Frantic Deadline

[aphex79]

Anyone using this? The new version 2.6 can force 32 bits or 64 bits if you have mixture on your farm. Does this mean you can use a 64bits workstation , and render with 32bits rendernodes? Anyone think Autodesk will fix this problem on backburner?

[suurland]

yes, it should be able to send jobs from 64bit workstation to 32bit slaves.

I think autodesk can fix this, but I'm not sure they will. Atleast they had plenty of time to do it.

/Thomas

[dimo]

Hi,

what I understood is that it's best to install both 32 and 64 bit Version on your 64 bit slaves. The backburner will dispatch the job to the fitting programm then. If you sent the job from a 32 bit max the slave will render in 32 bit mode. I think this is ok behaviour. Mixing 32 bit and 64 bit in one sequence isn't a good idea anyway.
Haven't tested this yet, though.

Best regards,

Dieter

[aphex79]

suurland: hmm.. ok.. maybe we'll download and test the trial version..
dimo:we only have 32bits slaves.. but want to upgrade our workstations

[jreynolds]

aphex79:

The latest update to Deadline will definitely handle hybrid farms as well as sending from either 32 or 64-bit workstations. This may be obvious but there are two limitations in cross platform network configurations though you should only have to consider the first one with the setup you have described.

*If you make a really huge scene that works fine on a 64-bit workstation you may find memory limitations on your 32-bit slaves.

*A mixture of 32/ 64 slaves could potentially give slightly different results because of known differences in compilers used for the two styles of V-Ray.

Hope you like Deadline and all of it's extras. We refine it almost every single day from Artist/ TD perspectives and I find it to be very solid work some really smart RnD guys

If you didn't know, we also have a forum setup for software support:

http://support.franticfilms.com/wb/d...antic&action=0

Best regards,
--Jon

[aphex79]

Thanks for the reply! we'll definite look into it.. have you got any info on the Flood: surf? any release/beta?

[jreynolds]

Thanks for the interest

There is some very positive development happening with Flood: surf at the moment and we are working toward a beta release though no solid dates can be considered yet.

Best regards,
--Jon

[joconnell]

Just curious - how is deadline for XSI? we're looking at it inside here since batchserve isn't being developed any more and it'd be handy not to have to switch between render apps all the time.

[aphex79]

good news

[jreynolds]

how is deadline for XSI?

In terms of submition scripts from within the 3D software...
Definitely the most developed submitter is for Max because that is our base inhouse software of choice. So the XSI submitter won't have as many option requests from internal artists and TDs but we do incorporate external user requests as they come to us and actually like to keep a direct line of communication with any studio that has an active developer. These scripts are also provided open to the end user so they can be molded into what you need for your pipeline. Though, they will get overwritten with any Deadline update so your customizations should be backed up in your own way.

From Deadlines core plungins standpoint...
With Max we are hooking directly in to the Max API due to some previous limitations found with the command line submition process this method allows us much more flexibility. I believe that any other 2D/ 3D software supported by Deadline uses a command line submition process primarily because they all seem to have a nice set of switches that we can control.

I do know that the XSI submitter has recently been given support for Softimages' flavor of Render Elements based on an external users communication. From Ryans', our primary Deadline developer, POV all the supported software is equal and can be given due support for it's user base. From my POV... one of the driving forces behind some of the great tools in the Max submitter is because of Master Bobo and his quick hand at scripting and friendly response to ideas that we come up with sitting here using Deadline day-to-day

Here is an up-to-date graphical look at the overall support of software in deadline.
http://software.franticfilms.com/ind...dline/plug-ins

BTW, Pulse is a really nice new addition that we've spent some time developing and have seen a dramatic increase in monitor response with hundreds of queued/ active jobs and hundreds of other archived/ completed jobs in the monitor.
http://software.franticfilms.com/ind...deadline/pulse

Best regards,
--Jon

[joconnell]

Yeah one thing that the XSI guys really liked about batchserve was that it's really easy to see how jobs are doing at a glance because of it's graphs at each level - A lot of the render manager apps are heavily text based in terms of their feedback and very noisy. Admittedly this is really handy when you have full time render wranglers or tds but for smaller shops the simplicity is an advantage (hence my max over soft preference in most cases)

[jreynolds]

I have to admit, I didn't know what batchserve was till a couple minutes ago. Now that I've located it on the XSI wiki I see that the specific features you are referring to are similar to a tool we have in Deadline currently called Job Monitor. It is a standalone application that you can drag-n-drop jobs form the monitor into a small window which will give you a single row per-job with just the job name and a multiple info progress bar. If you hover over the job name to get more detailed info and if you hover over the progress bar it will display updated, more detailed info about the progress. The cool thing is that you can close the monitor completely and leave this little app open and even set it to always on top.

http://software.franticfilms.com/ind...ine/jobmonitor

[RErender]

Has anyone tried mixing frames from V-Ray 64 and 32? I remember back to the days when people preached that there would be diffences between frames rendered on AMD's and Intels because of the floating point differences, where in reallity any difference was imperceptable.

[studioDIM]

Some differences are to be expected since the compiler generates different code for 32- and 64-bit platforms. The result is very similar, but some details may be different - e.g. the generated (quasi) random numbers will be slightly different in general, resulting in different noise patterns.

Best regards,
Vlado

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...asc&highlight=

Something does happen, aye.

Lele

[RErender]

Those renders are not a very good example, IMO. At those low settings and amount of noise you can render an image 3 times in the same session of max and get that much variance in the noise. I wonder how much difference whenthe noise is reduced from the equation via Higher settings, saved maps, etc. Not on Max 9 here yet so I can't test it myself.