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Cinema4D R18, takes and multi-pass missing frames

Hello,

We are having some issues with the Takes system in C4D R18, along the multi-passes output.

Apparently, when a machine loads the scene for the first time, it will skip writing to network the rendered frames of the multi-passes. It works fine with the Regular Image pass though. So let’s say I render some takes ranging 0-299 in 10 frames per Task on a 5 rendernode group, I will end up with 300 Regular Frames, but only 250 multi-pass frames (per pass).

As far as I can see, there is no error or no indication in the logs that this is actually happening. The frames are just missing

This behavior only seems to happen when using the Cinema 4D Takes system so far.

I’m still trying to figure out all the variables, but if anyone have a clue on this issue, I’d be very grateful.

Thxs

Which frames are missing? Is it some from the beginning, end, random?

I’ve seen a fun issue when using different frame rates where Cinema4D will round down every X frames and basically save over the last frame in a task. You can usually tell it’s doing that because the last frame in a set will inexplicably have jumped ahead in the animation (and file write time). For you it would be frames 9, 19, 29, and so on that you’d want to scrutinize. The math doesn’t quite work out with my theory (it would only be 30 missing frames), but it’s the most reliable and fixable cause of missing frames I’ve seen.

Would you be able to share a test scene? I’m barely a C4D novice, so it would help a lot if I had something to play with over here.

Hey eamsler,

I know what situation you are refering to (the different frame rate issue), we had this with R16 - Deadline 8 combo, but it’s not the problem here.

I actually figured out what is happening, but I don’t know why exactly. Here’s the Take setup window in Cinema4D:
C4D_takes.JPG

On the left, you can select which take is actually active in viewport so you can make modifications (green). Then you can setup a different Camera (blue) and a different Render Settings (red) for each take. You can also check which Takes you would like to be marked active (purple).

Now let’s say you submit the scene to Deadline, specifying to render the marked takes, each nodes that pick up the Job for the 1st time will actually render with the render setting from the take that is in focus when you submitted the project, no matter what take it is actually suppose to render. It will do so only for the 1st task it renders of that job, then for the 2nd task, it will render the with right settings.

That is why I was missing frames in the Multi-pass folder. Because the take in focus was using a render setting that didn’t have any multi-pass setup. So when using this setting, it would not save any multi-pass. Then on the 2nd task, it would use the right settings and it would save the Multi-Pass frames properly.

We did a test rendering a Take that was setup for JPEG, but with another Take in focus that was setup to render TIFF, and we end up with a mix of JPEG and TIFF in the folder for a single Job render. Weird stuff.

The obvious workaround is to set the focus on the take you want to render before submitting to Deadline (we tried, it works). The problem is that you can only set the focus on one takes, so if you have several takes using different render settings, you’d need to submit them in group, changing the focus for each submission.

I’m still not sure at what level this can be fixed, Maxon, Thinkbox or both.

Oh man! You just made my week!

We’ve been trying to figure out that TIFF vs JPEG thing for months! I’m sure we can fix this, I’ll add it in the dev system and see what we can do to get it fixed.

Thanks for finding this out! I’ve had a few calls with Maxon support over it and neither side could figure out what was going on.

The dev team patched this. Mind giving the following a test? Just rename it to “Cinema4DBatch.py” and drop it into “[repo]\plugins\Cinema4DBatch”.
Cinema4DBatch.py.txt (46.5 KB)

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