Deadline 4 can support Maya 2010, with some tests… submit Maya files with mentalray render, all is OK.
But… there is a error / problem occur now, I don’t know the reason why… it always show the words “Error: (Mayatomr) : could not get a license” , can’t render!
Can anyone help?
Thx a lot
Alex
the following text is the error description:~
Error Message
Exception during render: An error occurred in RenderTasks(): Deadline caught error “Error: (Mayatomr) : could not get a license”. If this error message is unavoidable but not fatal to your render, please email deadline-support@primefocusworld.com with the error message, and disable the Maya job setting Strict Error Checking.
at Deadline.Plugins.ScriptPlugin.RenderTasks(Int32 startFrame, Int32 endFrame, String& outMessage)
Slave Log
/ loading C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/mentalray/lib/physics.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/mentalray/include/production.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/mentalray/lib/production.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/mentalray/include/subsurface.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/mentalray/lib/subsurface.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/mentalray/include/surfaceSampler.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2010/mentalray/lib/surfaceSampler.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: File read in 0 seconds.
0: STDOUT: Result: C:/Documents and Settings/render/Local Settings/Application Data/Prime Focus/Deadline/slave/jobsData/alexFisheye_test.mb
0: STDOUT: initMPS with licenseOption 0
0: STDOUT: Error: (Mayatomr) : could not get a license
0: INFO: Deadline is ignoring error: “Error: Scene C:\Documents and Settings\render\Local Settings\Application Data\Prime Focus\Deadline\slave\jobsData\alexFisheye_test.mb failed to render.” because plugin setting Strict Error Checking is enabled and this error is not usually fatal.
0: STDOUT: Error: Scene C:\Documents and Settings\render\Local Settings\Application Data\Prime Focus\Deadline\slave\jobsData\alexFisheye_test.mb failed to render.
Scheduler Thread - Render Thread 0 threw an error:
Scheduler Thread - Exception during render: An error occurred in RenderTasks(): Deadline caught error “Error: (Mayatomr) : could not get a license”. If this error message is unavoidable but not fatal to your render, please email deadline-support@primefocusworld.com with the error message, and disable the Maya job setting Strict Error Checking.
at Deadline.Plugins.ScriptPlugin.RenderTasks(Int32 startFrame, Int32 endFrame, String& outMessage)
Error Type
RenderPluginException
Error Stack Trace
at Deadline.Plugins.Plugin.RenderTask(Int32 startFrame, Int32 endFrame)
at Deadline.Slaves.SlaveRenderThread.RenderCurrentTask()
Deadline doesn’t control the licensing of the applications it supports, so the problem is that mental ray for maya legitimately cannot find a license. Deadline is just the messenger in this case.
Mental ray for maya requires either batch licenses or interactive licenses to render on the network. Based on Maya’s documentation, if you have a floating interactive license of Maya, it should come with 5 batch licenses that you can use for network rendering. If you are rendering on more machines than you have batch licenses, or are rendering on machines that aren’t configured to point to the maya license server, that could explain the problem.
My office had purchased totally 5 Maya 2010 (stanalone), in the past, my office did not has a Farm. We just render animation footages in the workstation. Now, we have setup a Farm for rendering and using Deadline.
I’m just a Maya user and a designer only, not a technical man, so I’m not familiar with the render farm. Skyskan had setted a farm with deadline 3 last year, but just using Max and After Effect softwares, not Maya. Skyskan told us that deadline 4 will support Maya 2010. So, we wait for the new version and purchase Maya 2010. When the version 4 released, we started to test the Farm and Deadline… I can say that the result is very good and no problem at all.
But in the last few days, it showed an error. But I don’t know why and also why it was ok when testing period… I don’t know mental ray requires licenses, just guess it is free!!! So, in the meantime, what can I do?
I believe only floating interactive licenses come with the batch licenses, so if you purchased standalone (which it sounds like you did), then I believe you need to purchase batch licenses. You should definitely confirm with Autodesk what your current license entitlements are before making any additional purchases.
It could be that original tests were done using mayaSoftware as the renderer, which doesn’t require an additional license for network rendering. It could also be that the initial tests were done on the workstations that have the Maya standalone licenses, in which case mental ray would have used the standalone license during rendering.
It could be that original tests were done using mayaSoftware as the renderer, which doesn’t require an additional license for network rendering. It could also be that the initial tests were done on the workstations that have the Maya standalone licenses, in which case mental ray would have used the standalone license during rendering.
Well, the tests are not maya software render, it is a mental ray file and using a mental ray lens (domeAFL plugin) , a plugin that using mental ray lens for creating a dome scene. And about the initial tests, I copied this Maya file to the Farm, and opened it in the server for rendering…my workstation had been shuted down too. So, it was not the standalone license matter, right?!
And, I can moniter the deadline, 30 nodes for rendering is all working. Really make me confused.
I honestly don’t know. Like I’ve said before, Deadline doesn’t handle the licensing of the software it supports, so when licensing-related errors occur (especially this one), all we can do is speculate that the problem is license related. This is why we always suggest talking to the software developer (in this case, Autodesk) to confirm what your licensing entitlements are.
We can still try to help though. Can you confirm a few things for me:
You have 5 interactive Maya licenses, and 30 render nodes?
When you try to render a mental ray job with Deadline, do you get this error every time a machine tries to render the job, or do some frames render successfully.
Since you say this has worked in the past, can you think if anything has changed since you ran your initial tests? Maybe you had batch licenses that expired? Again, I’m just speculating here.
I can assure you that Deadline works with mental ray for Maya 2010. We use that here for some work, and we have a few hundred maya batch licenses that allow us to render mental ray for maya jobs on our 250 node farm with Deadline without any problems.
We can still try to help though. Can you confirm a few things for me:
You have 5 interactive Maya licenses, and 30 render nodes?
We have 5 Maya 2010, Standalone version
When you try to render a mental ray job with Deadline, do you get this error every time a machine tries to render the job, or do some frames render successfully.
Yes, Deadline shows this error every time, even doing some frames… after the initial tests which are successed.
Since you say this has worked in the past, can you think if anything has changed since you ran your initial tests? Maybe you had batch licenses that expired? Again, I’m just speculating here.
I can remember that … after the initial tests, the farm had been rebooted two times due to the server problems.
I might be wrong or misread what the issue is here…but since Maya2010, Maya is now only available in Unlimited mode, so even standalone node locked copies of Maya will have 5 batch licences available to them. So, as long as you send the Maya jobs to only your machines which have been nodal locked to a licence (use a limit group), then MR for Maya via batch should be fine. The licnece system has also changed from the sgi system to the Autodesk system, so maybe you are getting confused with the licence files and their location?
Mike
