slave Properties, and Monitor Options dialogs so that each panel takes up a bit more space.
- New rows created in the Path Mappings, Drive Mappings, and Monitor Layout panels in the Repository Options now have the correct height.
- Moved the database threshold in the repository options dialog to the Notifications panel, and grouped it with the database email address setting.
- Added a button in the Repository Options dialog to reset all settings back to factory defaults.
- In the Repository Options, all performance-related settings are now on a new Performance panel. Use the new Auto Adjust spinner control to automatically pick good default settings based on the number of Slaves in your farm.
- Fixed a bug in the Auto Configuration page in the Repository Options that occurred when the last entry in the Auto Configuration list was deleted.
- Auto Configuration rule sets can now be enabled or disabled.
- Manage User, Manage Groups and Manage Pools dialogs no longer close the Name dialog if an invalid name is entered.
- The Farm Statistics dialog now has a drop down to choose an interval, rather than 4 separate buttons.
- The Configure Cloud Providers dialog now initializes the cloud plugins before displaying to improve performance when viewing the settings for different cloud plugins.
- Added Import Settings option to the Tools menu, which allows you to import settings from other Repositories running a minimum of Deadline 6.
- Added new Local Slave Settings dialog to the Tools menu and the main toolbar to control the local slave and configure its Idle Detection and Job Dequeuing Mode settings.
- Improved layouts of controls in Plugin and Event Plugin configuration dialogs.
- Features that require Pulse now mention it in their respective property dialogs.
- Updated all Monitor scripts to use the new grid-based system for the script dialogs.
- All Monitor submission scripts now save their sticky settings if the dialog is closed using the “X” button, or if Alt+F4 is pressed.
- Added additional command line arguments for the Monitor to set specific Monitor Options at startup.
- Fixed the filter types for some columns in the slave list, job report list, and slave report list.
- If a Remote Control command succeeds, the result will now be “Connection Accepted” instead of just being empty.
- Added Monitor option to show when the last house cleaning and pending job scan operations where performed in the Monitor status bar. If they haven’t been performed for more than 10 minutes, they will be highlighted in red.
- Added Monitor option to enable slave pinging (it’s now disabled by default).
- Fixed some Remote Control commands that were not checking if they should be using the slave’s IP address, or a machine name or IP address override.
Jobs and Tasks
- Added new progress bars to the job list to show the state of all tasks for the job at a glance.
- Jobs with only a single task now show better job progress in the Job list.
- Fixed some issues that caused the job counts in the job list to be incorrect.
- Fixed some issues where requeue reports weren’t getting created properly for jobs.
- Improved layout of controls in the plugin-specific properties in the Job Properties dialog.
- Selecting multiple jobs and modifying their properties only overwrites shared properties for dependencies, extra info variables and environment variables.
- All dependency related job properties are now in the Dependencies panel in the job properties dialog, instead of being spread across three separate panels.
- The job timeout panel in the job properties now lets you specify a timeout in terms of hours, minutes, and seconds.
- Split up the job history logging to be more granular when modifying certain Job Properties.
- Jobs can now be grouped together in the Job list if they share the same Batch name.
- Improved the performance of the Quick Filters for the job list.
- User name quick filters now have “Me (userName)” as the entry for the current user, and will be the first user in the list.
- Added an option when suspending a job to only suspend the non-rendering tasks for the job.
- Updated the Transfer Job script to include some missing job properties that weren’t getting transferred.
- Fixed an error that could show up in the Console when closing the Job Details panel.
- The Explore Output menu in the job and task list no longer shows any duplicate paths.
- The task list now shows the current CPU and RAM information for a rendering task.
- Added right-click menu item to task list to suspend/resume individual tasks.
- Swapped the default location of the Startup Time and Render Time columns in the task list.
- The Job Dependency nodes in the Monitor have also been updated to show per-dependency settings.
- Added a new feature to toe Job Dependency View to test the dependencies and see which ones pass and which ones do not.
- The backgrounds for the graphs and the Job Dependency View now match the look of the rest of the Monitor.
- Jobs can now be grouped together in the Job Dependency View if they share the same Batch name.
- The layout can now be pinned for the Job Dependency View panel.
- The Job report list in the Monitor now have columns that show Memory and CPU usage information.
Slaves and Pulse
- You can now right-click on specific slaves in the Slave list in the Monitor to modify Pools and Groups for the selected slaves only.
- Added job icon to the Job Name column in the slave list.
- The Slave list now shows which Limits the slaves are whitelisted, blacklisted, and excluded for.
- The Slave report list in the Monitor now have columns that show Memory and CPU usage information.
- The utilization value in the slave list now takes into account rendering and idle slaves (necessary if there are multiple slaves running on the same machine, but not all are rendering).
- If the slave list is filtered, the utilization will show the total utilization, as well as the utilization for just the visible slaves.
- Fixed a bug where the utilization would only update if you click on a slave in the list.
- Cleaned up the utilization text a bit so that it’s easier to read.
Limits and Cloud
- The Limit list shows who the current stub holders are if that Limit is in use.
- The Limit list now has a new column that shows the Usage Level for the Limit.
- The Limit property dialog now has an option to use the Usage Level for the Limit.
- Many context menu items in the Cloud panel (ie: starting and stopping instances) are now performed asynchronously.
- User group permissions can now be set for the Cloud panel.
- The cloud panel will show dialog boxes if an error occurs when interacting with the cloud instances.
- Cloud plugin data is now only loaded and updated if the Cloud panel is being displayed.
Slave Improvements
- Multiple slaves on a single machine now share one license, instead of requiring one license each.
- Slaves now return their license when they become idle.
- New Idle Detection settings can be set per slave. They can be used to launch the slave when the machine is idle and/or stop the slave when the machine is in use again.
- New Job Dequeueing Mode settings can be set per slave. They can be used to force slaves running on workstations to only pick up jobs submitted from the same machine, or by specific users.
- Slaves can now be added to regions, which mainly affect how the slave applies Path Mappings.
- The slave system tray icon now shows the Deadline version number in the tooltip.
- Added timestamps when streaming the slave log.
- 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.
- Improved how the slave picks its IP address on Windows and Linux so that it picks a network interface with a gateway (the Mac OSX version already did this).
- If a slave is initially running in Free Mode and it later gets a license, the License information in the slave UI and the slave list in the Monitor will be updated appropriately.
- When a slave can’t connect to a license server, it only tries to do auto-discovery every 5 minutes so that it doesn’t saturate the network.
- The slave now queries the machine’s CPU speed at regular intervals while it’s running, instead of just caching the value it gets at startup. This is useful for machines with CPU speeds that dynamically change while the system is running.
- Fixed a bug that was not checking the Job failure detection settings when a plugin failed to sync its files.
Pulse Improvements
- Pulse no longer controls the Slave Scheduling feature. It is now handled by the Launcher.
- Pulse now only sends the Repository Path for Auto Configuration requests. The other settings are pulled from the Repository after the Deadline applications have connected to it.
- The Pulse system tray icon now shows the Deadline version number in the tooltip.
- In Power Management, Idle Shutdown now takes into account if there are multiple slaves running on the same machine.
- Added field to the Pulse UI that shows the state of the web service.
- The slave can now be shutdown with “deadlineslave -s” when it hasn’t connected to a repository yet.
- Added more information to the pulse throttling messages such as the slave name, job id, number of requests and throttle limit.
Command Improvements
- All command line options now support any number of leading dashes (for example, “deadlinecommand.exe -pools” or “deadlinecommand.exe --groups”).
- Added new commands to suspend/resume individual tasks.
- Added a new command to suspend all non-rendering tasks for a job.
- Fixed some bugs with the RenderJob command line option.
- Fixed some bugs with the JobStatistics command line option.
