Hey everyone.
We plan on using Deadline so we just got our trial last week and now I’m setting it up. Our environment is as follows:
30 render nodes
20 workstations
Katana, Nuke, Maya and Renderman as rendering software
floating licensing of everything
software being used from single centralized network location. No local installations on the machines, except Deadline client
CentOS 7 on all machines
So far I’ve successfully deployed Deadline and it’s license server.
The troubles I’m having are with the plugins. I guess the problems come from some variables, so I’m going to try to explain as simple as I can.
Testing Maya rendering with Renderman on single headless node throws out:
Plug-in, "RenderMan_For_Maya", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH
Although I have exported the path locally on the node with the export command. If I set this variable manually for the job via Deadline menu, it completes. On the workstations I have startup maya script setting the mentioned variables and also few additional ones and everything is working fine.
Moving to Katana. On workstations Katana also starts with startup script setting variables for Renderman.
When submitting one from the example jobs from Deadline to the node I’m getting:
Error: AttributeError : 'KatanaPlugin' object has no attribute 'Plugin' (Python.Runtime.PythonException)
File "/root/Thinkbox/Deadline10/slave/****/plugins/5aafc9df86c38825b363e351/Katana.py", line 106, in RenderArgument
gpuOverrides = self.GetGpuOverrides()
File "/root/Thinkbox/Deadline10/slave/****/plugins/5aafc9df86c38825b363e351/Katana.py", line 195, in GetGpuOverrides
gpusPerTask = self.Plugin.GetIntegerPluginInfoEntryWithDefault( "GPUsPerTask", 0 )
This speaks nothing to me, so I’m kinda confused. The plugin path to katana in Deadline plugins setting points to the katana program.
The issue with Katana is pretty easily fixed on our side. Assuming you’re on Deadline 10, here’s a file you can replace with the one in your Repository to allow you to continue testing.
Steps to apply patch:
Make a back up of the current Katana plugin file, located at ‘DeadlineRepository10/plugins/Katana.py’. (Can be a simple rename so it doesn’t get blown away)
Unzip the contents of the attached zip file (contains ‘Katana.py’)
Copy the unzipped file to ‘DeadlineRepository10/plugins/Katana.py’
Let me know how that works for ya.
As for your renderman licensing issue, is it throwing that error on only one Slave? Can the Slave(s) reach the License server? Are there multiple versions of Renderman installed on the machine?
Does the same licensing issue happen outside of Deadline? To test outside of Deadline, you can find the full command in the Task log for the job. The line will look like…
Other than that, might have to use some google-fu to see what’s missing…
Hi there and thanks for responding.
The issue I got with Renderman is only within Deadline. Apparently manually adding the varibles in the job menu fixes everything, but that isn’t solution for me, as we can’t expect artists to do it manually. I’m wondering why the slave’s local variables aren’t respected.
As for the Katana fix, now I’m going to test it out. We are on the latest Deadline version.
Not sure about the Python error, but for licensing I would set the variables at the system level and reboot. Because the Slave is started usually by the Launcher the environment won’t update just from restarting the Slave.
[ERROR python.root]: An AttributeError occurred in "RenderNodeUtil.py": Renderer 'prman' not supported.
This is an error message from Katana on the rendering machine. My initial guess would be that the Slave doesn’t have the prman plugin for Katana installed, or it’s unaware of it. Could you double check the machine reporting that error?
Adding manually all the katana variables solved this awell. However it failed with different error about Prerender, but I don’t think it is an issue on Deadline side.
Seems like I’ll have to add all the variables manually on the nodes, via script in /etc/profile.d/ or other way. I’ll report afterwards if that worked.
edit: For now, it seems, that I have sorted my Katana troubles. Now I’m battling the submission script that just doesn’t work. I’ve installed it via the .run file, but nothing seems to happen. On Maya I’ve got it working though.
Setting it up via /etc/profile.d/ is my preferred way. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but being able to debug problems outside of Deadline comes in handy quite often:
