Max 2015 - Submitter ignores task size?

Deadline
1

Hello all,

it seems that the deadline submitter for 3ds max 2015 (design) does not submit the task size e.g. frames per task (render task chunk size).
The task window in deadline monitor shows only one frame per task. With 3ds max 2013 everything is ok.

Any idea?

Thank you.

Best regards

Thorsten

2

We have seen this happen on new installations. There is code in place in SMTD to prevent this, but for some reason it does not seem to help in some cases.
There is a simple workaround - switch to the Tiles tab and re-select the option “FULL FRAME Rendering…” from the drop-down list. You have to do just once on a workstation, and after that the problem should go away forever.

Technical details: It looks like the default “region rendering” mode is not set to #none in the settings, but to “” which confuses the system. This would be visible from the SMTD Log where it lists the current region mode as “” instead of “none”. I am still trying to figure out why this happens as it is explicitly written in the code to assume #none when an empty string (no record at all) is read from the INI files…

Please let us know if this helps!

3

Hello Thorsten,

I think we have seen this a time or two. Could you go to the Tiles tab in the 3ds Max submitted, and the first drop down, could you click the drop down and just click something on the list, even if it’s the current option? Let me know how your submissions go after that. Thanks.

4

Thanks Bobo and Dwight. The workaround worked well our jobs are now beeing submitted with the correct task size.

Best regards

Thorsten

5

Hi,
I just had a chat with Bobo and we figured it out and the fix will appear in Deadline v7.0 when it’s finally released. However, you can fix it yourself.
Search in the file: “/your_repo_path/submission/3dsmax/Main/SubmitMaxToDeadline_Functions.ms” around line: #965 for this line:

if findItem #("none", "singleframemultiregion", "animationmultiregion", "singleframetiles", "animationtiles", "maxregion") (tolower (theValue as string)) == 0 do theValue == "none"

and change it by removing one of the “=” characters towards the very end, so it looks like this:

if findItem #("none", "singleframemultiregion", "animationmultiregion", "singleframetiles", "animationtiles", "maxregion") (tolower (theValue as string)) == 0 do theValue = "none"

Cheers,
Mike

6

Hello Mike,
thank you very much. We fixed the script and everything seems to work normal.

Best regards

Thorsten

7

Good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to provide the feedback. It’s always appreciated!
Regards,
Mike