My artists are trying out realflow 4 and i got the duty to set up a few realflownodes. I followed all the steps accordingly: installed, registered licenses on both realflow and the node, opened up a scene and test rendered it, and added the maya plugin. I submitted a scene to it through deadline monitor and i get errors saying “cannot locate license file”
I thought it was a realflow problem at first so i tested the render through command line. Worked like a charm. However deadline does not seem to like the realflownode.exe for some reason.
Thanks,
Jonathan
When you installed Realflow on the render nodes, was Deadline running at the time (including the Launcher)? If so, try restarting the Deadline applications or even the machine to see if that helps. If RF is relying on an environment variable to find the license, Deadline would have to be restarted to recognize this.
Also, when you were rendering from the command line, were you using “realflow.exe” with the -nogui option, or “realflownode.exe”? Deadline can work with both realflow.exe and realflownode.exe, so whichever one you’re using that is working with the command line, try using the same in the RealFlow plugin configuration.
Cheers,
I restarted the machine and retried submitting a job. I also tried restarting deadline by itself. Same error:
Exception during render: An error occurred in RenderTasks(): [RealFlow Warning]: Invalid license. (FranticX.Processes.ManagedProcessAbort) (Deadline.Plugins.RenderPluginException)
at Deadline.Plugins.ScriptPlugin.RenderTasks(Int32 startFrame, Int32 endFrame, String& outMessage)
For the command line argument, i am using realflownode.exe. This is how i ran the command which worked just fine.
realflownode.exe -range 0 200 -threads 16 “C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Application Data\Frantic Films\Deadline\slave\jobsData\Crest_RF_07.flw”
realflownode.exe is unreliable in my experience.
Check out the versioning! Realflownode.exe states 4.3.8.0123, yet the main realflow.exe is version 4.3.8.0124. Exciting!
From my experience, its better to run the realflow.exe and avoid the realflownode.exe. Just change your deadline plugin configuration. Ryan has written the plugin script to handle both *.exe’s.
Also, using the cmd line, try re-licensing the realflownode.exe and also, boot up the realflow.exe on the slave machine and manually re-licence the software.
Also, when you re-licence the software, ALWAYS copy and paste the licence information into the Realflow window! Don’t use the “file open / browse” option, as it is again, unreliable!
After re-licensing the software, restart the machine and check BOTH licensing options are still in place. Then try re-running the job through Deadline…
Hope this helps 
Mike
Ok, I followed your awesome instructions. I modified the plugin config in the repository. I tried to re-license the software the way you said however it wont accept it. The .dat doesnt have the # and # so i tried everythink i could think of to get it to work. 
I can use both realflow and realflownode just fine from command line. I will keep playing around with it though, cant give up.
What software do you recommend in place of realflow? anything out there better/same as?
Jonathan
Ah. Forgot to mention the windows firewall exceptions. RealFlow licensing is network aware, so if your firewall is blocking licensing communication over the network, then it might be flagging as failing, hence the error messages in Deadline.
If both *.exe’s are running OK in the command line, then you don’t need to re-license (that’s for when it goes wrong…!, normally, when you push it too much and it falls over itself!).
Alternatives? RealFlow is kind of out there in a category of its own…unless of course, Ryan wants to send you a copy of Flood!
Mike
I would like to try out Flood. I will look into it this week.
And still cant get realflow to work. oh well. At least the maya plugin for it works alright.
Actually, there are no current plans to release our Flood tool set to the public. I think there was a very subtle sarcastic tone to Mike’s last comment. 
lol, thanks for giving my hopes up.
What would it take to sneak a copy from you ryan? 