The latest version of Frantic Films’ render farm management system includes many improvements, bug fixes and fully supports 32bit and 64bit builds of Max 9.
Other than Backburner, Deadline allows the user to submit Max 9 jobs from a
64bit workstation to 32bit slaves, from a 32bit workstation to 64bit slaves
and even from any Max 9 build to a mixed network of 32bit and 64 bit slaves
(of course, at your own risk as rendered frames could differ if rendered on
mixed builds). It is your network, you decide.
The 3DS Max submitter has also been vastly improved, adding among other things:
*Support for automatic Quicktime generation from rendered frames using either
Apple’s Quicktime 7 or Eyeon Fusion (version 4 or 5),
*Direct setup of Machine Limits using Named Slave Selection Sets for instant
black or whitelisting of predefined slave groups,
*Automatic Render Element paths updating based on the current output path,
*Improved Job Dependency controls featuring various filters for fast search
through hundreds of jobs,
*Support for faster Distributed Tiles submission directly from the local workstation
(previously available only via a master job which used up an additional Max
license)
and lots more.
You can read details on the 3ds Max submitter features here:
http://software.franticfilms.com/content/support/deadline/plugins/3dsmax/submission2/content.html
To download Deadline 2.6 and for a list of bugfixes since 2.5, go to
http://software.franticfilms.com/releases.aspx?page=deadline/releases
NOTE: Deadline will run in FREE MODE with up to 2 render nodes without any feature
limitations.
‘fully supports 32bit and 64bit buikds of Max 9″
– which is more than you can say for Backburner 2007 (Shakes fist)
– Steve
Steve,
Funny historical fact – Backburner is the main reason for the existence of Deadline!
Back in 2002-2003, Frantic Films tried to use Backburner in production… The next logical step was to develop an in-house solution that does what it is supposed to. The main drawback of Deadline is the price, but you get what you pay for. (For home use with up to 2 render nodes, you get a free mode)
Hi Bobo,
to be honest, this is the first real problem I’ve had with BB, but I’ve only been running 5 machines at most.
Deadline does look great though, especially if you’re running multiple applications.
Cheers
Steve
Yep, for small farms, BB has always been a good idea (free, unlimited, bundled with Max).
With 200+ machines and hundreds of jobs on the queue, it would need a human to babysit and restart every couple of hours when it hangs. (at least it was necessary in the past).
We have found that the only way to take down Deadline is to physically damage the network ;o) The few known cases in the last 3 years when Frantic’s farm had stopped rendering were always caused by defective hardware.
Deadline is very similar to the original design of ARPANET – the military wanted a network that would still function even if 90% of it were destroyed physically by a nuclear strike. Deadline does not have a centralized manager application but relies on smart slaves to make the decisions. As long as the Repository contains job description files, even if 99 of 100 slaves have crashed, the last one would still pick up jobs and keep on working…
My personal slogan for Deadline is “To crash the software, place C4 on the hardware”.
And I don’t even work for the Marketing dept :o)
The trick is getting the repository to be fast and reliable/redundant. But you’d have those same problems with BB.
BB excels, however, if you DO want to babysit. If you are used to manually operating your farm, Deadline can be a little bit frustrating.