From the release notes: “Fixed FumeFX Wavelet Sim issue for MayaBatch & MayaCmd”
Could someone offer more specific info about this fix? Is this a fix for the “UI commands can’t be run in batch mode” error?
“Fixed FumeFX Wavelet Sim issue for MayaBatch & MayaCmd” was a fix made to both the MayaBatch & MayaCmd plugin.py files to handle an edge case when FumeFX “Wavelet” type of simulations were submitted to Deadline and our STDout handlers were not correctly calculating the sim progress and reporting that back via the Slave and displaying it in turn in the Deadline Monitor for the job/tasks progress. An identical fix was also applied to the 3dsmax plugin to handle wavelet based fumefx sims as well. The issue was reported to us by one of our clients.
I’m not entirely sure what you are referring to when you say: “UI commands can’t be run in batch mode”. Perhaps, you’re referring to when submitting jobs to Deadline and using our “MayaBatch” plugin, which keeps Maya open between tasks (frames) which is good for renderfarm efficiency but does have a few limitations such as not being able to pass additional command line args.
Could you provide more information so I can better understand your question?
This is an old problem with fumefx we tried to solve in the past. Last word from the developers was that it’s a maya ascii problem and it works with binary format. This was when we were submitting via python script.
Since deadline 6, we’ve been using the awesome method of submitting with the backburner switch enabled. That works great for default sims but not with wavelet. The “UI commands can’t be run in batch mode” error comes up because fumefx is trying to do something that a sim license will not allow. Setting the render drone to full license works, but that is too expensive and unreasonable.
I was hoping you might have found a way around it, but it looks like a fumefx problem. I understand version 4.0 is due out soon, so this problem may just go away on it’s own.
Oh, I didn’t know about this issue. Yeah, hopefully, the next version of FumeFX is able to work around this issue.
Out of interest, is there any difference if you submit the Maya job to use the MayaCmd plugin instead of MayaBatch?
Submitting with mayabatch enabled will mostly work, but not always. We run one drone with a full license for the times it fails and resubmit with a group with just that drone in it. Recently, we’ve been submitting with batch turned off and it always works on any license. The problem there is getting artists to remember to turn it back on when submitting sequences.
I’ve been doing tests today and it looks like wavelet may work with deadline 7. The batch error is gone and now receive this error: “File “none”, line 1048, in HandleFumeFXProgress\n”. That must be the error that was fixed in v7? I don’t have a test system for v7 so it will have to wait until June. I’ll re-address it then.
Yep, that sounds like the error that was fixed in v7.1. If possible, it would be good if you could join the v7.1 beta to verify all is well? If you’re able to, you can send an email to beta [at] thinkboxsoftware [dot] com to request access via a signed NDA.
I have finished testing and have successfully done a fumefx wavelet sim in maya 2016 on deadline 7.1.2.1. This is a critical accomplishment for us and now allows for straightforward simming on the farm.
Thanks again for the help.
Cool. Thanks for the feedback!