muster:9.0:release_notes

Release notes

  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a serious memory corruption bug that happens when a notification is sent to the Notificator. This may cause a random crash of the Dispatcher. The update of at least the Dispatcher component is mandatory
  • [COMMON] Enhanced Modo template to support output image files
  • [COMMON] Enhanced Octane Standalone template to support images files mask
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue where on certain operations on the chunks, the selection logic was not started automatically
  • [DISPATCHER] Live changes to the templates no longer send paused/unpaused machines to the wrong status but retains the current one
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Fixed the behaviour of kTemplateErrorAbortRender when used in onCheckLogLine that was acting as intended
  • [API] Definitions for chunks actions chunkActionSetPriority were missing even the code was present. The problem has been fixed and the functions are now usable from the MClientAPI namespace
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a serious bug introduced by 11569 causing an SQL error when tried to add a new user. Users running 11569 must update to 11581 immediately
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an LDAP/AD issue on Windows with usernames/groups with non-latin characters
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an LDAP/AD issue not handling well UTF-8 strings under certain circumstances
  • [DISPATCHER] Selection logic is not triggered also when a job attribute is changed. This address some issues when using APIs to control dependancies
  • [GLOBAL] Support for Clarisse CNode Caching included in the CNode template
  • [GENERAL] Due to slowness caused by Covid, we are pushing some minor enhancements planned for Muster 9.5 into 9.0.14 LTS
  • [GLOBAL] Chunks priorities can now be manually changed from Console or using the APIs. This let you put a specific chunk on the top of the queue if required
  • [GLOBAL] Users and groups drive mappings for Windows. This let you specify a different configuration for Windows drive mappings on a group/user basis
  • [CONSOLE] It's now possible to purge orphan jobs from the instances popup menu. Previously if was not possible to remove a deleted jobs from the exclusion list of an instance leaving the warning until a restart
  • [CONSOLE] It's now possible to purge a job from the jobs popup menu, affecting all the instances with the job in the exclusion list
  • [DISPATCHER] A new option on the Dispatcher configuration let you automatically purge nodes when a job is reinit
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a performance issue with the Dispatcher when dealing with a large amount of users. Each network operation is validated against the currently logged user. In the previous versions, this was done wrongly using a list look, leading to extremely high latency operations on systems with a large number of users created or imported from LDAP
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue with the Wake up on lan port used to send WOL packets that was random instead of 40000. This worked on most systems but failed on NIC that effectively check the message port instead of the packet header
  • [RENDERCLIENT] The Wakeup-on-lan port is now configurable
  • [GLOBAL] Either Dispatcher and Renderclient now starts correctly in Linux when IPV6 is disabled
  • [CONSOLE] It is possible to disable the prompt to close Console allowing automatic shutdown with Console open
  • [CONSOLE] It is now possible to set chunks as completed by erasing the warnings and/or the errors already collected
  • [CONSOLE] It is now possible to clear a chunk dependencies from the chunks view
  • [CONSOLE] It is now possible from the job popup menu to automatically requeue chunks in warning/error status
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue with the web and REST APIs login where the rights of the TCP login of the users where checked instead of the web login rights
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a rare race condition that happens when streaming the chunks thought the web server and/or the REST apis that may lock the Dispatcher
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed a crash in Console when building thumbnails of OpenEXR files with channels dimensions smaller than the image dimension (cropped channels)
  • [DISPATCHER] A new method in the license check on the Template object allows to check for license usage on a node basis in multi instances setup (self.setLicensesMode(MTemplateAPI.MTemplate.kTemplateLicenseCountNodes))
  • [DISPATCHER] The borrow function now obey to pools settings (only instances in target pools are borrowed)
  • [DISPATCHER] A new borrow mask is available in the render client instances overrides. It is possible to specify which instance number to borrow on an instance basis
  • [HOUDINI] The Houdini PDG connector gains an environment field to submit jobs with a custom environment