Scripting Improvements
- Added new events to the Event Plugin API: OnHouseCleaning, OnSlaveStarted, OnSlaveStopped, OnSlaveRendering, and OnSlaveStartingJob.
- Added new grid-based control options to the DeadlineScriptDialog class, which make it easier to create custom interfaces in the Deadline scripts.
- Updated the cloud plugins to not swallow their errors when creating instances.
- Exposed some errors that happened when Cloud/Balancer plugin files were missing or spelled incorrectly.
- Added function to get the database connection string.
- Added function to change a job’s frame list.
- Default for ConcurrentTasks in a plugin’s dlinit file is now True.
- Added API commands to launch processes with a specific user account.
- Made some improvements to the way python exceptions are printed out.
- Fixed some issues with how python stdout and stderr redirection to the Deadline logs was working.
- Added new API commands to suspend all non-rendering tasks for a job.
- When a plugin, event, cloud, or Monitor script is executed, the log will now show where the script is being loaded from.
- Added “EnabledStickySaving” function to the DeadlineScriptDialog class that can be used to automatically save sticky settings when the dialog is closed.
- Improved some function documentation for the API.
- The Slave Stdout Limit is now applied to ManagedProcess objects created in plugin scripts. Before, it was only applied to the main DeadlinePlugin object.
- Fix a bug that prevented module import errors from showing the actual Python error.
Shotgun Event Improvements
- Updated Shotgun API to version 3.0.17.
3ds Max Improvements
- Made some improvements for the RTT (Render To Textrure) feature in SMTD, including the option to bake one object per task.
- Fixed bug in FumeFX string handling in 3dsmax plugin.
- Updated SMTD to handle blowup mode properly.
- Updated Region manipulator in SMTD to keep aspect ratio while in blowup mode.
- When offloading Mental Ray DBR jobs, the job will now use a temporary max.rayhosts file, rather than modify the original.
After Effects Improvements
- Improved the error message if the wrong submission script is installed on the client machine.
- Relaxed the output path sanity check in the integrated submitter so that it doesn’t prevent you from submitting a job that is outputting to a folder that doesn’t exist yet.
Arnold Standalone Improvements
- Added the -dp flag to the render arguments to speed up the rendering.
Cinema 4D Improvements
- 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.
- Updated Draft to version 1.2.0.56290. Also note that if you are using Draft 1.1 or earlier, you will need an updated Draft license.
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.
Maya Improvements
- Added Jigsaw support to Maya.
- Removed unnecessary 32 bit paths from the MayaBatch and MayaCmd plugin configurations.
- Added a new stdout handler to catch a Maya licensing error.
- Fixed some text cutoff issues in the integrated submitter on Mac OSX Mavericks.
- Added overrides for the height and width of the render output to the Monitor submitter.
- Fixed FumeFX Wavelet Sim issue for MayaBatch & MayaCmd.
- Fixed an Arnold for Maya verbosity flag bug.
- Fixed some issues when using tile rendering with VRay.
- VRay render elements are now supported when using the Draft Tile Assembler.
- Arnold AOVs are now supported by tile rendering.
Mental Ray Standalone Improvements
- Added plugin configuration option to treat exit code 1 as error or success.
modo Improvements
- Added Jigsaw support to modo.
- Added option to modo Monitor submitter to specify the output pattern.
- Added warning message to modo Monitor submitter that overriding output and using Tile Rendering has limitations, and that they should use the integrated submitter in certain cases.
Nuke Improvements
- 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.
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.
Rhino Improvements
- Updated the default Rhino 5 executable path.
Vray DBR Improvements
- Added a task timeout option to all the DBR submission scripts. When the timeout is reached, the task will be marked as complete so that the slave can move on to something else.
- In the Monitor submitter, the application version number is now sticky between sessions.
- The 3ds Max and Maya DBR submitters now disable vray distributed rendering when closing if the submitter had automatically enabled it.
- The 3ds Max DBR submitter can now automatically mark the spawner job as complete when the rendering finishes.