AWS Thinkbox Discussion Forums

VRay DR with Deadline 7, but without "workstation mode"?

Deadline
#1

Hi all,

After many years of hit and miss experiences rendering though Backburner, I have finally got round to testing Deadline 7 on a 30 day trial. It’s certainly a lot more powerful (and complicated) than BB, but essentially the main thing I’d like to use it for is to send DR jobs to just one of my two render nodes, with the 2nd node running the VRay DR spawner, so that both nodes render the same image. I can then use my workstation for other production tasks.

With Backburner, the set-up described above works fine (most of the time), but with Deadline the only way it works is if you use “Workstation mode” when submitting the job, which needs a full/workstation license of 3ds max on the node/slave you’re sending the DR job to. Unfortunately, I only have the one license of max and that’s on my Workstation, which defeats the object of sending a DR job to a slave so that I can work on something else. If you don’t tick “Workstation mode”, the slave renders alone, without DR kicking in. I’ve tried it with Deadline Slave running on the 2nd DR node and with VRay Spawner running without Deadline Slave.

Anyone found a way to do this?

I have seen this post below and the related post on the Chaos Group forum, but it doesn’t help, as davexl ended up using the workstation mode:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13004&p=58148#p58148

forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread … t=deadline

I have also posted this on the Chaos Group forum. I’m running max 2015 and VRay 2.50.01

Thanks.

#2

Hi,
One way to get around this issue, is to submit the off-load DBR job via our “3dsCmd” plugin instead of using our “3dsMax” plugin.
docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … f-load-dbr

docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … on-options

#3

Hi Mike,

Thanks for replying so quickly.

Yes, I’ve read through all the docs about off-load DBR via the “3dsCmd” plugin. Is that done through the Monitor? If it is, I have already tried it and the Slave that picks up the job, renders alone without the other DR node kicking in (I’ve tried running Slave w/o VRay Spawner and also VRay Spawner w/o Slave on the 2nd DR node). Hopefully it’s something I’m doing wrong, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it is yet.

Related to this: Can you assign a job to a specific node/slave, as you can with Backburner?

Cheers,

Andrew.

#4

No problem Andrew.

You shouldn’t be running V-Ray Spawner either manually or via its service as this will cause Deadline to fail to work correctly. The 3dsMax/3dsCmd plugin when executing on the slaves, will run the V-RaySpawner as a managed process, which Deadline controls. This allows us to shut it down, cleanup nicely in the case of a crash, etc. Our docs attempt to provide a tips’n’tricks / do’s & don’ts, when it comes to V-Ray DBR setup here. I always recommend getting everything up and running outside of Deadline just the way you want it and then slip Deadline in at the end and verify all is well.
docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … f-load-dbr

Does V-Ray Spawner startup on the 2nd and subsequent slaves during the job? Does V-Ray Spawner run independently on this 2nd machine ok? If not, it could well be a firewall client block or indeed, this machine needs to ‘network render’ at least 1 frame at some point, before attempting V-Ray DBR. (Weird reason, which is V-Ray related as I understand it and it’s mentioned in our docs).

This docs page is super useful as a ‘checklist’ that you have everything configured correctly for Deadline to run smoothly, incl. Firewall considerations:
docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … tions.html

I would just add this important page as well, as we are talking about 3dsMax & V-Ray:
docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … iderations

So, if V-Ray Spawner isn’t picking up the job when you run the off-load DBR job, even though “task 0” is running fine on the MASTER machine, then could you provide both the job log reports form the Deadline job AND also the VRayLog.txt from the machines as this should explain why this V-Ray Spawner isn’t picking up. Make sure in 3dsMax before submitting the job, you increase the level of VRay logging verbosity if required, so we get plenty of logging. Chances are, the message will mean something logical to you, such as…“V-Ray blocked due to…X”.
VRay Logs are typically stored in: “%temp%\VRayLog.txt” on your system.

Let us know how it goes!

re: running a job on a specific slave.

Yep, couple of ways, all providing slightly different but useful functionality. Depending on the monitor/in-app submitter, they all have various means to declare these settings as well.

  1. Whitelist/Blacklist
    docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … hine-limit
    docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … ine-limits

  2. MachineLimit
    docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … ine-limits

  3. Limits
    docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … tml#limits

Of course, I’ve not included our usual job scheduling settings such as pools, groups, etc which could also be used here.

#5

Wow, thanks again Mike - very comprehensive response!

Having looked through the docs to try and sort this out over the weekend, I gathered that I shouldn’t be running VRay Spawner either manually or as a service on the DR nodes, but thought it was worth a try to see if it got round the problem - clearly it doesn’t.

V-Ray Spawner doesn’t kick in on the 2nd or subsequent slaves during the job unfortunately, but it does run independently on this 2nd machine without any problems, as I’ve been using this method of DR through Backburner for ages. So I guess that suggests it’s not a Firewall block?

I will have another play around with it over the next few days and send you logs as requested to see if we can get to the bottom of it.

Thanks also for the tips on how to submit a job to a specific slave.

Cheers,

Andrew.

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