Hey guys,
No idea whats happening here, but one of our standard jpg render elements is randomly rendering out as an exr when using deadline… i checked through the _Functions script, and our handling scripts, but could not find anything that could be related
i found these parameters,and have turned them off:
RenderElementsUpdatePaths = true,
RenderElementsUpdateFilenames = true,
But no difference…
Is lighting / deadline doing some further render element wrangling?
The files are named .jpg btw. But they arent jpegs…
If i just open the file off the repository, then hit render on a frame, it comes out as a proper jpg… so something goes amiss in deadline.
The only way i could fix it, is by writing a maxscript extension plugin that gets called before the file is saved, that does this:
Value* FixRenderElementDevice_cf(Value **arg_list, int count)
{
check_arg_count(FixRenderElementDevice, 1, count);
int elementIndex = arg_list[0]->to_int();
IRenderElementMgr* reMgr = GetCOREInterface()->GetCurRenderElementMgr();
int numElements = reMgr->NumRenderElements();
if (elementIndex < 0 || elementIndex >= numElements)
throw RuntimeError (MSTR("RenderElement index is outside valid range"));
IRenderElement* re = reMgr->GetRenderElement(elementIndex);
PBBitmap *mBitmap = NULL;
re->GetPBBitmap(mBitmap);
#define DEVICECOUNT 3
CStr extensions[DEVICECOUNT] = {".jpg", ".jpeg", ".exr"};
CStr devices[DEVICECOUNT] = {"JPEG File", "JPEG File", "OpenEXR Image File"};
if (mBitmap!=NULL)
{
MaxSDK::Util::Path p = mBitmap->bi.GetPathEx();
mBitmap->bi.FixDeviceName();
MSTR pstr = p.GetString();
pstr.toLower();
bool bSuccess = false;
bool bTried = false;
for (int i=0; i<DEVICECOUNT && bTried==false; i++)
{
if (pstr.length() >= extensions[i].length())
{
CStr ext = pstr.Substr(pstr.length() - extensions[i].length(), extensions[i].length());
if (ext == extensions[i] && devices[i] != CStr(mBitmap->bi.Device()))
{
bTried = true;
const char* setthis = mBitmap->bi.SetDevice(devices[i]);
if (devices[i] == CStr(setthis))
{
bSuccess = true;
mBitmap->bi.FixDeviceName();
}
}
}
}
if (bTried && bSuccess)
{
if (mBitmap->bi.GetPiData() == NULL)
{
mBitmap->bi.CreateFmtSpecBlock();
}
return &true_value;
}
return &false_value;
}
return &undefined;
}If i dont do a SetDevice manually, the FixDeviceName does not always properly set the output device… so even though we have a jpg in the filename, it uses the exr plugin.
It seems that using the 3dsmax command line renderer, it auto fixes the outputs properly. When using deadline + lighting, this does not happen.