  • [GENERAL] This version is LTS (Long Term Support). Future developments will be on Muster 9.5 while bug fixes will be carried on 9.0.14+
  • [GENERAL] Support for Blackmagic Fusion Command
  • [GENERAL] Support for Redshift standalone
  • [GENERAL] Support for reserve templates. They let you lock a render client by launching another application. This works well to integrate native render farm manager. Initial support includes support for Lux Core Slave, VRED Server Node, VRED Cluster Servce, CoronaDR, Lux Slave, VRay Spawner and VRaySwarm.
  • [GENERAL] A new dark VFX skin is enabled by default. Special thanks to Massive | A Ubisoft studio for it.
  • [GENERAL] Fixed Houdini PDG connector to handle cross platform scenarious and correctly handle backslashes on Windows supporting either UNC paths and drive mappings. Also code for distributed simulation has been included
  • [GENERAL] Released a new universal connector with initial support for Houdini. The Universal connector will incorporate under an unique code base connectors for softwares running Python 2/3 and Pyside/Pyside2 (Maya, VRED…), it will be implemented in future versions
  • [GENERAL] Alarms handling has been moved on the Renderclient, they will handle them depending on the configuration and it is possible to write callbacks into the Global python template
  • [GENERAL] On multi instances setup, it's now possible for a job to borrow instances, by locking additional ones and freeing resources for intensive jobs. On GPUs engines like Houdini Redshift or Maya Redshift, GPUs allocated for the borrowed instances are automatically assigned to the instance holding the lock
  • [GENERAL] A new GPU affinity mask is available that works with Houdini Redshift/Octane, and Maya Redshift/Octane
  • [GENERAL] The history table now also holds the chunks owners
  • [GENERAL] Fixed an issue with maximum used instances when the jobs where not inside a folder
  • [GENERAL] OpenEXR supports now includes cropped images
  • [DISPATCHER] Database exports now correctly sets the IDs of the tables
  • [DISPATCHER] Exports of statistics in JSON format is now correctly encoded
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug where a keep alive message may be sent to pending invalid connections crashing the Dispatcher
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an error in the setDelay() function not working as intended since several versions
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue in the SQL Server driver where the db_jobs_data were not indexed correctly
  • [DISPATCHER] Job names can have more than 100 characters, previously it caused a crash in the log filename generation
  • [DISPATCHER] It's now possible to limit a job to a minimum amount of physical GPUs
  • [DISPATCHER] A review of the connected accounts is available in the Dispatcher statistics view
  • [DISPATCHER] Timed paused and resume on instances are now available
  • [DISPATCHER] Timed paused and resume on jobs have been fixed, they were not working under certain circumstances
  • [DISPATCHER] A license count check is now available on a job basis, this allows to check for a dual licensing (like Houdini and Redshift that have different licenses servers)
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue with SQL Server not able to store db_nodes data complaining shared_log_paths value was null
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed wakeup at farm full load and required by pool functions that were considering folders too triggering the start even when it was not necessary
  • [CONSOLE] New filters available in Console and web interface for templates and pools
  • [CONSOLE] Is now possible to copy/paste user's and group's rights
  • [CONSOLE] Host views and pools manager now reports the instance GPUs
  • [CONSOLE] Is now not possible to remove or rename the currently logged user from Console
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an error in the script editor where the windows disappear if the ESC key is pressed
  • [CONSOLE] Python console and code editor have the font size configurable
  • [CONSOLE] If an instance has CPU/GPU affinity enabled, it is shown in a dedicated column
  • [WEB] Configurations from the WEB REST APIs can be read only by Administrator, previously they were exposed to any user
  • [WEB] A new WEB API /api/profile returns features and capabilities of the currently logged user
  • [WEB] Is now possible to browse a chunk's log from the web interface
  • [WINDOWS] The entire code base of Windows has been changed to use only Unicode functions. This incremented the overall compatibility on the Windows platform as well as handling Unicode natively
  • [LINUX] Fixed an error in Python startup where in daemon mode the stdout/stderr were closed and this caused startup errors in the systemd scripts under certain circumnstances
  • [LINUX] Fixed a crash in Linux happening when sending a command line with more than 255 arguments (yes that happens!)
