v7.2 [Oct 5, 2015]
New features include new Quick Draft options to create movies from rendered images or perform file conversions without having to create template scripts. Integration with NIM Labs’ NIM pipeline management tool enables the creation of NIM renders, and automates the uploading of thumbnails and movies to NIM when jobs complete. Enhanced support for SideFX Software’s Houdini introduces Jigsaw region rendering, HServer interactive rendering, and HQueue simulation node slicing.
v6.2 [Jul 3, 2014]
Application Support
- Support has been added for 3ds Max 2015, Anime Studio 10, Clarisse iFX, Composite 2015, DJV, Maya 2015, modo 8xx, SketchUp, Softimage 2015, and VRay's ply2vrmesh tool. Support has also been added for the Redshift renderer for Maya and Softimage. Finally, new integrated submitters have been created for Houdini and modo. Support has also been added for all the Maya Extension versions (2013.5, 2014.5, etc). For example, in previous versions of Deadline, you would either have to render with 2013 or 2013.5 on the farm. Now it's possible to render with both.
Offloading VRay and Mental Ray DBR Jobs for 3ds Max
- This release adds the ability to offload VRay or Mental Ray DBR jobs for 3ds Max to Deadline. You simply enable Distributed Rendering in the render options, then enable the VRay/Mental Ray DBR option in the submitter and choose the number of Slaves to render on. A job is then submitted to Deadline with the number of tasks equal to the number of Slaves you specified. The slave that picks up task 0 will act as the "master", and will coordinate a DBR render with the slaves that pick up the other tasks.
modo Distributed Rendering
- An interface has been created for modo to allow modo Distributed Rendering to work on your Deadline farm. After you have brought up the new interface, you can choose the number of Servers to use for Distirbuted Rendering, and then click Reserve Servers to submit a special job to Deadline that runs modo in server mode. You can then click the Update Servers button to show which Deadline Slaves are running the modo server. When you're happy with your list, press Start Render to render to begin rendering. After you close the interface, the job will automatically be marked as complete so that the Slaves can move on.
Redshift Support and Optional GPU Selection
- Redshift for Softimage was previously supported, but now Redshift for Maya is also supported. In addition, there is now a submission option when using the Redshift render to specify the number of GPUs to use per task. If set to 0 (the default), then Redshift will be responsible to choosing the GPU(s) to use for rendering. This can be used in combination with concurrent tasks to get a distribution over the GPUs.
Additional Cloud Provider Support
- Cloud plugins have been added for OpenStack and Google Cloud.
