task executed before main job - possible ?

Deadline
1

Hi !
Is it possible to execute some operations before the job starts to render?
Precisely, I need to convert maya scene’s shaders to renderman, and then run rendering.

Right now only way I see is to make two jobs, second dependant on first…

-cheers,
michal

2

Hi Michal,

Currently, the only options to do what you’re looking for is either:

  1. Using two jobs (as you mentioned)
  2. Customizing your own plugin to perform both operations

In Deadline 3.0, which should be released this week, will also support pre-job and pre-task scripts (written in python). These might be able to help you out as well.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

Can you give me some hints about plugin customization ?
This is actually for my own plugin for 3delight4maya, so I’m not too limited with what I can do with the plug…

thanks

4

Ah, right. I revisited an older thread of yours for reference:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1402

I would imagine you could add additional functionality to your StartJob.ffs or RenderTasks.ffs scripts to run additional commands before running the Maya process. Do the conversions of these shaders need to be done before each task, or do they only needed to be converted once before the job starts? Maybe this could be done in the StartJob.ffs script.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
5

Conversion needs to take place only once, before all the tasks. So it seems StartJob.ffs is a good place to put the code into :slight_smile: