Maya Hardware Render 2 on Farm Not Working

l.jackson · October 12, 2021, 8:17pm

I’m trying to allow our hardware rendering process to be done on the farm, but it always seems to result in the error: 2021-10-12 13:13:56: 0: STDOUT: Could not initialize ogsRenderer. This error happens whether I submit via the deadline api passing the job/plugin info specifically, or use the built-in submitter in the deadline client. Here is the plugin and job info passed, with censored irrelevant information: Sorry if I went overboard with the censoring, just wanted to make sure I don’t get in trouble.

Job Info:

BatchName=CENSORED>

Blacklist=

EnvironmentKeyValue0=MAYA_OGS_GPU_MEMORY_LIMIT=4000

EnvironmentKeyValue1=RESX=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue10=MAYA_VP2_DEVICE_OVERRIDE=VirtualDeviceGLCore

EnvironmentKeyValue11=STEP=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue12=VERSION=1

EnvironmentKeyValue13=SHOTNAME=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue14=MAYA_APP_DIR=/cache

EnvironmentKeyValue15=SHOWNAME=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue2=RESY=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue3=SHOT=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue4=SBOX=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue5=MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue6=PYTHONPATH=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue7=RENDER=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue8=VARIANT=CENSORED

EnvironmentKeyValue9=MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH=CENSORED

EventOptIns=

Frames=967

MachineName=deadline

Name=CENSORED.ma

OutputDirectory0=CENSORED

OverrideTaskExtraInfoNames=False

Plugin=MayaBatch

Pool=renderblades

Region=

ScheduledStartDateTime=12/10/2021 13:12

UserName=ljackson

And plugin info:

Camera=CENSORED

OutputFilePath=CENSORED

ProjectPath=CENSORED

Renderer=mayaHardware2

SceneFile=CENSORED.ma

Version=2020

Would anyone have any advice on our to proceed?

Thanks

Panupat · October 14, 2021, 8:33am

Was it, by any chance, sent to a CPU farm without GPU?

anthonygelatka · October 14, 2021, 8:58am

or is it running as a service / headless and can’t see the hardware?

does the submission line work outside of Deadline?

have you tried CENSORED

l.jackson · October 14, 2021, 2:40pm

Unfortunately I’ve definitely tried on a machine with a GPU and still the same issue.

l.jackson · October 14, 2021, 2:43pm

Is there a certain flag which states whether it’s running as a service/headless. Sorry for the ignorance, I’m still fairly new to deadline.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “does the submission line work outside of Deadline?”. If you mean does the render work normally, on a live session of Maya, then yes.

Unfortunately I did try CENSORED, but because of CENSORED, and my coworker who CENSORED the CENSORED, it still won’t CENSORED as intended.

anthonygelatka · October 14, 2021, 3:06pm

lol!

If you installed Deadline to run as a service on Windows, it doesn’t engage the GPU, If you’re running on linux without a GUI then it’s the same. I only recall this being an issue on Windows machines though.

If you check the log from the Deadline worker you’ll see a line like this (it’s a 3ds job but maya should be similar)

INFO: Executable: "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2021\3dsmax.exe"
INFO: Argument:  -p "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\dl_762927826881.ini" -q -s "C:\ProgramData\Thinkbox\Deadline10\workers\WS1\jobsData\5fca6e3b7a28f30990f411ae\maxStartup\0\deadlineStartupMax2021.max"
INFO: Full Command: "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2021\3dsmax.exe"  -p "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\dl_762927826881.ini" -q -s "C:\ProgramData\Thinkbox\Deadline10\workers\WS1\jobsData\5fca6e3b7a28f30990f411ae\maxStartup\0\deadlineStartupMax2021.max"
INFO: Startup Directory: "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2021"

you can take the ‘Full Command’ and run it in command prompt or shell, in this case

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2021\3dsmax.exe"  -p "C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Temp\dl_762927826881.ini" -q -s "C:\ProgramData\Thinkbox\Deadline10\workers\WS1\jobsData\5fca6e3b7a28f30990f411ae\maxStartup\0\deadlineStartupMax2021.max"

That would be running it outside of deadline

I’ve not really scene anyone using the Maya sw/hw render so not sure
Did wonder if this affected anything?
MAYA_VP2_DEVICE_OVERRIDE=VirtualDeviceGLCore

maybe worth searching available env vars for the hw render to see if there is something that may help

LukeO · June 5, 2024, 7:30pm

I was getting the same type of error when trying to run a playblast using maya -batch or mayapy via Deadline.

This was the tell-tale message in the deadline logs: Could not initialize Playblast renderer

My issue ended up being that Deadline was running as a service on all nodes on the farm.

https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.1/1_User%20Manual/manual/considerations.html#running-as-a-service-daemon

“Windows does NOT allow any background service to access the graphic card.”

It states Windows specifically, but its the same deal with linux.

To test, I started up a Worker manually on a farm node (so it has the UI). Then submitted my playblast job to be picked up by that node. The node playblasted it without any issues.