Slave Dequeues and Renders Tasks Completely Within Seconds - Though Not Really

Deadline
1

Hi everyone,



I’m experiencing strange behavior with a slave. It dequeues tasks only to finish them in a matter of seconds. Of course, they’re not really finished after two seconds. However, the slave thinks everything’s alright. The log files always show “INFO: Process return code: 0” after each task. So technically everything is alright.



The slave runs on Windows XP Professional 32-bit. Although the user account on which it runs is restricted I’ve made sure it has read and write access to both the Deadline installation folder and the network share to which it should write successfully rendered frames.



Here’s a log snippet of one of the allegedly successful tasks:

2008-02-28 00-08-22: Scheduler Thread - Updated environment variables

2008-02-28 00-08-22: Scheduler Thread - Plugin loaded in 0.06 seconds.

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: Loaded job: lea_kamerafahrt (00j_050_o_0e0f8ac6)

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Script plugin for Deadline 2.7.27948, built May 17 2007 22:41:24 R

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: >> Maya Renderer for Deadline, 2004-10-09

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: job file: c:\deadline\slave\jobsData\00j_050_o_0e0f8ac6.job

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: Plugin rendering frame(s): 120-149

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Ignoring popup windows matching “.entry point.”

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Ignoring popup windows matching “.Entry Point.”

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Rendering to network drive…

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Rendering with Maya 8.0

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Rendering all layers - using the renderer set in the Maya render settings.

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Enforcing 32 bit build of Maya

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Enforcing 32 bit build of Maya

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Executable: “C:\Programme\Alias\Maya8.0\bin\mayabatch.exe”

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: Arguments: " -renderer file -s 120 -e 149 -b 1 -rd “Z:/_render/voodoo/images/” -proj “Z:/_render/voodoo” “Z:/_render/voodoo/scenes/lea_kamerafahrt.mb”"

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: StartupDir: “C:\Programme\Alias\Maya8.0\bin”

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: UseJobObject: true

2008-02-28 00-08-25: 0: INFO: HideDosWindow: true

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: Flags:

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -v prints the product version and cut number

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -batch for batch mode

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -prompt for interactive non-gui mode

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -proj [dir] look for files in the specified project dir

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -command [mel command] runs the specified command on startup

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -file [file] opens the specified file

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -script [file] sources the specified file on startup

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -log [file] copies stdout and stderr messages to the specified file

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: (use complete file name)

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -recover recover the last journal file

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -render [file] renders the specified file

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: (use ‘Render -help’ for more options)

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -optimizeRender [file] [outfile]

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: optimize maya file efficient for rendering

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: purposes, and put result in outfile

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: (use ‘maya -optimizeRender -help’ for more options)

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -archive [file] displays a list of files required to archive

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: the specified scene.

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -noAutoloadPlugins do not auto-load any plug-ins.

2008-02-28 00-08-28: 0: STDOUT: -help prints this message

2008-02-28 00-08-29: 0: INFO: Process return code: 0

2008-02-28 00-08-29: 0: INFO: Finished Maya render.

I don’t know what’s wrong. I’d gladly accept any help you can offer.

Greetings,

Sven

2

Try using Render.exe as the render executable instead of mayabatch.exe.

You can configure this in the Maya Plugin Configuration, which can be

accessed from the Monitor in Super User mode by selecting Tools ->

Configure Plugins.



Let us know if this helps!



Cheers,

3

Hi, Ryan,



d’oh!



The Slave was using mayabatch.exe to render instead of Render.exe. I checked the Plug-in Settings and discovered that for the Render.exe path there was a correct entry for that machine but there was also a path to the mayabatch.exe. So when the Slave looked for matching Render.exe paths on that machine it actually found the mayabatch.exe path first. And thus used it.



I’ve deleted the mayabatch.exe entry and the Slave immediately started rendering correctly.



Thank you for the hint.



Greetings,



Sven