  • [LINUX] Fixed an issue in the Houdini IFD template on the Linux platform not passing the correct arguments to the executables
  • [API] the MInstanceAPI now has a logAddMessage to print a log entry from Python
  • [API] MInstanceAPI.getRunningJob() and MInstanceAPI.getRunningChunk() correctly returns None if no job is running
  • [API] Add ability to reset the chunks require from the MDispatcherAPI and MConsoleAPI modules
  • [GENERAL] Support for Houdini PDG scheduler distributed simulations
  • [GENERAL] Support for VRED engine
  • [GENERAL] Support for VRED Image slicing engine
  • [GENERAL] Support for LuxCoreRender engine
  • [GENERAL] Support for LuxRender engine
  • [GENERAL] Support for Terragen engine
  • [GENERAL] Support for Terragen image slicing engine
  • [GENERAL] Support for Lightwave 2019 engine
  • [GENERAL] Support for Modo 13 engine that implements a different log output format
  • [GENERAL] Implemented new APIs in the MDispatcherAPI, MConsoleAPI and the new MNotificatorAPI to send custom messages between all the modules
  • [GENERAL] Fixed the MTemplateItemMultichoice in Console and HTML that allows user to select multiple checkbox and return a comma separated list of the selected values. This never worked as intended. An implementation is available in the VRED engine template
  • [GENERAL] Logs are now gzipped by default after rotation, or after completion of a chunk. The Muster logs inspector automatically handles .gz or uncompressed logs
  • [GENERAL] Add an option to prevent system sleeping on Windows and Mac (either on the Dispatcher and on the Renderclients)
  • [GENERAL] Fixed a bug where not returning an MTemplateError() object from certain templates functions caused a crash
  • [GENERAL] Remove temporary scripts generated by some templates on job completion
  • [GENERAL] Fixed a Maya connector bug not able to save default settings on certain Maya version
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug where a newly create home folder for a user could not start jobs until it is paused/resumed or the Dispatcher restarted
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug where editing job with changed frames ranges didn't update the start/end frames in Console correctly
  • [DISPATCHER] Estimated ending times are now calculated taking into account also the chunks progress, an (E) flag is appended to the ending time to empathize that the time is estimated
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug that may lead to a race condition and a Dispatcher lock if using autobackup/autoarchive and any MDispatcherAPI python function inside your templates custom code
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug where the mail engine was started even a blank mail server address was present. The mail server address is now blank by default (instead of 127.0.0.1)
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a memory leak when sending notification emails
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug when running in evaluation where a reconnecting client may overflow the maximum amount of available nodes and stuck the Dispatcher
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed potential lock on re connection of a client with an already bound socket
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a memory leak on clients re connections
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue where a client may became unresponsiveness in a streaming templates status if a re connection after a disconnection was attempted before the Dispatcher acknowledge the disconnection (rare condition)
  • [DISPATCHER] A new option to abort any node running the same jobs upon failure is available
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug in handling notificators connections on Linux and Raspberry that may close the socket upon connection
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed retain instance status on disconnection not working under certain circumstances
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue where the maximum chunks requeue counter was not working as intended on chunks aborted by timeout
  • [DISPATCHER] Aborted historized chunks now reports a reason for the abort
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Fixed a bug where a network overflow may be raised with chunks with an extreme long list of warnings or errors
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Network buffers sizes are now configurable in the clients preferences
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Logs on Mac and Linux platforms are flushed regularly preventing a bug where the complete actual log was not visible
  • [RENDERCLIENT] A global routine that checks logs and inputs to Python and sanitize them to UTF-8 string has been implemented. This caused crashes with non uniform logs in the previous versions
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Windows now correctly encodes command line to wide strings to support non-ASCII characters
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Is now possible to specify an hard limit to the number of warnings and errors reported back by a chunk to avoid a network buffer overflow
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed hot keys not working with + and some other symbols on certain layouts, changed default keys for some options
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed a bug with hot keys where holding the key generated multiple key presses
  • [CONSOLE] Templates icons are now synced to Consoles on connection
  • [CONSOLE] It is now possible to upload a template icon while using the template editor
  • [CONSOLE] It is now possible to save column status and sorting of chunk view by clicking the icon to save the window position and size
  • [CONSOLE] It is now possible to save column status and sorting of the logs inspector by clicking the icon to save the window position and size
  • [CONSOLE] Changed some console counters icons and reviews how counters are handled. A new blue icon is available for locked instances
  • [CONSOLE] Is now possible to one click a filter for jobs , chunks and nodes by pressing one of the counters icons
  • [CONSOLE] Instances search field accepts also instances ID
  • [CONSOLE] The chunk view gains chunks counters and filtering and it's possible to fast filter clicking the icons like in the other Console's views
  • [CONSOLE] The jobs filter were not behaving correctly under certain circumstances
  • [CONSOLE] Fix log retrieval for files with non-ASCII characters in the filename
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed templates environments not refreshed on version changed in Console templates editor
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed extra carriage returns in Python Console wrongly appended
  • [NOTIFICATOR] Notificator now reads the templates from the user roaming profile in Windows (like Console) making it possible to read templates updated by a Console session. An independent templates synchronization for the Notificator will be implemented in the future
  • [WEB] Fixed a bug where a pause command on a working node was not possible in the web interface
  • [WEB] Fixed an issue where the progress percentage was wrong under certain circumstances in the web interface
  • [WEB] The web interface now shows progress bars with chunks colors
  • [WEB] Web interface expanded nodes and jobs filters
  • [WEB] Web interface expanded chunks filters
  • [WEBAPI] A chunk log can be streamed from the web API (/api/logs/nodes/jobid/chunkid)
  • [MRTOOL] Mrtool correctly encodes the inputs from wide strings to UTF-8 make it possible to use non-ASCII characters
  • [MRTOOL] Fixed a bug where mrtool was able to accept a submission with a template ID of 0 sending the job to the global template
  • [GENERAL] A new template for SketchUp using the standard render or VRAY up to the newest VRAY NEXT version has been included
  • [GENERAL] A new template for Rhino and Rhino Bongo using the Rhino Renderer, Maxwell and VRAY up to VRAY NEXT version has been included
  • [GENERAL] A new connector for Blender has been included
  • [GENERAL] A new connector for Sketchup has been included
  • [GENERAL] A new connector for Keyshot has been included
  • [GENERAL] Keyshot template has support to enable render node licenses
  • [GENERAL] Fixed an issue with the 3D Studio Max image slicing template now handling multiple frames in one job correctly
  • [GENERAL] Fixed an issue in image slicing jobs with “Skip assembler” enabled not producing the correct chunks
  • [GENERAL] A new set of classes to handle popups suppression and automatic handling has been introduced. Now is possible to write templates that starts GUI based renders. Double check the new Sketchup and Rhino templates as examples
  • [DISPATCHER] We optimized the way new submitted jobs and batch deletion are handled by the databases by collapsing several queries under a single transaction making the entire process faster and atomic
  • [DISPATCHER] The database schema for the db_users table has been changed to avoid the group keyword now reserved in MYSql 8+
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue where the email address of an user imported from a directory server was displayed as empty even it was functional
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed repositories visible to web/API parameter not serialized into the DB
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Trough the preferences, is now possible to mark the processes logs path as a shared folder path, and also the path itself can parse an %hostname% macro to make subfolders for each renderclient. By redirecting the logs to a shared folder, is now possible to query logs of offline nodes and centralize logs management
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed a bug where frame masks submitted with a fresh new job were previously ignored
  • [CONSOLE] The frames mask selector now opens the file dialog from the current file path
  • [NOTIFICATOR] The image viewer window had the set size icon hidden even it was functional

Version 9.0.11 is a features and bug fix release

  • [LINUX] Fixed as issue where it was not possible to import Pyside.QtGui on some Linux distributions
  • [LINUX] The Linux and Raspberry distribution now have a new easier install script that let you install, upgrade and remove Muster automatically
  • [GENERAL] A Python interpreter called mpython is now distributed with Muster. This let you run the examples of the SDK as well as launch an already set up environment able to import the Muster SDK classes as well as PySide without installing the SDK manually. It is actually based on Python 3.3.1
  • [GENERAL] The Guerilla connector now supports frames specified in the passes tab, otherwise if empty, it uses the document settings
  • [GENERAL] The Cinema 4D connector now sends the correct image output mask when submitting a job
  • [GENERAL] The Maya Redshift templates not let you specify the GPU usage on an instance basis
  • [GENERAL] Houdini hython render template now correctly handles GPU usage for GPU based renders
  • [GENERAL] Frames mask detection works also with filenames with only numbers i.e. 0001.exr
  • [GENERAL] A new template for Maya Octane has been included
  • [GENERAL] Updated the Maya connector to support Maya Octane
  • [GENERAL] Connectors are no longer available as a separate download but installed with Muster in the Connectors folder when you install the client tools
  • [GENERAL] Some fields across templates had substitution enabled even they shouldn't. Even this not caused any problem it has been normalized
  • [DISPATCHER] Repositories are correctly filtered in web interface if assigned to just one user
  • [DISPATCHER] Repositories now have a flag to specify if they should be visible into the web interface
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an issue with the job filtering bar not reloading departments or users during a full queue refresh
  • [CONSOLE] Repositories paths now have a better error checking. A wrong path error should no longer appear with certain paths
  • [CONSOLE] The preferences of Console had a bug where some settings were not saved
  • [CONSOLE] The templates editor no longer outputs an error when trying to change the template ID from the interface
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an error where Console was not able to open the output folder when a frame mask was available but no frames still saved
  • [CONSOLE] Depending on your screen DPI, menu icons are no longer overlapping with the texts
  • [SDK] Is now possible to specify a file translation source platform when submitting a job through the REST APIs in case you submit a job from a platform that's different from the ones running the Dispatcher
  • [SDK] The Python examples had the wrong connection port still pointing to the Muster 8 one. It has been fixed
  • [SDK] The SDK is no longer available as a separate download but it's now installed when you select the client tools
  • [SDK] Minor fixes in the SDK samples as well as in the MClientAPI functions dealing with logs

Version 9.0.10 is a features and bug fix release

  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a bug that caused the Dispatcher to stall when assembling multiple slices images
  • [DISPATCHER] The auto update from 8.5 queues now checks if redundants values are contained inside db_jobs_data causing the update to fail. This is now correctly handled.
  • [DISPATCHER] Multiple backup LDAP servers can be specified with a comma (only for authentication)
  • [GENERAL] The internal image library now supports TIFF files with Z compression enabled
  • [GENERAL] The job.getFramesRange() return value from Python now returns an usable list of MFrameRanges objects
  • [GENERAL] Fixed a critical issue with the templates synchronization that may happen if a template with the same UID on a client tries to sync with a different template on the Dispatcher, this caused an endless synchronization loop on the client making it unstable
  • [GENERAL] A new template to support Guerilla Render 2+ has been included
  • [GENERAL] A new connector for Guerilla Render 2+ is available in the download section
  • [GENERAL] A new template to support Houdini Render though hython instead of hrender is available. This allows batch renders to be run using GUI licenses instead of batch ones
  • [GENERAL] A new template to support Corona standalone render has been included
  • [GENERAL] A new template to support DJV convert batch process has been included
  • [GENERAL] A new template to support Python scripts executions has been included
  • [GENERAL] The Maya Renderman template has been updated to support Renderman version 22+
  • [GENERAL] A new template to support PRMan RIB Renders (Renderman) has been included
  • [GENERAL] The Clarisse CNode template has been updated to support version 4+
  • [GENERAL] A new connector for Clarisse is available in the download section
  • [GENERAL] The Maya mental ray single frame assembler has now a fix to correctly handle a bug in Maya 2016 Mental ray not supporting rendering exr files from a batch session.
  • [CONSOLE] Console now warns if you try to create a new template with an UID less than 1000
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an issue where gamma values and colors were not saved in the console preferences on MAC correctly
  • [CONSOLE] The Console open output folder function is now more smart. It checks for an output path, then for a detected frames mask and finally for the main scene path, opening the folder according
  • [CONSOLE] Add an option to add a chunk's renderer to the job's excluded pools automatically from the context menu of a chunk
  • [NOTIFICATOR] Fixed a bug in the Notificator automatically opening images on wrong events

Version 9.0.9 is a features and bug fix release

  • [MRTOOL] Fixed an issue with mrtool using the legacy -sf -ef flags instead of the new -range flag were the frames may be converted to scientific notation causing problems when parsed back by the Dispatcher and giving a from total frames result
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Fixed an issue with the last idle and last paused timers not working as intended causing the “shutdown when idle” and “shutdown when paused” functions not behaving correclty
  • [DISPATCHER] The selection of the jobs has been optimised, in the past an idle instance was analysed continuously until a job match is found. Now instances that does not have a job match are put in a memory purgatory until a change is made on the queue relaxing the dispatcher work
  • [CONSOLE] Updated the way jobs and nodes are sorted after being retrieved from the Dispatcher. In the past the sort routine may be extremely long for a big queue, now it's extremely faster
  • [CONSOLE] In the past, the warnings about the pools and the users configured by another session caused annoyance to users working on a submission on in console directly. Now the dialogs are configurable in the preferences of Console

Version 9.0.8 is a features and bug fix release

  • [GLOBAL] Implemented a workaround for a Windows 7 bug where a dual NIC installation is present and IPV6 is disabled on one of the NIC, any connection from mrtool or from the render client versus the Dispatcher may get the wrong routing address and fail
  • [GLOBAL] A Render template for Katana has been included
  • [MRTOOL] Included a formatting flag for job query (-q j) 'proct' to obtain the total job cumulative processing time
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an issue where archived jobs inside folders may be invisible when the Archive filter was enabled
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed potential crashes when dealing with a Dispatcher with jobs belonging to no longer available templates
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue where the Dispatcher may be stuck on Loading queue cache if a job is left in a post action status

Version 9.0.7 is a features and bug fix release

  • [CONSOLE] A warning is displayed when trying to fetch statistics from a chunks that are not available or disabled on the Dispatcher preferences, for both the regular and the history chunks
  • [CONSOLE] Broadcast jobs now have the maximum nodes field in the submission view
  • [CONSOLE] The Reparse chunks log function now takes into account the chunk's process exit code no longer producing a wrong chunk status. The Chunk's process exit code is also now stored in the DB
  • [DISPATCHER] Statistics samples were not correctly copied over the history chunks
  • [DISPATCHER] Maximum working nodes on folders are now calculated correctly. In the past a race condition in the multithread engine caused more instances to be allocated than the ones intended under certain circumnstances
  • [DISPATCHER] The Python function onJobEnd may be called twice or more, the problem is not fixed and it is also called for jobs that completes while being into a paused folder
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Statistics samples were skipped on Windows DISKS without an effective name

Version 9.0.6 is a features and bug fix release

  • [GLOBAL] Fixed an issue with the MClientLib::WaitForMessage function that caused, under rare circumstances, long times to acknowledge a response. This caused slow response times with mrtool when submitting a new job as well as with custom submissions scripts
  • [GLOBAL] Fixed a rare condition where a socket may be closed twice. This caused random disconnections with fast submission where sockets descriptors were reused or a random disconnection for connecting Consoles.
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed 3 rare conditions that may lead to deadlocks on the Dispatcher
  • [DISPATCHER] The submission speed of certain jobs has been optimized and is now faster
  • [CONSOLE] Icons of Console main panes are now configurable from the Preferences
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an issue where pressing the ESC key into the chunks view made it empty and unusable until a queue refresh
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed a crash where trying to generate thumbnails for OpenEXR without an Alpha channel
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed some sorting issues in the chunks dialog
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an issue where the view rows may change size if the main icon on the first column was not visible
  • [CONSOLE] In the Pools configuration dialog, is now possible to purge selected pools from no longer existent nodes
  • [REST API] Fixed an issue where the packetType value of a job submission was mandatory. Submitting a job with a wrong packetType lead to a refused job. Now the value is read from the parent template.
  • [DISPATCHER API] New methods to retrieve the chunks history are now available, as well as 3 new methods to flush the databases

