Problem with blank frames and modo

Deadline
1

Hi there

I’ve been testing Modo with Deadline and so far pretty impressed. However I have encountered a problem and wondered if I’m doing anything wrong.

What I want to do is render multiple passes from the same file, as I am switching different meshes on and off. I only have one render slave (my editing machine) for the time being and all my resources are local.

Screengrab of my submit screen form within modo: screencast.com/t/MzU3ODZjZjg . I select the submit modo scene, so it retains all the information when I submit otherwise any changes I make in the file will get reflected in the render output.

Now what happens is the render starts and goes through all the motions but pops out a blank png at the wrong resolution. If anyone has any ideas that would be great. I really need a solution to work with render passes in modo as saving 25 different files for each object seems pretty pointless.

Any help much appreciated.

thanks

Matt

2

Hi Matt,

I can’t think of anything off the top of my head that would explain this problem. Is it possible to post a simple test scenario that reproduces the problem? That would help us determine if Deadline is doing something wrong, or if we need to follow up with the Modo support team.

Thanks!

  • Ryan
3

Hi Ryan

Thanks for the reply. I’ll get some test files together this weekend and post it up.

cheers

Matt

4

Hi there

I’ve uploaded the modo .lxo file. If you fire the render script it should render out a blank frame. If you render through modo’s own interface it renders out fine. I’ve played around with the settings but still no joy.

Any help much appreciated

Thanks

Matt
axonometric3.zip (183 KB)

5

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the sample scene. I had to replace JapCastle1stFloor.tga with a proxy and then add a Render Output object, but those are the only changes I made. When rendering with the “Submit Modo Scene” option disabled, it seemed to work fine, but with the option enabled, it didn’t. That would seem to imply that the Modo scene is relying on resources relative to the scene file itself that aren’t submitted with the job (in this case, JapCastle1stFloor.tga). That would explain why the local rendering through Modo works. When you disable the “Submit Modo Scene” option, Deadline would be rendering the scene file from the same location that a local render would be.

So unfortunately, it looks like your only option is to not submit the scene file with the job.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
6

Hi Ryan

Thanks very much for the fast reply. It does indeed seem I missed a rogue TGA in the file so thanks for flagging that up. I’ll keep playing around with modo and deadline as it seems like a great pairing (Modo’s own network rendering is awful!) and post any thing useful that I discover to work around this problem.

thanks

Matt