Hello there,
I work for Full-dome VFX company and have recently started using the deadline software for rendering blender scenes using the aces 1.2 open OCIO. The issue that we have right now is that some computers, when rendering through deadline , appear to render the frames at a different colorspace and/or exposure than other computers even though some computers have the exact same hardware specs and are all running the exact same version of blender. So far, we have tried to run the ocio locally and even delete the ocio. When we tried to render the frames locally the frames appeared fine.
What could cause this issue?
You’re starting just as it’s ending 
Any clues in the logs? Testing it locally is a good test. When you deleted the ocio, do you mean the actual config files, or the OCIO environment variable?
In deadline, does the job properties have any OCIO environment var that might overriding?
The logs should show any OCIO issues. What renderer do you use? Is there some post gpu effect that isn’t saved with the scene? I know redshift has some. Actually, when you tested locally, were you testing as the same user that the deadline worker runs on?
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Hello Jason,
Thank you for taking the time to respond. With OCIO, I indeed mean the environment variable. After I did remove the environment var, I also reinstalled Blender from scratch which also did not help.
I don’t think the deadline has any OCIO var overrides. I use most of the stock settings while also making sure it only launches Blender LTS 4.5.3
When I did the local renders, I did indeed use the same user. I don’t know of any gpu effect. Also since a lot of the pc’s have the exact same hardware.
I will check if deadline has any OCIO vars
EDIT: Deadline does not have any vars regarding OCIO
I am not sure what it could be. (we don’t use blender on the farm). I would compare the deadline job reports. And to confirm it’s an OCIO issue, you could try a non-OCIO scene…
Hello Jason,
I checked the reports and did not find any difference between the logs. I also tried a non OCIO (Blender’s standard AGX) scene but even that results in different frames (Color and/or exposure)
What are some other things to look in to?
That is indeed strange that the same scene renders differently on different machines via deadline submission.
Since you said it is OK when rendered locally on those machines when rendered directly in Blender, I would mimic the command-line render that deadline uses. You will see the “Full command” in the deadline job report.
Not sure if you are using cycles or eevee, but you could try some blender cpu/gpu command-line arguments (Command Line Arguments - Blender 4.5 LTS Manual)
Other than that, test with a basic cube scene, test eevee vs cycles. leave default Follow Scene and exposure and gamma settings under Colour Management, on both Render Properties and Output Properties.
Hello Jason, I did a basic test with Cycles. I did both a test using the default Follow Scene and one with Override (AcesCG). After adding the path and filename of the OCIO in the Deadline Plugin tab, it appears to render without problems. So, maybe adding the path to the plugins seems to have solved the issue as I did not get any bad frames from either render. Maybe that solved the issue?
Great that you found a working test case. It didn’t sounds OCIO related since you did a test previously with no OCIO. Does setting the OCIO env var in the deadline job fix the original scene? local env var issues to check would be to check if OCIO is set as a both a user and system variable (user has precedence). Not sure this is it since you haven’t seen OCIO errors.
If it is scene related, compare the Colour Management, on both Render Properties and Output Properties with the basic test you did.
I also did another test where I used a absolute texture path rather than package it into the blend file itself. So, for this test I mapped the textures to a specific network location and made a low res dome render to see. Could it be that the flickering was an issue of the textures and the color management?
I am not across the nuances of blender, but packing textures into the blend file might be an issue in terms of filesizes and network performance. using a network path for all external reference files is worth testing, as well as the deadline submission option - Submit Blender Scene File With The Job .