Issues with vrayDeadline and AOV from latest official release - Vray for Houdini

[walter_matheosjr]

Hi!

We updated our vray for houdini to the latest official release and noticed two issues:

First, the vrayDeadline node isnt working as expected, it cant submit our files to deadline, we figure out that the file "C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\Houdini 18.5.499\vfh_home\scripts\python\vfh\vfh_deadline. py" is not working, we tested with a old build (13036) and we can submit using this old version, can you guys check it?

Second, inside the vrayDeadline node we noticed that a ${AOV} var is appended to our file path, when we finish the render that var is empty and making the output name like nameFile..jpg notice the missing name better the first and second period. so, what this ${AOV} var is supposed to do or we need to set it in some way?

Thanks!

[bdancer]

> we figure out that the file "C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\Houdini 18.5.499\vfh_home\scripts\python\vfh\vfh_deadline. py" is not working

By not working you mean there are some error printed?
I've just submitted some job - seems to work for me...

> so, what this ${AOV} var is supposed to do

${AOV} is used when saving render elements into separate files, it'll be expanded with the render element name.

[raphael_sposato]

Hi bdancer, thanks for the answer!

I was having trouble posting through my account, so i used Walter's to ask these questions. I will answer your questions here from now on.

> By not working, do you mean there is an error printed?

Not necessarily. It looks like with the "original" file, it doesn't find our deadline settings. For example, when we try to open the list of machines from renderfarm, nothing happens. It is as if the script cannot run deadlinecommand.exe to open the menu. Our pool and groups are also not found.

> ${AOV} is used when saving render elements in separate files, it will be expanded with render element name.

Okay, that's exactly what we expect, but files are saved ignoring this variable. We don't know if this is a problem with the vray itself or some misconfiguration on our part.

A dumb question: Is it recommended to delete the previous version of vray before installing the new one or is it okay to just do a fresh install over the top?

Thanks!

[dougWilkinson]

we are having the same issue about the vray deadline node not functioning correctly. won't show the groups/pools/etc. But even worse it won't allow us to submit to deadline.
we use the Zip installation and we use environment variables only. we don't use the new .json package system. Maybe we have this aspect in common?

[ronald_a]

Is there any particular reason why you don‘t use the submitter that comes with deadline?

[dougWilkinson]

yes the vray one has more control over the way the deadline tasks can be setup, allowing different frames-per-task settings for the vrscene export and the standalone rendering.
i believe there were some other minor things that artists preferred but these are not dealbreakers.

mostly I'm concerned that the node does nothing at all, and makes me think that the zip install instructions might be missing something.

[raphael_sposato]

Hi bdancer

We are trying ways to solve it, but we still can't use this new update due to this problem with vray for deadline. Do you have any news or any idea what we can do?

Thanks.

[Dubbie99]

We are also having trouble, but seeing our output exrs all going to frame 0001
If you look at the deadline job properties, there seems to be a parameter override that sets the file output to path/name.0001.exr
If I delete that, the job renders fine except frames 1-9 are missing padding.

[rickramirez]

Curious if there has been any movement on this. We are trying to test Houdini VRay on our farm but having similar issues with the VRay Deadline node. I can see pools and groups but I cannot access the machine list or limits and pressing the Submit to Deadline button does nothing.

EDIT: We think the pools and groups are populated because of a regular Deadline ROP.

Running Houdini 18.5.596



V-Ray for Houdini hash:fb365cd from 16 Jun 2021 11:44
V-Ray Core 5.10.20 [5322b47e] from 4 Jun 2021

[dougWilkinson]

Curious if there has been any movement on this. We are trying to test Houdini VRay on our farm but having similar issues with the VRay Deadline node. I can see pools and groups but I cannot access the machine list or limits and pressing the Submit to Deadline button does nothing.

EDIT: We think the pools and groups are populated because of a regular Deadline ROP.

heya rickramirez did you by any chance get to the bottom of this vray deadline node issue?

[rickramirez]

heya rickramirez did you by any chance get to the bottom of this vray deadline node issue?

We have not. We were not able to look into it for a while but as we're moving things over to H19, I was hoping to get this working. Was hoping to find an answer here in the forums but only found this old post so far.

Does anyone know if there is a doc somewhere that explains how to get VRay in Houdini to talk to Deadline?

[dougWilkinson]

we found there is some code in

vfh_deadline.py

that is causing the vray connection with deadline to fail, but they were never visible because the logging doesn't output anywhere we could find.
we had to redirect the logging, and then it was possible to see that there is a command being called in the python 2 version of this file that is only compatible with python 3

thats my understanding. we still have to test this patch from our TD and then we will submit it to choas. hopefully they can fix this.

there's a chance that moving to houdini 18.5 with python 3 will "just work". i'm guessing this is the case or it would have been caught already. If you can try switching your houdini to python 3 it might solve the issue...

good luck