What’s New In Deadline 7.1.0.15 (Beta 1)
Deadline 7.1 adds many new features to Deadline 7.0, including new slave metrics, better font synchronization, and new application support. It also fixes some bugs that were discovered after Deadline 7.0 was released.
Here are the highlighted changes:
New Slave Metrics
Slaves now report their Network I/O, Disk I/O, and Swap usage, which can be viewed from the Monitor. This information is also stored in the statistics that are gathered for the Slaves.
In addition, Swap usage for the rendering process is stored with a job’s task when it completes, and is also stored in the statistics for the job when it completes.
Improved Job Batch Display
Deadline 7 introduced the ability to group jobs together in the Monitor by setting their Batch Name property. Now, all Deadline submitters automatically set the Batch Name if multiple related jobs are being submitted at the same time. For example, when submitting each render layer as a separate job in Maya, they will all be part of the same batch. Another example is submitting a Jigsaw render with a dependent assembly job.
In addition, the Batch Row in the job list in the Monitor now shows information for all columns, depending on the settings for the jobs in the batch. For numeric settings like priority or machine limit, the largest value for the jobs is shown. For settings like pool and group, the value will be shown if all jobs have the same value, and if they don’t, is shown instead. For all other columns, is simply shown.
Finally, the counts above the job list in the job panel now show the number of batches in the list, and the selected count now ignores selected batches so that it properly represents the number of selected jobs.
Flexible Image Viewer Configuration
The Monitor has always had the option to specify up to three viewers to use when viewing images from the Task list. Now, optional command line arguments can set, which are then passed to the viewer when viewing images. There are also special tags, which are replaced automatically with information about the image being viewed.
The following tags are supported in the command line options:* {FRAME}: This represents the task’s frame file. For example: /path/to/image0002.png
- {SEQ#}: This represents the task’s frame sequence files, using ‘#’ as the padding. For example: /path/to/image####.png
- {SEQ?}: This represents the task’s frame sequence files, using ‘?’ as the padding. For example: /path/to/image???.png
- {SEQ@}: This represents the task’s frame sequence files, using ‘@’ as the padding. For example: /path/to/image@@@@.png
- {SEQ%}: This represents the task’s frame sequence files, using ‘%d’ as the padding. For example: /path/to/image%04d.png
The arguments default to “{FRAME}”, which keeps the default behavior from previous versions of Deadline intact.
Expanded Font Synchronization
The new FontSync event plugin that ships with Deadline can be used to synchronize fonts on Mac OS X and Windows before the Slave application starts rendering any job, or when the Slave first starts up. This general FontSync event plugin replaces the font synchronization options in the After Effects plugin and now works for ALL plugin types in Deadline.
Standalone Web Service Application
A standalone Web Service application is now shipped with Deadline, and is called deadlineWebService.exe. It works exactly the same as the Web Service feature that is built into Deadline Pulse, and both can be configured using the new Web Service page in the Repository Options.
Install Launcher as Daemon on Mac OS X
The Deadline Client installer now has an option to install the Launcher as a Daemon on Mac OS X. This feature lets you run the Launcher daemon as root, or as another user account.
Draft Updated to Version 1.3.0.57696
This version of Draft requires a new Draft 1.3 licenses, and includes the following updates:
EXR Images:* Added support for EXR data and display windows (previously data windows were set to the same size as the display windows).
- Updated to OpenEXR 2.2.0.
LUT support:* Added ACES 1.0 LUTs to the included ocio-configs folder.
New Application Support
Support has been added for many AEC (Architecture Engineering Construction) and Product Visualization products, including AutoCAD, CSiBridge, CSiETABS, CSiSAFE, CSiSAP2000, EnergyPlus, MicroStation, VRED and VREDCluster.
Support has also been added for 3ds Max 2016, Composite 2016, Corona distributed rendering, Maya 2016, Media Encoder, Houdini 14, LuxSlave distributed rendering, Natron, Nuke Frame Server distributed rendering (for Nuke Studio), and VRay for modo.
General Improvements
- A standalone Web Service application is now shipped with Deadline.
