Rendering AfterEffects files

Deadline
1

We are finishing the process of installing and testing Deadline. Everything is fine with our 3Dmax files. But the AE projects ar giving us a hard time.

We have 14 PCs and 4 Macs G5 running After Effects 6.5. Our render farm is growing from 20 to 30 BOXX PCs. As far as I understand, I don't have to buy After Effects "render licenses" for the render farm. But they refuse to render my projects. I've tried to copy aerender.exe to each machine of the render farm, but still nothing.

Do I have to configure something more than the aerender.exe folder?

Thanks for any kind of help.

2

Hi Marcelo,



As long as you have one valid license of After Effects on the network, you should be able to net render on as many machines as you like. Can you post the error messages that the slaves are printing out? They might help explain what the problem is.



Thanks!



Ryan Russell

Frantic Films Software

http://software.franticfilms.com/

(204)949-0070

3

Ok. Let me try to explain the hole picture.
As I wrote before, our network has 14 Dell PC´s running Windows XP and Windows 2000. We have 13 After Effects licenses, installed on Dell01 to Dell13. There are no licenses installed on any one of the 20 render-farm machines. There are also 2 servers on our network. One running Linux (Max-T Sledgehammer) and another one running Windows 2003 Server (Dell Server).
This is our basic configuration:
 - Dell01 to Dell13 -  After Effects licenses installed on drive C:/
   For security reasons, those drives are not shared on our network.
 - Render01 to Render 20 - Render-farm with no After Effects licenses.
 - Sledgehammer Server - This is our server for all the files, projects, image sequences, etc.
 - Dell Server - This is an old server. Now we use as "render management". The Deadline Repository is in this server, and shared to everyone on our network.

We are using the Dell14 without After Effects license for this tests.

This how we run the test.

Objective: To submit a After Effects render from Dell5 (with AE license) to be rendered on Dell14 (without AE license).

STEP-01

The aerender.exe path was added to Plugin Configuration
C:\Adobe\After Effects 6.5\Support Files\aerender.exe


STEP-02

This same path was created on Dell14, because there was no After Effects installation there.
The only file copied to this path was "aerender.exe".


STEP-03

The render was submitted from Dell5 using the Script "submit ToDeadline.jsx"
The Slave return this:
 
0: Loaded job: TEST_deadline_25-04-2006_A.aep Comp 1 (00e_050_o_43170AA2)

0: INFO: Script plugin for Deadline 2.0.18035, built Mar  8 2006 09:37:12 R

0: INFO: >> After Effects plugin for Deadline, 2006-01-27.

0: INFO: job file: c:\deadline\slave\jobsData\00e_050_o_43170AA2.job

0: Plugin rendering frame(s): 13

0: INFO: Executable: "C:\Adobe\After Effects 6.5\Support Files\aerender.exe"

0: INFO: Arguments:  " -project "c:\deadline\slave\jobsData\TEST_deadline_25-04-2006_A.aep" -comp "Comp 1" -output "\\Sledgehammer1\vol1\Arquivos_Deadline\RENDER\dia25-04-2006\TESTE_AFTER25-04_A_[#####].tga" -s 13 -e 13"

0: INFO: StartupDir: "C:\Deadline\temp\"

0: INFO: UseJobObject: true

0: INFO: HideDosWindow: true

0: INFO: Process return code: 128

 Scheduler Thread - Render Thread 0 threw an error:

 Scheduler Thread - Exception during render: Renderer returned non-zero error code, 128

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

Exception Details

 RenderPluginException -- Exception during render: Renderer returned non-zero error code, 128

  RenderPluginException.Cause: JobError (2)

  Exception.TargetSite: Void RenderTasks(Int32, Int32)

  Exception.Source: DeadlinePluginLoader

  Exception.StackTrace:

   at Deadline.Plugins.PluginLoader.RenderTasks(Int32 startTask, Int32 endTask)

   at Deadline.Plugins.PluginLoader.RenderTask(Int32 task)

   at Deadline.Plugins.Plugin.RenderTask(Int32 frame)

   at Deadline.Slaves.SlaveRenderThread.RenderCurrentTask()


STEP-04

We copied all the files from a After Effects installation to Dell14 and submit the render again.
The Slave return this:
 
0: Loaded job: TEST_deadline_25-04-2006_A.aep Comp 1 (00e_050_o_43170AA2)

0: INFO: Script plugin for Deadline 2.0.18035, built Mar  8 2006 09:37:12 R

0: INFO: >> After Effects plugin for Deadline, 2006-01-27.

