VFB and elements

Deadline
1

Hi all,

I have just started to use Deadline with 3ds max and Vray and am loving it! Cant wait to get everyone here off backburner.

One thing, when I submit an animation to render to .exr throughthe VFB, the slave loads up the 3dsmax FB so you cannot see the render/elements, good for visually checking eerything is ok.

How do others here render to multilayer exr through Vray?

Thanks

Mark

2

Hi Mark,

To workaround potential problems, Deadline suppresses the VRay VFB in most cases. Based on a quick scan of the code, the only time it is still used is when rendering to a VRay raw image file.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

Hi,
I have to agree with Ryan.
Keeping the VRay FB closed is one of the best things to do when your network rendering in VRay.
All because something renders fine locally in 3dsMax means absolutely nothing when it comes to network rendering. Over the years, Thinkbox have sorted out so many issues that ‘may’ occur with VRay and indeed other renderers in the beast known as 3dsMax; its so sweet to see your renders just flow through the farm with zero errors. Much better this than having to stay at work late at night because of a mysterious network render fail which ONLY happens sometimes…now that’s very annoying!
Fun fun.
Mike

4

Makes perfect sense, thanks Ryan, Mike.

Does it sound like we’re saving out the exr’s the best/correct way, still through the VFB? Or can you save out through the 3dsmax save file section and still have a multilayer file? Is there an option to disable the MFB so the slave does not open even that?

I have been noticing that the CPU usage shown in the monitor was around 95/96% so I tried to make the priority change in the 3dsmax.py file, but the slaves are still loading up 3dsmax as belownormal. An ideas?

Thanks,
Mark

5

Hi Mark,

I think using the Vray VFB is the only way to save multi-layered exrs (I’m sure Mike will correct me if I’m wrong here). Just to clarify, the current process you’re using is working for you, it just that the Vray VFB isn’t displayed during rendering, correct?

You can disable the Max VFB, during submission under the Options tab (see screen shot).

smtd_disable_vfb.PNG
smtd_disable_vfb.PNG428×774 33.5 KB

The reason we start the max process at below normal is so that the render process doesn’t starve other processes of CPU (including the slave application itself, and any remoting software you may use to remote into the machine, like VNC). So as long as you’re not doing anything on the machine, the CPU usage should climb to 100%.

However, if you want to use normal priority for testing to compare, find this line in the 3dsmax.py file (note that there may be 2 of these lines, and you’ll want the one near the bottom):

self.ProcessPriority = ProcessPriorityClass.BelowNormal

Change it to this:

self.ProcessPriority = ProcessPriorityClass.Normal

Save the file, and submit a new job to test it out. I should note that the priority code that appears near the top of 3dsmax.py is actually deprecated and should be removed. Odds are this is where you were originally making the priority change.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
6

Thanks Ryan,

I’m out of the office till the end of the week, but will try/answer when I get back.

I remember I only changed the priority once, and it was right at the top of the file.
Thanks
Mark

7

Hi Ryan,

Yes the current method is working perfectly, I think Ill try disabling the mfb as its not worth having it come up and must be using memory.

I’d be interested in any useful info from Mike with regards how they use Deadline with max and vray. I am planning the BIG switch off of Backburner next week, so am going to be training the studio in Deadline and dont want to teach them anything bad!!

Many thanks, keep up the good work.
Mark

8

Hi Mark,

Yep, multi-channel EXR’s in VRay v1.5 means using the VFB.

I would recommend not making the transition all in one go. Its not that Deadline won’t work, but more a case that you will more than likely want to tweak/configure Deadline to the way you work. This will take time and I personally find it a lot easier to throw just a couple of my really “picky” users at a new piece of kit and let them try and break it for a few weeks or in the case of something major like an Operating System, then months. It really does pay for itself when you make the final transition, zero errors and NO surprises.

For example, on the 3dsMax - Deadline SMTD interface, I’m still customising it for our studios needs and that’s about 3 years I’ve been on this task! Don’t get me wrong, it works great out of the box. I’m just referring to very unique/specific work-flow tasks we have in our studio.
On the 3dsMax-VRay front; this might be a great opportunity to have a review about how you are using VRay or indeed any renderer in 3dsMax/Maya/etc? in conjunction with what Deadline can or could do to allow you to work differently or more efficiently?

For example (not knowing your pipeline, so taking a random thought here…); Should you be using multi-channel VRay EXR’s for all your renders? Its one thing to standardise file formats in a pipeline and use lovely things like floating-point information but its another thing to just use EXR’s because that’s what everyone else say’s their using? Fully loaded EXR’s run really slowly in After Effects. PNG’s are your friend for simple things like mattes. So if we don’t go down the multi-channel EXR route, how about a hybrid some multi, some single channel passes? Hey, but hang on, doesn’t that mean more rendering time on the farm? Well, it depends on how you look at it. What’s better; spend 4hrs rendering a frame with all its ARB passes in it, OR render just the beauty RGB pass and the rest of the channel passes have been set as a dependency job on completion of the first job, BUT runs on lower spec machines which won’t need as much RAM, thereby maximising your rendering through-put? (Don’t get me wrong, we use EXR’s. Its just not the only thing we use :slight_smile:)

Mike

9

Thanks Mike, a lot to think about.

As a rule, we do render to multichannel exr’s for animations, but only if we’re going to need the channels/elements later. If I’m rendering a white people pass, then PNG’s are perfect, and any graphic overlay layers. I pretty much stick to exr and png for the most part. I agree about your comment that the low spec machines could provide better through put with splitting passes, I’ll bare that in mind.

I think i’ll leave Backburner running, but not tell the studio, if we get into difficulties we can just submit it the old way very quickly. I’ve been using Deadline for about a year on and off and hopefully have got most of the possible issues covered. We’re only small so that will help.

Thanks
Mark