- A new “KeepWebServiceRunning” property can be added to the system’s deadline.ini file to restart the web service application if it is stopped or crashes.
- Added a generic new event plugin to synchronize fonts, and removed the font synchronization option from the After Effects plugin.
- Regions can now be renamed.
- On OSX, the Deadline applications now respond properly to SIGTERM and SIGINT signals.
- All Deadline job submitters now set the job’s Batch Name automatically if multiple related jobs are being submitted.
- Passwords can now be longer than 15 characters (affects super user password, passwords for running jobs as users on Windows, etc). Note that this does not break existing passwords that are already saved.
- Fixed a bug that caused the Slave, Balancer, and Pulse to report their disk space incorrectly on Linux.
- Added ability to import statistics from another repository.
Installer Improvements
- The Repository installer now ships with default script menu layouts for the Monitor (they are only applied if there aren’t existing customizations to the script menus).
- Added a “–backuprepo” command line option to the Repository installer to specify if the repository should be backed up or not (default is true).
- Improved the speed of backing up the repository in the Repository installer.
- Added command line option to the Windows Client installer to kill Deadline processes before proceeding with installation.
- Fixed an error in the OSX Client installer that occurred when trying to set up the Launcher Login Item in a headless session.
- The Repository installer now sets the label in the mongodb plist file correctly on OSX.
- Added option to OSX Client installer to install launcher as a daemon.
- The Submitter Installers no longer create empty folders in the Start Menu on Windows.
- The Client uninstaller now checks if there is another Deadline installation prior to deleting DEADLINE_PATH, and if there is, it prompts the user if they want to delete DEADLINE_PATH or change its value to something else.
Job Improvements
- Added an option to the job scheduling settings to set when the job should stop.
- The swap usage of the rendering process is now stored with the task when it is complete, and is also stored in the job statistics.
- Added a job option to specify the rendering progress cut-off for interrupting a job.
- Maintenance jobs now take the job’s whitelist/blacklist into account when setting the number of tasks for the job.
Power Management Improvements
- When Power Management is starting up Slaves for a job, it now checks the job’s Limits, and doesn’t start up Slaves if they will exceed the maximum for those Limits.
- When starting up Slaves for a job, the list of jobs for the secondary pool scan are now gathered properly.
- The maximum number of Slaves that can be started for a specific job is now tracked between the primary and secondary pool scan, in case the job shows up in both collections.
- Fixed a bug in Idle Shutdown that would not shutdown an idle Slave on a machine if there were offline and/or stalled Slave instances on the same machine.
- The thermal shutdown sensor dialog in the Power Management window now ensures that the user enters a host name or IP address for the sensor.
- When setting up Thermal Shutdown, you can now specify “Test” sensors that can be used to test the Thermal Shutdown functionality without connecting to real temperature sensors.
- Added option to Power Management groups to simply include all slaves in the group (instead of having to add each one manually).
Launcher Improvements
- The option to change the user is now disabled if Deadline is configured to use the system’s user.
- Fixed a memory leak in the Launcher that occurred when it launched various Deadline applications through it.
- When shutting down a Linux machine, the Launcher now tries to use “sudo shutdown” instead of just “shutdown”.
- The deadlinelauncherservice script on Linux now returns the proper exit code when checking the status of the Launcher.
Monitor Improvements
General* All remote viewer scripts (ARD, Radmin, RDC, and VNC) now use the hostname/IP override if necessary.
- When managing the Script menus in the User Group Permissions dialog, scripts that are no longer in the repository no longer show up.
- When auto-configuring the performance settings in the Repository Options, a preview of the current and new performance settings is now shown.
- The option to change the user is now disabled if Deadline is configured to use the system’s user.
- Added Import/Export/Default buttons to the Script Menus page in the Repository Options.
- Fixed a bug in the Script Menus page where script items were losing their order when dragged and dropped as a group.
- Fixed a bug in the Script Menus page that could cause the Monitor to crash during some drag and drop operations.
- When changing repositories, the Submission and Scripts menus in the Monitor are now updated.
- Moved Image Viewer settings to separate page in Monitor options, and added the option to specify command line arguments for them.
