I’ve written a render manager for my studio. I am pretty happy with it. It even manages power! When nodes are done on the last complete job it powers them off and powers off the entire farm when the last job is done..  now I can sleep better knowing my render farm isn’t going to be running through the night.

I am a little confused about getting progress and frame counts from backburner jobs though.

When the manager sends an update callback my app requests all of the jobs again.

I am trying to use the job.numFramesComplete value to update my displays. But it doesn’t really update to the proper values until the job is completed.

When attempting to update the server’s progress I am trying to use s.jobFrameIndex as the frame number the server is currently working on. But somehow I don’t think the frame index equates to an actual frame. it returns either a frame number, undefined or 268435455 (0x0FFFFFFF)

So.. I am looking for some examples of code snippets to help me keep an a updated render progress display.

	Attachment

Still looking for answers if anyone knows anything.. or a link to a complete maxscript - backburner reference. The one that ships with Max2011 is full of holes and errors.

In short. I am trying to adapt my code to get real job/server status from backbiter. The docs are so sparse and plain that I am a little stuck.

My requests for status at the moment come back with erroneous, out of date information about the render job.

This is what I am using to try to get server current frame info from a running render.

jobFrameIndex is always undefined or 268435455 (-2)

I know this isn’t what most users do with maxscript but I am hoping for a little light to be shed on this or some links to more complete documentation.

thanks!

dang.. I guess I am stuck. I am sure the netRender class of Maxscript is working nothing like it is documented. Everything else is working but my real time progress part of the monitor. I can’t very well call Autodesk.. which is pathetic.

Hi Jona, i hope this MaxStation post helps a bit: getting_backburner_status_information_from_maxscript

Thank you very much for your reply. That was the first thing I tried but I get erroneous information in the jobFrameIndex. No matter how I attempt to get that data I always get either -2, 0 or undefined.

I know that I am connected to servers working on active jobs when I connect and query the servers for the job frame index.

Also.. when querying the job status (not the server status) I don’t get current values either. Sometimes they show up after the job is completed but during a render the calls return static values.. usually 0.

I was wondering if you have tested this code with BB2008? If so, did it work for you?

Thanks again for the link. I wish it were that easy!

OK.. Maxstation has tested the code and found the same results as I have but may have also found the answer.. in the Maxstation blog