Thread by @Fifty_5o

#Thinkbox #Deadline Render Manager in a Nutshell thread...

1. Let's first look at the easy way of setting things up.

Download deadline awsthinkbox.com/deadline

Sign in with your Amazon details and get the installer.

Basic setup -

2. If you want to use multiple machines then things can get a bit more tricky, you need to think about and understand how things are setup

So this is how I did it(can be done in different ways) but I like to keep things as simple as possible.

3. First of all I use a separate drive called Z: this will be shared by all computers on the network. I share all LAN permissions and preferences across my local network.

4. It's up to you how you need to do this but remember the easier it is to access and less secure on the LAN the fewer problems you will run into with Deadline. Let's make life easier and keep things simple if possible.

5. All of the live work, Deadlinedatabase and the DeadlineRepository are installed here. It's important that these can be accessed by all machines with workers installed. Live work is backup up in the cloud using Pcloud or dropbox could be used

6. Again like when we have shared the drive I'm using the simplest approach to setting up."Client" is ok if its a client installed on the same machine as the repository but if its a different machine you need to use "remote connection server" (I made this mistake)

7. If you right-click on the deadline launcher app(rocket icon) you can check the repository path is correct like in the image below and it's set to direct connection
Another problem you can see here is that the worker's license is invalid.

8. Sometimes this can happen, you need to right-click on the worker change license and then check the "no license" box as seen in the image. This will allow you to use it for free for up to 10 machines

9. If someone is currently working on the worker machine the cpu and gpu affinity can be set . First goto tools and set "Super user mode" this gives you more options.

10. Then right-click on the worker and "change worker properties" > Set GPU affinity. This will allow you to free up a GPU so they can still work. Also, there can be an annoying cmd popup so you can download a free app called "RBtray" to keep it hidden. github.com/benbuck/rbtray

11. So hopefully now it's all working... Well, at least Deadline... Let's look at the submission process. We need to download the submission scripts so you can do this through the Deadline monitor like in the image below.

12. This will download the latest installers that will allow you to directly submit jobs from your apps.

13. ... Hold on you are not done yet. Sometimes it can take some time for these to be updated so I'll do a separate thread on looking at how we can update Deadline as soon as a new 3D Apps update is released.

14. Maybe I should list some reasons why you would want to use Deadline after all of this setup. Ok so...

1) It allows you to queue up any application sent to it

2) Split them across multiple machines

3) Render and work on the same machine GPU rendering - Control hardware

15.

4) Render missing frames.

5) Manage everything in one place Sims, renders, Post.

6) Render a single frame on each of the GPUs at the same time

7) Allow a better team workflow

8) Share hardware locally and across the internet

+ lots more.