- The Client Setup page in the Repository Options now explains that clients can automatically upgrade or downgrade.
- Added a pinned filters button above the list in most panels to allow quicker switching between pinned filters.
- Tooltips for spinner controls in the Repository Options now show the minimum and maximum values that are supported.
- The default balancing algorithm in the Balancer Settings in the Repository Options now has a Verbose option.
- Made a slight improvement to the performance of the list panels.
- The size of the box on the left of Repository Options, Plugin Configuration, etc, can now be resized.
- The datetime values shown in the Monitor are no longer based on the system’s region settings. This was breaking the Monitor datetime filters in some regions.
- The first column in all the lists can now be moved using drag and drop.
- The Monitor no longer asks for the super user password twice during startup if the Monitor is configured to start in super user mode.
- Fixed inconsistencies in the sort order of the job status column.
- Added options to the House Cleaning settings in the Repository Options to disable having the Slaves perform housecleaning, repository repair, and pending job scan.
- Added option to Slave Scheduling groups to simply include all slaves in the group (instead of having to add each one manually).
- Removed the [?] button in the top right corner from a few dialogs, since it isn’t used.
- Added a green label to the Monitor status bar that makes it clear that you are only seeing your own jobs if you aren’t allowed to see other users’ jobs. The tooltip for this label explains why you can’t see the other jobs.
- Fixed a bug in the local slave controls where some options weren’t disabled by default if Override Idle Detection Settings was disabled.
Jobs and Tasks* The job batch expansion arrow in the job list is now always shown in the first column.
- The job batch row now shows more information based on the jobs in the batch.
- The batch row now shows the number of jobs that are in the batch.
- The counts above the job list now show the number of batches, and the selected count now ignores batch rows so that it properly shows the number of selected jobs.
- The counts at the top of the job list now update properly when switching between graph and list displays.
- The “Job Batch” setting in the Job Properties dialog is now called “Batch Name”.
- The initial title for the charts in the job list is now set properly.
- Fixed a bug where changing a job’s state from the Monitor didn’t update the job’s Started and Finished date properties.
- Fixed error when updating job’s history after deleting all reports for the job.
- When switching between being able to see other users’ jobs and not being able to see them, the job counts are now updated properly.
Slaves and Pulses* When starting Slave machines from the Slave list, the info dialog is now displayed immediately.
- The initial title for the charts in the Slave list is now set properly.
- The Slave list now shows the name and port of the Pulse instance that a Slave is connected to (it still shows “No” if it can’t connect to Pulse).
- The host name or IP address specified in the Pulse settings is now treated as an override. If left blank, the host name or IP address shown in the Pulse list will be used (depending on the Pulse setting to use Pulse’s IP address in the Repository Options).
- If a host name or IP address override is specified in the Pulse settings, it is now used when the Slaves connect to Pulse, and for remote commands.
- A MAC address override can now be specified in the Pulse settings.
Limits* Added a button to the Limit List Control to add a new Limit, which works the same as the existing right-clicking option.
Balancers and Cloud* Cloud Regions can now be renamed.
- Added a Scripts menu to the Balancer list’s right-click menu.
- Added Balancer license information to the Balancer list.
- A host name or IP address override can now be specified in the Balancer settings, which is used for remote control.
- A MAC address override can now be specified in the Balancer settings.
- Added a button and a right-click option in the Cloud Panel to add a new instance.
- Some right-click options in the Cloud Panel are now asynchronous.
Slave Improvements
- Slaves now report their Network I/O, Disk I/O, and Swap usage, which can be viewed from the Monitor.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Slave to lock up when registering new fonts on Windows.
- The Slave UI now shows the name and port of the Pulse instance that the Slave is connected to (it still shows “No” if it can’t connect to Pulse).
- Fixed an Access Denied error that could occur when rendering as a user on Windows.
- On Windows, a warning is now printed if the rendering process cannot be assigned to a job object instead of failing the render. Note that this is only an issue on Windows 7 and earlier.
- The Region name is now shown in the Slave UI.
- The Slave now sets its Slave name when updating a requeue report.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Slave on Linux from getting the output image size correctly after it finished rendering a task.
