How to debug templates

If you run the renderclient.exe as a seperate window, and not in service mode you will get python template prints in the log window for the renderclient.

Just go into the muster folder and double click them to start. (make sure to stop the service first or it wont start since it´s already running)

So for development it´s nice to have both the dispatcher.exe and renderclient.exe running locally in demo mode and you can then edit the templates and see the debugging info live.

when your template is ready for action you can just transfer it to your Live Dispatcher. Easiest is to just have 2 consoles running and copy paste your code from one template editor (Your DEV one) and then paste to the LIVE one and update LIVE. That way you dont have to restart the LIVE dispather and it will distribute the updated template to all render nodes automatically.

You can also check each individual render instances own log, even if renderclient is running as a service.

Go into Workstation Logs for the Instance in question. (Rightclick/Workstation Logs *CTRL+J)
Then change the dropdown from Processes to Activity logs in the top right corner of the window that appears and read the log for the job you just ran.

That log is the same as the if you ran renderclient.exe in debug window mode, And Python outputs will look like this

11/25/2015 11:58:02 – [1] Instance available for selection
11/25/2015 11:59:03 – [Core_Python] in Submission
11/25/2015 11:59:03 – [Core_Python]

So if i have print(‘Hello world’) in the python template it will output like this in the log

11/25/2015 11:59:03 – [Core_Python] Hello World

This is good for if you have weird behavior on just one of the render instances in the LIVE render pool, then you can check that particular log to see what went wrong on that specific computer.

I would love to have a way to actually output this to the regular log but it´s the best we got atm.