When using Deadline to render a job on a Mac which has an unlicensed copy of After Effects installed (see Render Engine mode), the log outputs this error:
2024-11-27 15:11:46: 0: INFO: Attempting to create "/Users/admin/Documents/Documents/ae_render_only_node.txt" to force After Effects to run in Render Engine mode
2024-11-27 15:11:46: 0: WARNING: Failed to create "/Users/admin/Documents/Documents/ae_render_only_node.txt" because Traceback (most recent call last):
2024-11-27 15:11:46: 0: File "/Users/Shared/Thinkbox/Deadline10/workers/node103/plugins/6747a716fa52992d55bfb692/AfterEffects.py", line 399, in PreRenderTasks
2024-11-27 15:11:46: 0: open( myRePath, 'w' ).close()
2024-11-27 15:11:46: 0: FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/Users/admin/Documents/Documents/ae_render_only_node.txt'
Based on this, I checked the built-in after effects submission script and discovered that line 672 looks like this: outputPath = os.path.join( Environment.GetFolderPath( Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal ), "Documents/ae_render_only_node.txt" )
This suggests that an extra “Documents” was being appended to the path, perhaps because the .Net value for Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal no longer points to the user’s Documents folder as of 01/26/2023. There is more information about this breaking change here: .NET 8 breaking change: GetFolderPath behavior on Unix - .NET | Microsoft Learn
I modified line 672 of the submission script at DeadlineRepository10/plugins/AfterEffects/AfterEffects.py to fix this:
outputPath = os.path.join( Environment.GetFolderPath( Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal ), "ae_render_only_node.txt" ).
Sure enough, this resolved the issue and the unlicensed machines are now rendering correctly.
This also has the fortunate effects of making the Windows and macOS path commands identical within the submission script. So assuming this is the correct fix, the macOS conditional check could be removed entirely and replaced with a single line of code to form the path for both OSs.
Versions
macOS: 14.7.1
Deadline Client Version: 10.4.0.10 Release (aa82ae82b)
FranticX Client Version: 2.4.0.0 Release (711d0392d)
Repository Version: 10.4.0.10 (aa82ae82b)
Integration Version: 10.4.0.10 (aa82ae82b)
3PL Settings Version: 28/10/2024
After Effects: 24.6.2 (Build 2)