0: INFO: job file: c:\deadline\slave\jobsData\00e_050_o_43170AA2.job

0: Plugin rendering frame(s): 22

0: INFO: Executable: "C:\Adobe\After Effects 6.5\Support Files\aerender.exe"

0: INFO: Arguments:  " -project "c:\deadline\slave\jobsData\TEST_deadline_25-04-2006_A.aep" -comp "Comp 1" -output "\\Sledgehammer1\vol1\Arquivos_Deadline\RENDER\dia25-04-2006\TESTE_AFTER25-04_A_[#####].tga" -s 22 -e 22"

0: INFO: StartupDir: "C:\Deadline\temp\"

0: INFO: UseJobObject: true

0: INFO: HideDosWindow: true

0: STDOUT: After Effects error: your serial number is invalid.

0: INFO: Process return code: 0

0: Render Time: 4.219 s


STEP-05

We deleted only the .exe files from Dell14 and submit the render one more time.
The Slave return this:

0: Plugin rendering frame(s): 30

0: INFO: Executable: "C:\Adobe\After Effects 6.5\Support Files\aerender.exe"

0: INFO: Arguments:  " -project "c:\deadline\slave\jobsData\TEST_deadline_25-04-2006_A.aep" -comp "Comp 1" -output "\\Sledgehammer1\vol1\Arquivos_Deadline\RENDER\dia25-04-2006\TESTE_AFTER25-04_A_[#####].tga" -s 30 -e 30"

0: INFO: StartupDir: "C:\Deadline\temp\"

0: INFO: UseJobObject: true

0: INFO: HideDosWindow: true

0: STDOUT: aerender ERROR 1: unable to find after effects application at C:\Adobe\After Effects 6.5\Support Files\AfterFX.com at line 601

0: INFO: Process return code: 0

0: Render Time: 640.625 ms

 

That it. We are running out of ideas.
I hope that all this explanation make sense.

Regards!

Marcelo Cunha

4

Hi Marcelo,



Thanks for the info. I believe you still have to install the after effects render engine on all of your render nodes. When you install after effects, it should give you the option to install either the full version, or just the render engine. The render engine, I believe, does not require a license, and can be installed on as many machines as you like.



It’s likely that simply copying the after effects program from one machine to another isn’t enough. I would bet that there are registry settings and other stuff that needs to be set in order for after effects to run properly. Can you try installing the render engine on your render nodes to see if that works?



Cheers,



Ryan Russell

Frantic Films Software

http://software.franticfilms.com/

(204)949-0070

5

Ryan,

First I have to thank you again for your attention.

Our system administrator / maintenance guy always told us that there were no such thing as "Render Engine" on  After Effects. He even wrote to Adobe and they wrote back saying that we should buy the Pro License. But we already have it. Now, after a little disagreement, we install the render engine on all machines, and almost every thing is working fine.

The only question now is about the location of the repository. Is it better to place it on our Sledgehammer Server, that has 4 Gigabit ports? How Deadline deals with the After Effects files? Are they copied to the repository and each one of the render machines access it to render each frame? I´m worried about storage space and network traffic.

Cheers,

Marcelo Cunha

6

Hi Marcelo,



That’s great to hear that you have after effects rendering now. Since you only have 20 rendernodes, you’re probably safe to leave the repository on your Dell server. What you could do is try installing it on your Sledgehammer server as well, and see if you notice a performance difference between using the different repositories. If you decide to test this out, you can use DeadlineConfiguration.exe to change which repository the slaves point to - just right click on your slaves and select “Modify Repository…”.



The after effects project file is copied to the repository upon submission. When the slaves pick up the after effects job, they copy the project file locally to reduce network traffic. Any external references that your after effects project file uses should already be on the network, and that’s how the slaves access them.



Cheers,



Ryan Russell

Frantic Films Software

http://software.franticfilms.com/

(204)949-0070