Hi,
I really would like to switch all our rendering over to Deadline as soon as possible. Right now we are using Deadline mainly for VRay and Maxwells own network rendering system for all Maxwell renders.
There are two functionalities from the Maxwell system that I am currently missing (or just can’t find) in Deadline: “release node” and “Add node to job”.
Release Node
The abbility to remove a node from a renderjob without the the progress of that node beeing lost.
We need this mainly for the workstations that render over night. If an artist comes in in the morning, his machine might be rendering on a job that is far from finished. In order for him to use his workstation it would be necessary that he can release his node from the farm. His render result should then not be lost but merged with the other renders on that job once they are finished.
This feature also comes in handy when we need to alocate more render ressources to a specific render job.
Add node to job
If a render job needs more power, it would be great to be able to add more nodes to it. They would need to get an individual initial seed for proper merging.
Hope this makes sense.
Can I already do this in Deadline? If not, please concider it as a feature request.
Cheers, Florian
Hello Florian,
Just looking this over and I see a few things that I don’t think are currently possible. The first of them is that a Maxwell node dropping what it’s doing mid task, this is something I do not believe we can currently do. If a task is not finished, it’s progress is lost and another machine will have to redo it. If this functionality exists in Maxwell, we might be able to re-purpose it, but that might take more than we are able to do at the moment. I know we are planning to take a look at tasks in the future, though.
As for adding a node to a job, that shouldn’t be a problem, though it sounds like maybe the system you are using might work differently than Deadline. In Deadline it’s just a matter of adding a machine which can do a job and it will try to pick up a task. Can you elaborate on how the Maxwell network renderer works that this would not be done? Thanks
Hi I have been working with Ryan on the Maxwell plugins since Deadline 6 and this is possible in V7.2.
You will need a couple of things checked before you create your Maxwell job for this to work.
Currently you need to have ‘Local Rendering’ and ‘Resume from mxi’ turned on for the job when you submit it via the Deadline Monitor in the plugin Outputs panel on tab 2.
This will allow your node to work on a job and when that node/job is suspended (ie not completed) the mxi will be written back to the output folder. When your node picks up the job again, then it loads the previous mxi from the output folder and continues without restarting the render.
To stop a node mid render, ie in the morning when the workstation is required, pause the task for that node/slave in the Deadline Monitor. The slave then writes it’s current mxi to the output folder and waits for the next job. At this point the slave can be turned off on the workstation or via the Monitor.
When the machine is available to carry on rendering, start the slave and then resume the task from Deadline Monitor. Maxwell should then pick up the mxi it was rendering and carry on from where it left off.
Tim.
Thanks for the info. Sounds like this could work for us. I’ll try it out tomorrow.
Hey Tim,
Thanks! I forgot that Maxwell is the only plugin that breaks the task rules we have in Deadline.