- On Linux and Mac OSX, a SIGKILL signal is now sent to the rendering process when cancelling a task if it doesn’t shut down gracefully.
Pulse Improvements
- Fixed a few bugs with how Slave names were processed by the web service (for example, there were issues with case sensitivity).
- Added functions to the REST API to get the contents of job, task, and Slave reports.
- The confirmation dialog shown when shutting down Pulse now mentions if Pulse is the Primary.
- The Region name is now shown in the Pulse UI.
Balancer Improvements
- Added a text box to the Balancer UI that shows information from the previous balancing operation.
- Added Balancer license information to the Balancer UI.
- Added option to change license server from the Balancer’s file menu.
- The Balancer system tray icon is now hidden when the Balancer is closed.
- The Balancer now responds to remote shutdown requests properly.
- The Balancer UI and logs now show which logic plugin the Balancer is using.
- The confirmation dialog shown when shutting down Balancer now mentions if Balancer is the Primary.
- The Region name is now shown in the Balancer UI.
Command Improvements
- Added RemoveCloudRegion command line option to remove a cloud region.
- Fixed the help text for the CreateCloudRegion command.
- Fixed the deadlinecommand shell script to properly set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Linux.
Web Service Improvements
- A standalone web service application is now included with Deadline.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the web service to lock up on Linux and OSX.
- Added REST API functions to get the Deadline version.
- Added REST API functions to delete Pulse and Balancer instances.
Scripting Improvements
- The RepositoryUtils.CheckPathMappingInFileAndReplace() function no longer loads the entire file in memory for path mapping.
- Popup detection in the Application Plugins now works on Qt popups and Windows 8 mobile popup dialogs.
- Invalid DateTime values in Deadline objects passed via the standalone Python API no longer cause errors, and instead are set to the minimum DateTime value.
- Right-click scripts for the Balancer list in the Monitor can now be created.
- Added new ReplaceFrameNumberWithPadding and ReplaceFrameNumberWithPrintFPadding functions to FrameUtils.
- Added functions to the standalone Python API to get the contents of job, task, and Slave reports.
- Fixed the “RemoveSlavesFroLimitGroupList” function typo in RepositoryUtils.
- ProcessUtils.IsProcessRunning() is now more reliable on OSX.
- Added functions to JobUtils to test dependencies.
- Added new Power Management events.
- Added script API functions to modify a job’s bad Slave list.
- Added a GetEventDirectory() function to the event plugin class, which returns the directory path for the current event plugin.
- Added new API functions to get selected Pulse and Balancer settings objects in the Monitor.
- Added Standalone Python API functions to get the Deadline version.
- Added Standalone Python API functions to delete Pulse and Balancer instances.
- Added functions to PathUtils to register or unregister a list of fonts (Windows only).
Application Plugin Improvements
3ds Cmd Improvements* Added support for 3ds Max 2016.
- Added Backburner sys env PATH checks to 3dsCmd plugin.
- Fixed FTrack bug in the 3dsCmd integrated submitter.
- Version info for 3dsmaxcmd.exe and 3dsmax.exe executables are now logged during rendering.
3ds Max Improvements* Added support for 3ds Max 2016.
- Many Corona renderer properties can now be modified from the Monitor after the job has been submitted.
- Increased the communication timeout between Deadline and 3ds Max, which greatly reduces the occurrence of timeout errors.
- Lowered the timeout for customise.ms from 10 minutes down to 1 minute.
- Improved the reliability of the Kill ADSK Comm Center feature.
- Updated 3dsmax plugin dict to support final, public release of Max2015 SP3.
- Added Qt popup handling.
- Fixed a bug with .mxp path config files for some submission modes.
- The contents of the temporary dl.ini file are now printed to the render log.
- Fixed a bug in SMTD that allowed you to click the Submit button before SMTD finished loading.
- A warning message is now logged if the Backburner version installed doesn’t match the version of 3ds Max being rendered with.
Composite Improvements* Added support for Composite 2016.
Corona Improvements* Added support for Corona distributed rendering.
Draft Improvements* Updated Draft to version 1.3.0.57696 (requires a new Draft 1.3 license).
