Issue with the Blender Plugin on MacOS

Hello,

I’m currently exploring Deadline for a project, and I’m encountering a small issue with the Deadline plugin specifically on MacOS. I’m working in a mixed PC and Mac environment. On Windows, everything works perfectly, but on Mac, it’s a different story.

I believe I’ve correctly configured the “path mapping” settings, as I can now launch a render from the Monitor on both Mac and PC without issues. (By default, it didn’t work because the path would change when rendering from Mac instead of Windows.)

The plugin seems to work fine on Mac, and I can even perform a “Submit to Deadline” directly from Blender, just like on Windows.

However, here’s a screenshot of what happens on Mac, and it occurs on both Intel-based Macs and ARM-based M1 Macs:

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Error
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Executable returned from RenderExecutable(), "/Applications/Blender.app", does not exist.
   at Deadline.Plugins.PluginWrapper.RenderTasks(Task task, String& outMessage, AbortLevel& abortLevel)

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Type
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RenderPluginException

I don’t know what else to do! It’s probably something minor that’s blocking me, but I have no idea what it could be.

It can’t find the app here, I think this is the old location and it’s problem something like /Applications/Blender4.3.app, check your app folder to confirm

Hello anthonygelatka,

Thank you for your response. Yes, that’s indeed something I checked. I manually entered the application path because I encountered the same issue with Windows.

On Windows, I removed the version number from the path to match Deadline’s default path, and on Mac, the path seemed to match. However, I used “Copy ‘blender.app’ as path name” to confirm the path in Deadline.

That’s why I don’t understand this error message, as the path should be correct in my case.

you need to reference the app within the .app, this should be the default path

/Applications/Blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender

You can open the ‘blender.app’ it’s essentially a folder, but the proper path to the executable should be like the above

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Hello anthonygelatka,

It worked for me. I greatly thank you for the tip. :grinning:

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Hi again, Anthonygelatka,

I’m making progress with my tests, but I’m now facing a somewhat strange new issue.

Now that the .app problem is resolved, everything works on 2 Windows PCs and 2 Macs. However, on a third Mac, I’m getting an error message: Unable to read the file “/Volumes/MEDIA/Tests Disney/Test blender/Scène blender 01/test foret 01.blend”: Operation not permitted.

Yet, I can access the file in question on this machine by opening the project in Blender. So why wouldn’t it work with Deadline on this machine specifically? :face_with_spiral_eyes:

You’ve to set up path translation, so if you submit a job from a Mac to Windows and vice verse, it will translate the scene and any references

https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.4/1_User%20Manual/manual/cross-platform.html#path-mapping-setup

but can you confirm on the Mac that this is the correct path? Sometimes the mount gets dropped on a mac (power saving etc) and sometimes it remounts as /Volumes/MEDIA-1 etc.

Confirm on the Mac that you can access this share. Also as a practise avoid using spaces in paths, so /Volumes/MEDIA/Big_Projects/Scene_01/Shot_01/Blender_Scenes/Scene_01_003.blend is better than using spaces

Hello anthonygelatka,

Thank you again for the advice. I think I’ve figured out what’s causing the issue! It seems I’m running a version of macOS that’s too old on the machines that aren’t working!

In fact, I applied the same configuration to all the Macs I have, and since I couldn’t figure it out, I installed it on other Macs to see if I could replicate the problem. Sure enough, I encountered the same issue on another Mac Pro 2013 running Monterey (12.6.1).

Fortunately, I have one that’s been modded to boot on Sonoma, and like magic, it works! :grinning:

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