Software Info

DEADLINE NETWORK RENDERING SOFTWARE

The hassle-free administration and rendering toolkit for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux-based render farms used on projects like Avatar.

Deadline® offers a world of flexibility and a wide-range of management options for render farms of all sizes. Experience the depth of features that sets Deadline apart from other render management products:

• Rock-steady operation: Deadline´s unique architecture removes the need for a centralized manager application by using File Sharing to manage the farm. As long as your server machine is running, Deadline® is running.

• Intuitive user interface: Built with your creativity in mind, Deadline´s UI has evolved in response to extensive feedback from artists. Instead of web pages, mysterious elite terminology or strange multi-platform UI widgets, there is a single, integrated Monitor UI.

• Cross-industry rendering support: Deadline® supports a wide range of rendering packages – and includes unique, custom-written interfaces for 3ds Max, After Effects, Blender, Cinema 4D, Fusion, Generation, Houdini, Lightwave, Maya, Modo, Nuke, RealFlow, Softimage (XSI), and Toxik for enhanced efficiency and configuration.

• Flexible job scheduling: Numeric job priorities, machine groups and pools, named limit groups, and job-specific machine blacklists/whitelists allow you to handle both limited license plug-ins and render packages. Deadline® provides the capability to explicitly control distribution of rendering resources among multiple departments.

• Secure administration and auditing: Administration features are optionally password protected and all modifications to jobs, tasks and slaves are both logged and easily traceable. Remote administration tools – such as the ability to start/stop/restart both the Slave application and the machines – are built right into the UI.

• Remote error reporting: Reduce downtimes – and speed up problem solving – with optional remote error reporting. Render errors and general application problems get reported directly to Prime Focus Software – putting our team on your field.

• QuickTime support: Install QuickTime (7.04 or later) on your Windows or Mac OSX slaves to create QuickTime movies from your own rendered frames. As an alternative, Deadline® also allows users to create QuickTime movies with Fusion.

• Tile rendering: Split up large frames into smaller pieces and distribute them over your render farm. Deadline® creates a separate job for each tile – allowing for single frames and frame sequences to be tile rendered. Available for 3ds Max, Maya, Modo, Rendition, and Softimage (XSI).

• Job monitoring: Drag and drop jobs from the Monitor UI into Deadline´s job monitoring tool for automatic progress updates. Track the progress of a few specific jobs without having to refresh the Monitor UI.

• Cost effectiveness: Deadline® is available free-of-charge for start-up render farms of two nodes or less. Affordable pricing is available for small, medium and large render farms.

• Reduced energy footprint: Deadline® provides a green-friendly solution of reduced energy consumption with Deadline´s Power Management feature that shuts down idle machines saving power and cooling costs. This feature is available for render farms with machines that support WakeOnLan.

Deadline® offers a world of flexibility and a wide-range of management options for render farms of all sizes.

FEATURE SET

Installation and Upgrade Deployment:

• • Optimized Install Procedure: Deadline® has gone through rigorous analysis to make the installation and configuration process smooth and efficient. A detailed document provides easy, step-by-step instructions explaining the various components that will be installed.

  • Centralized Deployment of Upgrades: Deadline´s software has the ability to auto-upgrade the whole render farm from a centralized deployment–an incredible time-saver for large render farms.

Remote Control and Farm Administration:

• • Remote Control: Start, stop and restart Deadline® slave remote instances–as well as the remote machine on which it is running–from within Deadline® Monitor and Deadline® Configuration.

  • Remote Command Execution: Execute arbitrary command lines (i.e. applications, command line operations or batch files) on a single or group of remote machines.

  • Simplified Remote Desktop Access: Deadline® integrates seamlessly with VNC, Remote Administrator, Remote Desktop Connection and Apple Remote Desktop to provide effortless remote access to desktops across the render farm.

  • Slave Statistic Reporting: Deadline® Monitor displays many vital statistics for Deadline® networked machines: up-time, free disk space, available memory, CPU count, CPU speed, installed OS and service packs, IP address and more.

Plug-ins & 3rd Party Tools

• • Wide Support For Rendering Packages (see below).

  • Script SDK: Deadline® includes a Python script-based plug-in SDK, allowing users to create custom plug-ins.

Job Scheduling

• • Groups: Jobs can be submitted to specific groups of slaves.

  • Prioritized Pools: Jobs can be submitted to prioritized pools, each slave is configured with a list of pools sorted in order of priority.

  • Numeric Priorities: Within its pool, each job is assigned a numeric value between 0 and 100 to represent its priority in the queue.

  • Job and Plug-in Limit Groups: Jobs can be assigned limits to constrain the number of tasks that can be concurrently processed, or to control the amount of renderers with floating licenses.

  • Rescheduling Jobs: All pool, priority and limit group settings can be changed later using Deadline® Monitor.

  • Custom Scheduling: Customize scheduling to suit your pipeline–or use default scheduling based on pool, priority and submission time.

Network Rendering Made Easy

• • Integrated Submission Dialogs: Deadline® offers integrated submission dialogs for 3ds Max, After Effects, Blender, Cinema 4D, Fusion, Generation, Houdini, Lightwave, Maya, Modo, Nuke, RealFlow, Softimage (XSI), and Toxik, providing a comfortable native environment for cross-application tasks.

  • Render Completion Notification: Receive notice of job completion through either an automatic instant message notification or an e-mail notification to any number of watching users.

Access Control and Auditing

• • Access Control: While full access is granted for all users to modify their own jobs, Deadline´s Access Control System prevents users from inadvertently disrupting other jobs. An optional password protected Super User mode allows for global network administration. Super Users can configure the types of actions available to each user on their jobs–including which individual job properties users can modify after a job as been submitted.

  • Full slave and Job Auditing: Any command that affects a job, slave or task is logged along with the originating user name and machine. This allows everyone, including project managers and supervisors, to track changes and troubleshoot issues with confidence. It also encourages responsibility and cooperation on the part of Deadline® users.

Supported Following Rendering Packages and Many others:

1. 3ds Max (Autodesk)

   1. • Brazil (Splutterfish)

      • finalRender (Cebas Visual Tech.)

      • finalToon (Cebas Visual Tech.)

      • Maxwell (Next Limit)

      • Mental Ray (Mental Images)

      • RenderPipe (ARTVPS)

      • VRay (Chaos Group)

2. After Effects (Adobe)

3. Maya (Autodesk)

   1. • 3Delight (dna research)

      • finalRender (Cebas Visual Tech)

      • Gelato (NVIDIA)

      • Maxwell (Next Limit)

      • mayaSoftware

      • mayaHardware

      • mayaVector

      • Mental Ray (Mental Images)

      • Renderman (Pixar)

      • Turtle (Illuminate Labs)

      • VRay (Chaos Group)