- Added the Use Shotgun Data button and its functionality to the job right-click Draft submission script.
- Fixed a bug caused by trailing backslashes in paths being passed as command line arguments to Draft.
Houdini Improvements* Added support for Houdini 14.
- Added support to the integrated submitter for submitting Wedge ROP jobs.
- Submission settings in the integrated submitter now get saved in the Houdini scene file so that settings are sticky between individual scenes.
- Removed auto-detection of Houdini install path in the Houdini submitter installer due to various bugs.
- Fixed a bug with how the Houdini submitter installer installed the submission script on OSX.
- Fixed an ftrack bug in the integrated submitter.
- The integrated submitter now collects all ROPs in the scene, not just the ones in /out.
LuxRender Improvements* Added support for LuxSlave distributed rendering (works like the VRay Spawner and modo Distributed Rendering plugins).
- Updated the default executable paths in the plugin configuration.
Mantra Standalone Improvements* Added support for Houdini 14.
Maya Improvements* Added support for Maya 2016.
- Added the out of order frame range and preview job options to the integrated Maya submitter.
- Added configurable submission properties for the different kinds of dependent export jobs that can be submitted from Maya.
- Added additional Vrimg2Exr options to Maya submitter (when submitting a dependent vrimg2exr job).
modo Improvements* Added path mapping support for assets in the modo scene file, and for the render output paths.
- Added submission option to submit each render pass group as a separate job.
- Native modo dialogs are now used for info, errors, and yes/no questions.
- The local scene file warning is now only shown when the scene file is not being submitted with the job.
- Added support for VRay for modo.
Nuke Improvements* Added support for Nuke Frame Server distributed rendering (for Nuke Studio).
- Added option to integrated submitter to submit only write nodes within precomp nodes.
- Added option to integrated submitter to render the precomp nodes first.
- Fixed an issue with how the nuke integrated submitter handles write nodes with embedded TCL in the output path.
Ply2Vrmesh Improvements* Added support for handling multiple frames.
- Added option to merge the outputs.
Rhino Improvements* Added Qt popup handling.
- Fixed a bug in the Rhino submitter.
VRay DBR Improvements* Added support for VRay DBR for 3ds Max 2016 and Maya 2016.
- The Monitor VRay Spawner submitter now defaults to the “none” pool like the other submitters.
- The minimum value for the maximum number of servers in the Monitor submitter is now 1 instead of 0.
- The Version and Port settings can now be seen in the job properties for VRay Spawner jobs.
- Updated the default TCP ports for 3ds Max VRay and 3ds Max VRay RT.
VRimg2Exr Improvements* Added additional submission options: Separate Files, Multi Part, Long Channel Names, and Threads.
Event Plugin Improvements
ftrack* You can now create new Assets from Deadline’s ftrack UI.
- The Asset list in the UI will now list all Assets belonging to the selected Task’s parent (as opposed to assets already tied with that Task).
- The ftrack event plugin now uses a relative path to load the ftrack API.
- The ftrack event plugin no longer adds the ftrack API path to sys.path if it’s already there.
- Fixed a bug in the ftrack event plugin where it would still try to create a thumbnail after determining that it shouldn’t.
Shotgun* The Shotgun event plugin now uses a relative path to load the Shotgun API.
- Cleaned up some logging in the Shotgun event plugin.
- Added option to Shotgun event plugin to specify the character that should be used for frame padding when uploading the paths to Shotgun (default is ‘#’).
Cloud Plugin Improvements
Amazon EC2 Cloud Plugin Improvements* Added support for Security Groups.
- Tags are now copied over when cloning an existing instance.
Google Cloud Plugin Improvements* Fixed a bug in the Google Cloud plugin that caused it to only show the first 500 instances in the Monitor.
- Improved the tooltip for the Project ID field in the plugin configuration.
- Set a minimum and maximum value for the Port field in the plugin configuration.
- Cloning an existing instance now copies the persistent disk size.
- Added support for starting and stopping instances.
OpenStack Cloud Plugin Improvements* Added support for Security Groups.
- Added support for Key Names.
- Metadata is now copied over when cloning an existing instance.