Deadline Maya local asset cache

Deadline
1

Hi, I’m trying to test the local asset cache feature for Maya Batch renders. The idea is that assets will be copied locally for the duration of the render. Sounds good in theory, but I’m struggling trying to set it up properly. For the Windows LAC directory, I tried all sorts of things (“C:/Temp/Maya/cache”, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Redshift\cache, variations with forward slashes, quotes, etc.), but can’t get it to work. Usually I get this error

2023-04-26 12:07:28:  0: WARNING: Strict error checking off, ignoring the following error or warning.
2023-04-26 12:07:28:  0: STDOUT: Error: file: C:/ProgramData/Thinkbox/Deadline10/workers/Rocket012-cg/plugins/644961e7256ceba6c0545b20/AssetTools.mel line 581: error: file C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2022\Python37\lib\sre_parse.py line 938: unbalanced parenthesis at position 41
2023-04-26 12:07:28:  0: WARNING: Strict error checking off, ignoring the following error or warning.
2023-04-26 12:07:28:  0: STDOUT: Error: file: C:/Users/Joshh/AppData/Local/Temp/tmpA8B7.tmp line 49: Render failed.

Like the script has a typo or something. I wonder if anyone has set this up successfully and what would the settings look like?
Thanks in advance
Josh

ps. using Deadline 10.2.0.10 Release (3b87216c7), Maya 2022. Redshift 3.5.7

2

Hello @goshone

Thanks for reaching out, how are you submitting the Job ? where are you trying to set the Asset caching Path ?

Please elaborate more to understand this better, also, can you provide your work flow In order to reproduce the issue on our end ?

3

Hi,

I am submitting the job via python script ideally, but I was also trying to get it working using the standard submission shelf tool (in Maya).

This was an attempt to work around some performance issues we were experiencing with our server and farm. So I thought, cool, let’s copy the assets locally while processing the batches.

I tried several locations to save the caches to, something local that everyone would have (or we could also create on the fly). I tried various flavors similar to these, with quotes, w/o quotes, selecting from the browser button (3 dots next to field):
C:/Temp
%LOCALAPPDATA%/Temp

I thought C:/Temp would be a good place, and assumed Deadline would create/manage the subdirs within.

Again, I couldn’t get it working (it would complain about the folder not existing, or permissions, or the error above, which I thought was a script or format error). I was sort of looking for some examples of how to set it up or how others are using it, since the docs are not very detailed on this topic.

As for testing it on your end, try to get it to save some network assets locally to C:/Temp.

I hope this explanation helps.

4

Hello,

IIRC, deadline won’t expand any windows variable written as %LOCALAPPDATA%.

You can try using C:\TEMP\Maya but you have to give Full Control access to the e.g. deadline user (or whichever user deadline is rendering as) for that folder C:\TEMP\Maya.

5

Hello @goshone

You can tell the worker where to copy its Job files temporarily during rendering by specifying the SlaveDataRoot flag in client configuration file or using the Auto Configuration Local Data Path option.

I have tested by enabling local asset caching while submitting maya batch job by setting the flag in client configuration file and seen assets copied to local worker folder mentioned in client configuration file.

6

Ahh, that would explain some of the issues I was having. Thanks for confirming that jarak.

1 Like
7

I’ll take a look into these options. Thanks for the reply.

1 Like