Modo and layered EXR output

Deadline
1

I’m just trying to cover my bases here. But I’m investigating setting up our farm to have Modo output layered EXRs (16-bit half float) rather than PNGs. I’ve gotten some feedback on the Luxology forums stating that I need to establish this in Deadline but I don’t see where I would do this. If I tell the render outputs in Modo to output EXRs, they will all create their own image files. So I was hoping that someone had some experience setting this workflow up and could help me out.

James

2

Hey James,

I wouldn’t think that you need to set anything explicitly in Deadline to render layered EXRs. If that’s what you have set in your modo scene, then Deadline should just respect that. If you are choosing to override the output in the modo submission window, then just make sure to choose the Layered OpenEXR format from the Output Format drop down.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

Ooooh, OK. I see it now. I didn’t notice the optional output folder at the bottom. Once you choose an output folder it allows you to choose an output format. So now I need to figure out how to work that process into our submissions.

Thanks for the info Ryan!

James

4

So I have a follow up question. I’m trying to edit both the DeadlineModoClient.pl and the ModoSubmission.py scripts so I can fill the Output Folder box and set a file format for the render files. My initial attempts have not worked so I was hoping to get some guidance.

In the DeadlineModoClient.pl I’m guessing I need to add arguments to this line:

\"$deadlinecommandbg\" -executescript "$script" "$sceneFile" "$frameRange";

In the ModoSubmission.py I’m guessing that I need to add to this area around lines 271:

scriptDialog.LoadSettings( GetSettingsFilename(), settings )

appSubmission = False
if len( args ) > 0:
scriptDialog.SetValue( “SceneBox”, args[0] )
scriptDialog.SetValue( “FramesBox”, args[1] )

I tried adding this line but I got no results:

scriptDialog.SetValue( “OutputBox”, args[2] )

Any ways, I know I’m missing a bunch of stuff I just don’t know what. Being fairly new to both Deadline and Modo I’m still in the learning phase.

Thanks,

James

5

It sounds like you’re on the right track. What does your modified line in DeadlineModoClient.pl look like?

Also, in ModoSubmission.py, note that you will need to set the OutputBox with the output folder, the PrefixBox with the output file name (without extension), and the FormatBox to the correct format.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
6

Hey Ryan, thanks for the tips. I pulled a boner yesterday by not checking in my changes to the ModoSubmission.py. So when I was running my tests there were no changes to take affect! Sigh, I’ll try again. Since you said I’m on the right track hopefully I’ll get positive results.

James

7

BTW, is there any way to get error dialog from the ModoSubmission.py? Sometimes I’ll make changes and when I launch the script from the Monitor is just will fail to run and I have no idea why.

8

If you’re using Deadline 6, you can open the Console panel to see error messages from your script. You could also wrap the code in your main function in a try/except block, and use ‘traceback’ to get the error message. The script dialog has a function for displaying a popup message, which is used in the ModoSubmission.py script for reference.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
9

Cool thanks for the tip Ryan.