Usage

In order to get you familiar with Draft, many code snippets can be found in the Cookbook. Additionally, Draft sample scripts can be found in the Draft install directory under the Samples folder.

Submitting Draft Jobs To Deadline

There are many ways to submit Draft jobs to Deadline. As always, you can simply submit a Draft job from within the Monitor from the Submit menu. In addition, we’ve also added a right-click job script to the Monitor, which will allow you to submit a Draft job based on an existing job. This will pull over output information from the original job, and fill in Draft parameters automatically where possible.

When submitting jobs to Deadline through many of our submitters, you have the option to have Deadline create a dependent Draft Job once the submitted job has finished rendering. You can either use the Quick Draft settings, which use a general Draft Template script that ships with Deadline, or you can specify a custom Template script.

For more information, consult the Deadline Documentation. Specifically, the section Draft in Application Plugins and Draft / Quick Draft in Event Plugins can be very useful.

Draft Python Library

Draft can be used outside of Deadline (it still requires a draft license). In order to import Draft successfully, you will need to ensure Python knows where to look for the Draft module, either by including its install directory in the PYTHONPATH environment variable, or by appending it to os.sys.path before you do the import. You will also need to set the MAGICK_CONFIGURE_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH) environment variables to point to your install directory; this is so that ImageMagick knows where to find its ‘type.xml’ file. If you are simply planning on using Draft through Deadline, however, you do not need to worry about this at all.

If using Deadline’s Python, ensure you use these paths to instantiate dpython as they ensure the Deadline environment is setup correctly:

  • Windows: C:\Program Files\Thinkbox\DeadlineX\bin\dpython.exe
  • Mac OS X: /Applications/Thinkbox/DeadlineX/Resources/dpython
  • Linux: /opt/Thinkbox/DeadlineX/bin/dpython

where X is the MAJOR version of Deadline.

Setting Environment Variables

All platforms need specific environment variables to be set for Draft Standalone (Python) to successfully import Draft:

  • Windows:

    PYTHONPATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Windows/XXbit
    MAGICK_CONFIGURE_PATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Windows/XXbit
    
    where XX is either 32 or 64.
    
  • Mac OS X:

    PYTHONPATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Mac
    MAGICK_CONFIGURE_PATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Mac
    DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Mac
    
  • Linux:

    PYTHONPATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Linux/64bit
    MAGICK_CONFIGURE_PATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Linux/64bit
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/Draft install directory/Linux/64bit