SMTD with StereoCameraRig issues

[Bobo]

Actually, it’s just a bit misleading in the docs then:

In addition, any scripts or plugins in the ‘custom’ folder will override any scripts or plugins that are shipped with Deadline if they share the same name. 

(from http://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/7.1/1_User%20Manual/manual/scripting-overview.html)
So i guess it should read ‘… with the exception of STMD,…’.

What a very Max-centric thing to say

Deadline supports 70+ applications, and a few of them ship with integrated scripts written in various scripting languages. These integrated scripts are all affected by this limitation - in fact, some of them must be copied manually (e.g. the Maya submitter) into the 3D application’s own scripts folders, and do not update automatically from the Repository like SMTD does. So they are the connection of other apps to Deadline, they ship with Deadline, but are not “Deadline Scripts” in that they don’t run inside of Deadline.

I agree we should modify the documentation to explain what kinds of scripts we mean…

[celluloidvfx]

What a very Max-centric thing to say

Yeah, pretty tough for me as well as i’m rather a Nuke than a Max user
But that’s why i put a ‘,…’ there as i still don’t quite understand which scripts are affected and which aren’t. Is there a simple rule like ‘all submission scripts’?
And yes, please make this more clear in the docs.

Cheers,
Holger

[Bobo]

What a very Max-centric thing to say

Is there a simple rule like ‘all submission scripts’?

The rule is this:

The Repository contains a \Scripts folder, which contains sub-folders called
Balancer
General
JobReports
Jobs
Limits
Pulse
SlaveReports
Slaves
Submission
Tasks
WebService

The Repository also contains a \Custom\Scripts folder, and it contains EXACTLY the same sub-folders as the \Scripts folder.

All these scripts are written in Python and run INSIDE components of Deadline- in the Monitor, on the Slaves, in the Balancer, on Pulse etc. They implement operations like job submission from the Monitor, general operations on existing jobs, connecting with the slave via VNC, defining the Balancer rules, emailing the user, opening image viewers etc.

The ones in the Custom\Scripts\ folder will never be updated by the installers, and if the same file exists in both places, the Custom one will be run instead of the Factory version. So if you take an existing shipping script, say the Deadline Monitor submitter for Nuke, and want to add functionality, you first copy it into Custom\Scripts\Submission, then modify it. This way your changes will survive multiple updates.

In the Repository there is also a \Submission folder. It contains sub-folders for every application that provides an INTEGRATED submitter that runs in the application itself (Max, Maya, Houdini, Lightwave, Modo, Nuke, Fusion, AE, etc.) These scripts are written in various scripting languages native to the respective applications. These scripts communicate with Deadline (usually by calling DeadlineCommandBG.exe), but do not run INSIDE of Deadline. Currently they do not provide a custom folder mechanism.

So the rule would be “integrated submission scripts are not supported yet”. However, we are looking into changing that in future versions.

[celluloidvfx]

Thanks for the explanation!

However, we are looking into changing that in future versions.

Cool!

Have a nice weekend!
Holger

[celluloidvfx]

Hi Bobo,

i think we found another issue with SMTD:
it’s losing the checked state of the ‘Create/Upload Movie’ and ‘Create/Upload Filmstrip’ checkboxes when you e.g. go back to the ‘Job’ tab and then again return to the ‘Integration’ tab. They’re always unchecked.
This is with your modified ‘SMTD_StereoCameraPriority_20150827.zip’ from a few posts above. We haven’t had the time to upgrade to 7.2.0.15 nor 7.2.0.16 yet.

There’s also a feature idea that came to mind during our current project. Do you think it’s possible to add a feature for the priority of dependent Draft jobs, similar to the relative priority of the stereo cams and the ‘Rest of Frames’ jobs? We just found it’d be helpful if all those Draft jobs have a higher priority than the cg/comp job they’re depending on - so they will definitely rendered before any other following cg/comp job. Sometimes those have to wait for frames of other jobs to finish before they’re being started.
Of course, this would be great to have in all submitters that are able to submit dependent Draft jobs.

