maya tiling

Deadline
1

I am trying to render a scene with quite a bit of displacement, but am getting the “mental ray: out of memory” error. I read that it is possible to render a single frame on multiple machines on a renderfarm (tiling?) with deadline monitor, but cannot find out how to set this up. Help doing so is greatly appreciated.



Thanks

2

Hi Scott,



Maya tile rendering can be setup from the integrated Maya submission dialog.

http://www.franticfilms.com/software/support/deadline/maya.php



Simply enable the feature and specify the number of tiles in the X and Y

direction, and you should be good to go.



Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

I found the tab, thankyou, but still have an issue.



When I click on the “…” button beside any option in the maya submission window (limit groups, paths, etc) it freezes on me and I have to force quit maya.



I have always been submitting files through deadline monitor because of this, and therefore missing that tile option.



Guess it’s time to fix that inital problem before I get to try the tile rendering.



HELP?

4

Clicking on those buttons simply calls

c:\deadline\bin\DeadlineCommandBG.exe to perform some operations. For

the project directory option, the command is:


c:\deadline\bin\DeadlineCommandBG.exe -getdirectory “DIRECTORY_PATH”



Try running the following command from a command prompt on your machine

to see if you get any error messages:



c:\deadline\bin\DeadlineCommand.exe -getdirectory "C:"



Thanks!

5

I plug it in and a small window pops up and titled “Browse For Folder” and contains a windoes explorer list of: desktop, my documents, my computer, my network places…



is this right? or should it be going to a specific directory?




6

Sorry, my syntax was wrong. Running the following should open the folder

dialog and point to the c:\ root:


C:\Deadline\bin\DeadlineCommandBG.exe -getdirectory “c:\”



Try this and let us know if it works. Then in Maya, open up the Script

Editor, write the following line, then Execute the script:



string $newdir = SafeDeadlineCommand( “-getdirectory "C:\\"” );





The SafeDeadlineCommand function is a global function in our submission

script which is loaded when you start Maya (assuming you’ve already

setup the script). This should popup the same dialog. Select any path

and hit OK, and in the script history log, the result should be the

directory you’ve selected. Let us know if you have any problems here.



These two tests should help us figure out where the problem lies.



Thanks!

7

ok,



plugging > C:\Deadline\bin\DeadlineCommandBG.exe -getdirectory “c:\” into the command promt does what you said it would.



however, when I use



string $newdir = SafeDeadlineCommand( “-getdirectory “C:\\”” );



in maya it will bring up that same window to the C:, but if I move that little window around it leaves white holes behind it, as if maya in the background is frozen. Then when I hit OK after selecting a path, the window stays there, non-selectable with the OK button depressed, and maya is frozen. There is a message that comes up in the little script output line bottom right of maya reading “Error: Unterminated string.”


8

Strange. Which version of Maya are you using, and is it 32 bit or 64 bit?


9

maya 7.0, 32 bit

10

Tried it here on Maya 7.0.1 but I had no luck reproducing this problem.

Try running the command again from within Maya, and after Maya crashes,

send us these two files:



c:\deadline\temp\dsubmitoutput.txt

c:\deadline\temp\dsubmitexitcode.txt



It sounds like Maya is having difficulty with the information being

returned from DeadlineCommandBG, which is written out to these files.

We’ll take a look and see if anything seems out of the ordinary.



Thanks!

11

dsubmitoutput.txt contains :



\Proj\proj\tmp







dsubmitexitcode.txt contatins :



0








12

froze again,



dsubmitoutput.txt contains :



\Proj\proj\tmp





dsubmitexitcode.txt contatins :



0








13

Also, when I go to log off/turn off my computer after this script freezes in maya I get this End Program - DeadlineCommand window.


14

I have a feeling that either maya crashing when calling DeadlineCommand

might be causing orphaned DeadlineCommand applications to be left

behind, or that hanging DeadlineCommands are responsible for the

crashing of Maya in the first place.



One quick test would be to open up the Task Manager and ensure that

there are no DeadlineCommand applications running (if there are, kill

them). Then run the command from the command line outside of maya,

select the path and hit ok. Then check the task manager again to see if

DeadlineCommand is still running. If it isn’t, then we know that the

problem seems to be specific to Maya.



Is it possible to try installing Deadline on another machine to see if

you have the same problem? The reason I ask is that we’ve never seen

this problem before, and it would be interesting to determine if it’s

specific to a particular machine’s configuration, or if it’s more wide

spread than that.



Thanks!

15

So I tested out a few different scenarios with this, and it seems to only do it with my roaming profile here. I tested the command line, the deadline maya plugin, and the single script line in maya on another machine. Got the same freezing results logging in as myself. Had another guy here log in, no freezing. Logged in as the admin, no freezing. So it is with my profile in maya… an ideas?

16

Cool, at least we’re starting to get somewhere. :slight_smile:



When Maya calls that command, it is running it from c:\deadline\bin, and

it is creating and saving temp files to c:\deadline\temp. Probably a

good thing to check first is that your profile has full read/write

permissions to c:\deadline. I can’t think of anything else off the top

of my head though.



I’m not sure if there are any preferences or other settings in Maya that

would affect the running of these command lines. You could always try

blowing away the maya preferences saved under your profile and starting

from scratch, but that seems like a last resort scenario.



Cheers,