AWS Thinkbox Discussion Forums

Render Properties in 3ds Max 8 Jobs

I thought it was worth mentioning that the new version of the Submit Max To Deadline script (SMTD 2.0) we ship with Deadline 2.5 now supports most parameters of Scanline, mental ray, Brazil and V-Ray in 3ds Max 8.



When you submit a job using SMTD 2.0, all properties of the current renderer will be written to the Job Info file. (this also means that you can always take a look into the file if you want to know what settings the job had…)



In the [3dsmax8] tab of the Job Properties dialog, you will see the general settings like render size, camera etc. first, then a long list of renderer-specific settings.

Now you can change all these settings inside of Deadline instead of resubmitting each time you forgot to tweak a parameter!



The settings will be read from the Job Info file and enforced upon the scene by the file “customize.ms” located in the Repository\plugins\3dsmax8 directory.

The file “3dsmax8RenderOptions.param” in the same folder contains the UI definitions of all controls of all supported renderers.

(Modify these at your own risk!)

When the customize.ms is run before rendering a task, the settings enforced by it will also be printed to the console, so you will be able to see what settings are being used to render the current frame by reading the Log file.



If, for example, you submitted a job with Motion Blur or GI turned off but you wanted it to be on, instead of fixing the scene in Max and then submitting again, you can just suspend the job, check the corresponding checkbox or tweak a numeric parameter, close the properties dialog and resume (or requeue to rerender frames that might have been rendered with the old settings)





Click on the thumbnails to see the whole property dialogs:









We found this to be a great time saver and we hope it will speed up your workflow, too.





Cheers,



Borislav “Bobo” Petrov

Technical Director 3D VFX

Frantic Films Winnipeg

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