Houdini 20.5 Mantra tasks crash on Deadline 10.3.2.1/ Win 11?

Deadline
1

We’ve got an older, non-cloud, on-prem Deadline 10.3.2.1 install and while I’ve bolted Houdini 20.0 and 20.5 support onto the plugin the way every Deadline admin has learned to do it, submitted Mantra tasks crash with Windows error code -1073741819.

Running the full command as created by Deadline in the log on the render node works fine. Am I just resigned to upgrading the farm in the week or so I have before production kicks back into gear again? Any insights that go past (but could incorporate, if you want)

houdini_205_mantra_log.zip (3.0 KB)

“dead render manager is dead” would be great, thanks.

Zipped logfile attached.

JC

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Did you upgrade to Win11? I find issues with C:\ProgramData\Thinkbox cause unexpected issues, try resetting the permissions on this folder and contents (even if they look correct)

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We did upgrade, a while back. Did that affect Houdini only for your studio, or all rendering? We’re still getting Blender, Nuke, Maya, and Houdini 19.5 renders through without incident– it’s just Houdini 20.5 that’s the issue.

I’ll see if resetting permissions on the folder works and report back. Thanks, Anthony.

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Error -1073741819 is very generic.

This is going to sound weird, but try clearing the OFX env vars and set HOUDINI_DISABLE_OPENFX_DEFAULT_PATH=1 for Houdini before starting the job.
IIRC, it was specific to H20.5 and I had to add this to our JobPreLoad.py:

def block_ofx(deadlinePlugin):
“”“Block the default OFX scan and clear additive OFX variables.”“”
deadlinePlugin.SetProcessEnvironmentVariable(“HOUDINI_DISABLE_OPENFX_DEFAULT_PATH”, “1”)
deadlinePlugin.SetProcessEnvironmentVariable(“OFX_PLUGIN_PATH”, “”)
print(“[JobPreload] Set HOUDINI_DISABLE_OPENFX_DEFAULT_PATH=1 and cleared OFX_* for this Houdini job.”)

The person submitting the render would see no error when using H20.5 interactively, but when he submitted to deadline, it would hang or crash out; I can’t remember as it was last year.
I think I ended up looking at the minidmp files and it had references to RG Universe. Once these variables were cleared, the deadline job was able to render.

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Yeah, @jarak, you got it in one. Added that JobPreLoad and test frames work in our farm now.

That’s… completely non-intuitive, but I guess the situation with OFX has changed behind the scenes since 19.5. Thank you so much!

J

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Bonus: my Houdini artist has been working in 20.5 and just telling Deadline it’s 19.5 and proceeding from there, so, uh, the street has found its own uses for this problem. (My boss, fortunately, is incredibly amused at both of us.)

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