I have a fairly simple question: is it possible to set up a dependency that recognizes finished vrmap files? We are currently caching a car interior on one slave, task size all frames, to reduce flickering. Additionally, I submitted a maya scene file with task size 1 that reads the vrmap and renders the frame. I thought it would be extremely useful and efficient if the job that actually reads the vrmap to render the frames could start even before the cache job has completely finished. I already tried to use the frame dependency on that cache-job, but it seems to not use the “Successfully written Irradiance Map to file:“xxxxx”” as a trigger to start a task at the render-job (I mean of course it doesn’t as it would cause troubles with usual frame dependencies). Is there another option I don’t see to use the log entry above as a trigger or am I overseeing some major problems that would be caused?
Unfortunately, there isn’t a nice way to achieve what you want to do. You would have to have the output handler for “Successfully written Irradiance Map to file:“xxxxx”” browse the dependent job’s task folder in the Repository, find the file representing the task you want to “resume” from the pending state, and rename the file.
We always discourage touching files in the Repository manually, and it’s something we don’t “support”, but if you’re feeling ambitious, you may be able to pull it off.
If I understand correctly, wouldn’t writing an Event plugin that looks at the particular cache job and checks after each task for, say, a certain percentage of the tasks to be done and if the percent is, say, higher than 20% you’d trigger another job, or submit a new one, that’d take those files and start rendering, be enough?
Currently, event plugins only fire when a job changes states (ie: rendering to completed, or rendering to suspended), not in the middle of a render. Also, if we did add a task-based event, it would still only fire when a task completes, and since the cache job only has one task, that wouldn’t help here either.
Just thought it might be good to ask