Rendering Pre-Pass/GI Cache through Deadline

Deadline
1

We are running Deadline 6 and Modo 7 (SP3).

For the majority of the stills we produce we run tiled renders on multiple machines. This means you need to do the pre-pass on a single machine first to get a consistent result then link in the file and submit the render through Deadline. It would be great if there was a way of automating the pre-pass (GI/Irradiance Cache) through Deadline as part of the submission process and then using this file for the tiled render.

Something like creating 3 jobs on Deadline during the submission –

  1. Pre-pass – single machine – just saves pre-pass and closes scene
  2. Main Tiled render – multiple machines – references the pre-pass created from job one
  3. Merge – single machine – combines the tiles and saves out the final file

Has anyone managed to do anything similar yet or have any thoughts on how we could improve the workflow?
I imagine this would apply to other software packages as well.

Thanks

Peter Scott
Producer
Cityscape Digital Ltd
cityscapedigital.co.uk

2

Even if no one pipes up with a fix they already have on this, I wanted you to know I will be passing this along as a feature request to the devs because I think that sounds like a great idea if the tools allow it.

Cheers,

3

Hi Peter,

I know a number of studios who have created bespoke submission scripts which submit jobs in the same way that you are after, particularly in the Arch Viz field. I previously worked at HD and created a similar script with some kind help from Dave MacKenzie from Dave and Goliath who had previously written this very script and blogged about it (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7633).

I never got mine fully working, but it was all Maxscript and I don’t know anything about Modo - I thought you Cityscape guys were Max based?

4

Thanks Dwight, much appreciated.

Matt, we use both Modo and 3DS Max here at Cityscape.
Thanks for the links, we have only recently got Deadline installed so just catching up with it all.
Great so far though!

Thanks