Cheers,
Holger

[Bobo]

I think we found another issue with SMTD:
it’s losing the checked state of the ‘Create/Upload Movie’ and ‘Create/Upload Filmstrip’ checkboxes when you e.g. go back to the ‘Job’ tab and then again return to the ‘Integration’ tab. They’re always unchecked.
This is with your modified ‘SMTD_StereoCameraPriority_20150827.zip’ from a few posts above. We haven’t had the time to upgrade to 7.2.0.15 nor 7.2.0.16 yet.

I can see the bug and will fix it ASAP. The variables for Movie and Filmstrip were added, but not initialized correctly.

There’s also a feature idea that came to mind during our current project. Do you think it’s possible to add a feature for the priority of dependent Draft jobs, similar to the relative priority of the stereo cams and the ‘Rest of Frames’ jobs? We just found it’d be helpful if all those Draft jobs have a higher priority than the cg/comp job they’re depending on - so they will definitely rendered before any other following cg/comp job. Sometimes those have to wait for frames of other jobs to finish before they’re being started.
Of course, this would be great to have in all submitters that are able to submit dependent Draft jobs.

\

In this case, all I can do is ask the Deadline developers to add that option to the Draft event plugin. Right now the QuickDraft spawns a job when the main job finishes, and it appears that the Draft job inherits the properties of the main job. I am sure a Priority offset could be added, but it is not under my control…

[celluloidvfx]

I can see the bug and will fix it ASAP. The variables for Movie and Filmstrip were added, but not initialized correctly.

Cool!

In this case, all I can do is ask the Deadline developers to add that option to the Draft event plugin. Right now the QuickDraft spawns a job when the main job finishes, and it appears that the Draft job inherits the properties of the main job. I am sure a Priority offset could be added, but it is not under my control…

No problem. Should i post this in the Draft forum then? To have this as a parameter of the Draft plugin in general would work for me as well.

[Bobo]

No problem. Should i post this in the Draft forum then? To have this as a parameter of the Draft plugin in general would work for me as well.

Nope, it is not Draft per se, it is a Deadline feature using Draft. I will hunt down the right people and ask them about it.

[Bobo]

Could you please give this version of SMTD a go and see if it fixes the Shotgun issues you reported?
SMTD_Shotgun_Fixes_20150902.zip (173 KB)

This fixes the following issues:

• When entering a new version and description, the ExtraInfo fields will be updated immediately.
• The Movie and Filmstrip Upload checkboxes are now persistent when changing tabs.
• All Shotgun Integration options were already stored in persistent globals with the scene (if you would save the scene manually after using SMTD), but the values were only restored correctly if you first loaded the .MAX file, then relaunched SMTD. I fixed it so that opening SMTD and then loading multiple .MAX files containing different Shotgun settings will automatically update the SMTD settings and the SMTD UI without the need to restart SMTD after each loading.
• SMTD was performing some additional file operations each time a Shotgun setting was changed, resulting in awful performance hits. I removed these operations, so using SMTD with Shotgun should be much faster now.

Note that SMTD still does NOT save the current scene automatically to the original source path when you make changes to the Shotgun settings, unless the submission option “SAVE and Use Current Scene’s ORIGINAL NETWORK PATH” is selected. In order to make the Shotgun settings persistent per scene file the user MUST save the scene manually if using the other submission options.
However, the scene copy submitted with the job will have these settings stored in it, so opening it from the Repository would restore all Shotgun settings correctly.

Please let me know if you find anything else that does not work right.

[celluloidvfx]

We tried that version and the issues regarding the shotgun settings are gone.
Thanks!

Also thanks for explaining the situation regarding the handling of the shotgun settings and saving of the scene file. I think this explains some of the issues we experienced the last days when some info got mixed up in shotgun.

I’ll keep you updated should we encounter any other issues.

Cheers,
Holger