Post Processing Management in Deadline (Mar 08, 2018)

Version: Deadline 10 and later

INTRODUCTION

For many of the content creation applications that Deadline supports, there is a built-in workflow for performing post-processing on the rendered images and uploading content to different project management services. One example of where this workflow is useful is for automatically creating videos from rendered images and uploading them to review the renders.

For this blog entry, we will take a brief look at how this workflow would look using Maya and Shotgun. In this example, we will submit a render job from Maya, and when the render is complete, a secondary job will create a simple video and upload both a thumbnail and the video to Shotgun.

Note that behind the scenes, Deadline uses Draft to perform post-processing on the rendered images. For the purposes of this example, we won’t be diving into Draft, but see here and here for additional information.

INITIAL SETUP

Before we can walk through this example, we’re going to make the following assumptions:

• You have Maya installed on both the submitting and rendering machines.
• The integrated submitter for Maya has been installed on the submitting machine.
• You or your company have a Shotgun account set up, with at least one project, and a task that is assigned to you.
• Both the Shotgun and Draft event plugins have been enabled and configured within Deadline.

Providing that the necessary setup is in place, you are now able to submit a render job!

JOB SETUP AND SUBMISSION

To start the job submission process, open up Maya and load the scene that you want to render. When you are ready to submit your scene, open up the submitter and look for the Pipeline Tools button next to Submit Job.

Pressing this button will open up a new window that will normally have 2 tabs. If you don’t see 2 tabs, please ensure that the Draft and Shotgun event plugins are enabled (see the Initial Setup section above). For this example, we will only be using the Project Management tab, so please switch to it.

The first thing to check is that Shotgun is selected for Project Management. If the Shotgun event plugin is the only project management event plugin that’s enabled, it should be selected by default.

Next, you need to enable the option to have Deadline create a new version. This will allow you to connect to Shotgun and retrieve the tasks assigned to you. If you opened the scene through the Shotgun Toolkit, or you have previously submitted a job to Shotgun, then Deadline will automatically connect for you.

Now that you have the list of tasks, you can choose the one that the current scene is for. Next, enter the name of the version and any comments you want included in this version. Finally, change the Upload Movie option to Simple, which will have Draft create a low resolution video automatically after the render has completed, and upload it to Shotgun!

To move on with the job submission process, press the OK button in the Pipeline Tools window, and then press the Submit Job button in the Maya submitter.

If you would like to have more control over the video that is created and uploaded, you can change the Upload Movie option to Draft and set up a Draft job on the Draft Tab. Additional information for setting up Draft Jobs can be found in the Draft Documentation.

VIEWING THE MOVIE IN SHOTGUN

After the render job finishes, a Draft job will be submitted automatically, and will be included in the same Job Batch as the original job. This Draft job is responsible for creating the video and uploading it to Shotgun. You will be able to view both jobs in the Deadline Monitor.

After the Draft job completes, you can open the Shotgun Web Application, and navigate to the asset or shot that you are working on. From here, you can view the movie by clicking on the thumbnail that was uploaded, or by selecting the associated version and selecting the Uploaded Movie.

CONCLUSION

That’s all there is to using this workflow with Maya and Shotgun. Now you should be able to hit the ground running with automatically uploading your renders.

Note that this workflow is also supported for ftrack and NIM, and you can check out the available options in the Event Plugins section of the documentation. To find out which content creation applications this workflow is supported for, check out the Supported Software documentation.

If you have any questions about this workflow, or more complex post processing workflows, please contact our Support Team!

Maya is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries.

Shotgun Software is a registered trademark of Shotgun Software Inc. in the USA and/or other countries.

ftrack is a registered trademark of ftrack AB in the USA and/or other countries.

NIM is a trademark of NIM Labs LLC.