VRay animated attributes only updating once per task

Deadline
1

Hi all,

So, we’re running latest versions of everything

Deadline 10
Maya 2018.2
VRay 3.6

on 10 computers, and we’re having the hardest time with renders. We had previously established our workflow with Mental Ray, but since switching to VRay, we’re having some peculiar problems:

Many (not all, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason) attributes that are animated, be it camera animations, textures being animated, frame sequence textures, etc., will only update once per Deadline task. That is to say, if we submit the job as 10 frames per task, the camera will be still for 10 frames, then jump to the new position for the next 10, etc.

As I said, we previously established our workflow with Mental Ray, and after much testing, moved to multiple (usually 10-20) frames per task, to cut down on load time per frame. Is this a bad idea? It is obviously a VRay issue, as we never once encountered this problem with MR, and we absolutely can’t avoid it with VRay. --But is it a known issue? Should we ONLY submit jobs with 1 frame per task? Or is there a fix I’m not aware of?

Thanks,

Ricky

2

This is a new one for me, but I would turn batch-mode on and make your frames-per-task 1. Batch mode will keep the scene loaded, so the overhead is minimal. It may be that this is a wide-spread problem but since the default is one frame with batch, it might be no one is seeing it.

I’d open a case with Chaos Group too if you’re able and then follow the guide on how to isolate the render from Deadline:
docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produ … m-deadline

3

When you said batch-mode on, are you referring to “Use MayaBatch Plugin”?

4

The very same! Is that turned on?

5

Sorry for not responding–yes, it is. I’ve tried it both ways.

In the end, it does seem to solve the issue to keep the task size at 1, but it can definitely slow things down a little. At the end of the day, though–not enough to really matter. Thanks for the help, Edwin

6

Well, I’d really rather it not be a problem. :smiley:

I can understand if you don’t have the time, but if anyone else hits it I’d like to see if we can coordinate with Chaos Group.