ChaosGroup’s Phoenix Fluid simulator by default stores its simulation cache relative to the max file. But when you submit a Max file it copies it to the repository. So when the file loads it looks in the repo for the sim files and of course they’re not there.

I’m imagining this is just one example of a whole class of relative path bugs related to copying the max file on submission. Is there a good consistent way to avoid this automatically while still submitting max files to the repo?

It will require special handling. The default $(scene_dir) token creates a subfolder with quite a fancy name, and we have no good way of handling that right now, as only files can be sent to the job folder, not whole sub-folders (and I assume you only send the MAX file to the Job folder, not all external references).
We could copy the AUR files into the Job folder and use customize.ms to repath the relevant Phoenix objects to look there instead, but I am not sure how good that solution really is.

Of course a workaround would be to always use network resources when you expect the Phoenix to go to Deadline. In fact, I recently rewrote the Phoenix FD Deadline submitter to replace any local paths with a network path because a customer complained about the same thing. Curiously, the Backburner submitter that comes with Phoenix already had the same type of “Simulation Cache Output Directory Override:”.

Can you outline in more detail your exact workflow? Do you simulate locally but render on Deadline? Or do you simulate on Deadline and render on Deadline? How would you expect the AUR files to travel with the job - do you envision them going to the Job folder together with the MAX file? Or to an alternative network folder, similar to how we can copy the MAX file to any network path instead of using the Repisitory?

Please provide some sort of spec so we can discuss what could be done about it…