Feature Set

Rock-steady Operation

Deadline’s unique architecture removes the need for a centralized manager application by using a highly-scalable database and basic file sharing to manage the farm. As long as your Database and File Server are running, Deadline is running.

Intuitive User Interface

Built with your creativity in mind, Deadline’s User Interface has evolved in response to extensive feedback from artists. The flexible and intuitive interface provides a unified experience to artists and administrators across all platforms.

For job submission, Deadline offers integrated submission scripts for 3ds Max, After Effects, AutoCAD, Blender, Cinema 4D, Clarisse iFX, Clarisse BUiLDER, Composite, Fusion, Generation, Guerilla, Hiero, Houdini, Lightwave, Maya, Messiah, MicroStation, Mocha Pro, modo, Nuke, RealFlow, Rhino, SketchUp 3D, Softimage, VRED and Vue, providing a comfortable native environment for cross-application tasks.

Supported Software

Deadline supports over 80 different rendering packages out of the box. See the Supported Software page in the Deadline documentation for more information.

Customizable and Scriptable

With its Python based Plugin API, studios can customize the out of the box plugins and scripts to suit their individual pipelines, or create custom plugins to support in-house applications. Event plugins can be created to trigger events like updating pipeline tools when jobs are submitted or finish rendering. Finally, job scripts can be created to setup custom dependencies, as well as perform operations when a job starts, when a job finishes, and before and after each task is rendered.

Flexible Job Scheduling

Use numeric job priorities, machine groups and pools, and job-specific machine lists to explicitly control distribution of rendering resources among multiple departments. Limits allow you to handle both limited license plugins and render packages, while job, asset, and script based dependencies allow you to control when your jobs will begin rendering. Stick with the default First-in, First-out scheduling logic, or switch to a Balanced or Weighted system.

Launch and configure an arbitrary number of Workers on a single machine. Each Worker instance can be given a unique name, and can be assigned its own list of pools and groups, which allows Workers to work on separate jobs. A single high performance machine can process multiple 3D, compositing, and simulation jobs simultaneously.

Note

Starting with Deadline 10.1.23, Deadline and its components do not require a license. For older versions, multiple Workers running on the same machine will share a single Deadline license.

Notifications

Deadline can be configured to notify users of job completion or failure through an automatic e-mail notification or a popup message on the users’ machine.

Administrators can also configure Deadline to notify them with information about Power Management, stalled Workers, licensing issues, and other issues that may arise on the farm.

Statistics Gathering

Deadline automatically stores job and render farm statistics in the Database. Statistics can be viewed from the Monitor, or retrieved from the Database by custom pipeline tools.

Shotgun and ftrack Integration

Deadline integrates with Shotgun to enable a seamless render and review data flow. When a render job is submitted, a version is automatically created in Shotgun with key metadata. When the render is complete, Shotgun is updated with a thumbnail image, paths to frames, render stats, and playback links. Deadline can also automatically upload a movie and/or a filmstrip when the render is complete. Shotgun then dispatches targeted notifications with links back to the work. Studios can view versions in various contexts, create reports, and organize work into playlists for review sessions where they can quickly take notes with the Shotgun Note App.

The Deadline/FTrack integration enables a seamless render and review data flow. When Deadline starts a render, an Asset Version is automatically created within FTrack using key metadata. When the render is complete, Deadline automatically updates the created Version appropriately – a thumbnail image is uploaded, components are created from the Job’s output paths (taking advantage of FTrack’s location plugins), and the Version is flagged for Review. In doing so, Deadline provides a seamless transition from Job Submission to Review process, without artists needing to monitor their renders.

Draft

Draft is a tool that provides simple compositing functionality. It is implemented as a Python library, which exposes functionality for use in python scripts. Draft is designed to be tightly integrated with Deadline, but it can also be used as a standalone tool.

Using the Draft event plugin for Deadline, artists can automatically perform simple compositing operations on rendered frames after a render job finishes. They can also convert them to a different image format, or generate Quicktimes for dailies.

Note

Starting with Deadline 10.1.23, Draft and Quick Draft do not require a license. The ONLY exception is that a Draft Pro license (FEATURE draft-pro-codec) is required if you are encoding to the 3rd party Avid DNxHD codec.

Jigsaw and Tile Rendering

Jigsaw is available for 3ds Max, Houdini, Maya, modo and Rhino, and can be used to split up large frames into arbitrary sized tiles and distribute them over your render farm. When the tiles are finished rendering, they are automatically assembled into the final image using Draft. Specific tiles can be re-rendered and automatically composited on top of the original image.

Note

Starting with Deadline 10.1.23, Draft Tile Assember does not require a license.

Regular tile rendering, which supports fixed tile sizes only, is still supported as well, and is available for 3ds Max, Cinema4D, Houdini, Maya, modo, Rhino, Softimage, Terragen and VRED.

Easy Installation and Upgrade Deployment

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. In addition, Deadline has the ability to Auto-Upgrade the whole render farm from a centralized deployment - an incredible time-saver for large render farms.

Auto Configuration allows studios to efficiently increase the size of their farm by removing the need to configure each new Worker individually. The Repository Path, License Server, and additional settings can be configured in a single location, and broadcast to the Workers when they start up.

Worker Scheduling and Idle Detection

Start and stop the Worker based on the time of day to allow workstations to join the render farm overnight. Alternatively, start the Worker if the machine has been idle for a certain amount of time, and stop it when the machine is in use again.

Other criteria like CPU usage, memory usage, and running processes can also be checked before starting the Worker. Displays a warning message before starting the Worker, allowing an artist to choose to delay when the Worker starts if they are still using the machine.

Local Worker Controls

Artists can monitor and control the Worker application running on their workstation, which is useful if the Worker is running as a service. Override the Idle Detection settings for your Worker, or change the Worker’s Job Dequeuing Mode to control if the Worker should render all jobs, jobs submitted from the artist’s machine, or jobs submitted by specific users.

Remote Control and Farm Administration

Stream the log from a Worker in real time, or start, stop, and restart Worker instances (as well as the remote machine on which it is running) remotely from within the Monitor. In addition, execute arbitrary command lines (applications, command line operations or batch files) on a single or group of remote machines to rollout software or install updates.

In addition, Deadline integrates seamlessly with VNC, Remote Desktop Connection, Apple Remote Desktop, and Radmin using custom scripts. These scripts can be modified or new scripts can be created to support other remote access software.

Secrets Management

Access to secrets (passwords and API keys) stored in the database is controlled through the Deadline Secrets Management feature. This allows you to configure which machines have access to secrets, as well as denote server machines that are allowed to process secrets.

Reduced Energy Footprint

Save on energy consumption, power and cooling costs with Power Management, a feature that shuts down idle machines and starts them back up when needed. This feature is available for render farms with machines that support WakeOnLan or IPMI. Addtionally, restart your machines on a regular basis via Machine Restart and the Thermal Shutdown system polls temperature sensors and responds by shutting down machines if the temperature gets temporarily too high in your server room.