We’re having major problem getting the render elements out of deadline. Often, the shot comes back and many frames of the render elements are black although the RGBA pass is fine. We’ve turned off the frame buffer, and that seems to help, but we’re still losing the render elements. This happens when saving them inside the EXR and when saving them seperatly.
If anyone has any suggestions as to what might be the cause, please let me know.
Kindly,
Fred
Hi Fred,
Which version of Deadline are you using? Also, I assume you’re using VRay? If so, do you have the option enabled in the submitter to restart the renderer between frames?
Cheers,
max 2011, vray 2.? (I dont think we have the lastest update) and deadline 5.0
So Fred, do you have “Restart Renderer Between Frames” checked in the Submitter?
It is in the Render tab / 3ds Max Rendering rollout of the Submit Max To Deadline UI.
Yes, I have that set. That seemed to fix my older issue with saving separate elements, but these days I’m saving them in the EXR format. I did try restarting max between frames, but that slowed down the rendering a lot.
You definitely don’t want to be restarting Max between frames, unless there are memory issues, but I doubt that’s the case here.
Are you using VRay’s frame buffer to embed the elements into the exr (like a vrimg file), or are you using Max’s new exr format feature that allows you to embed the render elements?
Also, are you submitting directly from SMTD, or are you using RPManager?
Thanks!
We’ve started testing Deadline here and I must say I’m loving all the features. That being said, if it can’t render the render elements correctly, then what can we do? 
Rendered out a project last night and random RE frames are black. This was submitted via RP Manager 4.68, 3ds 2012 SP2, Win 7 Enterprise x64, Deadline 5.1, Vray 2.20.03. It’s not a memory issue as the machines have 24GB ram. The scenes aren’t even reaching the max physical ram and are even happening on the first frames some machines have rendered. RE frames are saved out as separate sequences. Also, the RE’s aren’t respecting the paths that are set up in the RE tab and instead saving them out to a different folder DL created on its own (probably a checkbox I’m missing since I’m noob to DL).
Is there a ‘proper’ workflow to use RP Manager, RE’s, DL, Vray 2? Thanks in advance!
Edit: We’re using the Deadline4_1 RP Manager scripts I found on the site since I haven’t been able to find the 5.1 scripts. Can I just replace those with the ones from the local Repository, or do I need to get specific 5.1 scripts to drop in the RP Manager directory?
Edit 2: Ugh… I meant RP Manager 4.64 (most recent on the site).
You’ll definitely want the 5.1 RPM scripts. You can find them here:
thinkboxsoftware.com/deadlin … r-14-2011/
The problems you are describing are often fixed by simply enabling the Restart Renderer Between Frames option under the Render tab of the Deadline submitter. In the 5.1 scripts, this will be automatically enabled for VRay jobs.
Cheers,
Wow… it was on the installer page. Doh! Totally didn’t see it. I resubmitted the job and in DL, I modified the settings to restart plugin each frame. I enabled the detect Black Frames too. Will that help?
Thanks for the help!
It would help detect if the problem has occurred, but it won’t prevent it from occurring in the first place. I guess this is better then false positives though. 