Version 9.0.5 is a features and bug fix release

  • [GLOBAL] We have included a brand new realtime statistics view over the Renderclients from Muster Console. You can watch realtime processors, memory, network cards and disks usages
  • [GLOBAL] The statistics of the Dispatcher service have been enhanced including the realtime processors, memory, network cards and disks usages
  • [GLOBAL] The nodes realtime statistics can now be stored as a chunk information (this can be enabled or disabled from the Dispatcher preferences, enabled by default), allowing browsing of each chunk individual statistics. When the engine allows distinguish of frames during rendering, statistics are also marked for each frame. It is also possible (this can be enabled or disabled from the Dispatcher preferences, disabled by default) to store the statistics in the history chunks as well
  • [GLOBAL] It is now possible to open a log of an in-progress chunk from the chunks view
  • [GLOBAL] Frames mask now accepts negative numbers prepending an “m” before a number. This applies only to render engine that supports negative frames numbers. I.e. if you want to submit from frame -100 to 100 , you should use m100-100
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed a bug where under certain circumstances, refreshing the entire chunks view may produce a console crash if thumbnails generation was in progress
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Fixed a bug in Windows that may produce a stall into the renders due to the way we collect the processes output. This is a rare condition but if you experience keep alive disconnections on the clients and/or the Dispatcher for an unknown reasons or you see that the client is stalled until the render is completed, the upgrade is mandatory. The bug is also present in Muster 8.6.19 and is marked as critical, that's why we also released a 8.6.20 version to address just this bug
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue where a successfully rendered chunk is stored in the history as a chunk with warnings and errors
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue in the MongoDB driver where it was not possible to retrieve off line nodes after a restart. This caused also informations like wake up settings to not being loaded
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue in the MongoDB driver where history chunks were not loaded in the chunks view correctly

Version 9.0.4 is a bug fix release

  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed an issue where it was not possible in version 9.0.3 to submit a job through the HTTP REST API and from within the integrated web service
  • [DISPATCHER] Reverted back the way custom environmental variables were parsed in 9.0.0+ by applying substitution paths to them. Now the environmental variables are left untouched making possible to send values with forward slashes in Windows (previously automatically changed to back slashes by the substitution paths engine)

Version 9.0.3 includes some minor new features and minor bug fixes

  • [DISPATCHER] Support for MongoDB as DB backend
  • [DISPATCHER] Export of dispatcher.conf is now possible through Console
  • [DISPATCHER] Export of database settings (pools , users and repositories) is now possible though the Console Export menu
  • [DISPATCHER] Console is now able to export databases dumps as well as settings in pure JSON format
  • [DISPATCHER] Toon Boom Harmony template now supports database render mode as well as frames ranges
  • [CONSOLE] A new job Total time info is now available that reports the effective sum of the chunks rendering times
  • [CONSOLE] Templates now have an icon, reported in the clients configuration dialog as well as in the submission view, that now clearly shows the job in focus at the top of its header
  • [CONSOLE] A new graphs library has been introduced, the visual style of the graphs changed drastically
  • [CONSOLE] A clear warning is now reporting if the Dispatcher or any Renderclient are not able to save their .conf file after the configuration (in case it has been misconfigured during the installation and the user has no right to write the files)
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed a glitch on the CPU usage bar when collapsed and at full 100% usage

Version 9.0.2 includes some minor new features and minor bug fixes

  • [DISPATCHER] Muster is now able to upgrade a Muster 8.5+ queue database (both queue and history databases)
  • [DISPATCHER] Fixed a minor bug that may produce a Dispatcher hang during an heavy load scenario
  • [DISPATCHER] Toon Boom Harmony and After Effects have both an additional template to send a job to a single host instead of multiple machines. This is particular useful for light weight jobs where you want to produce a final movie file
  • [WEB] Fixed some wrong reported values in the initial Dashboard
  • [WEB] Fixed a bug where it was not possible to send Wake up or other system events to nodes
  • [RENDERCLIENT] Fixed an issue with the sleep and ibernate feature that may lead an host to be waked up multiple times
  • [LINUX] Raspberry and Linux distributions implements systemd scripts instead of older init.d scripts where applicable
  • [GLOBAL] The Maya icons included in the distributions have been updated
  • [GLOBAL] An update to the network protocol has been implemented to solve a random bug introduced by recently system patches. It's mandatory that you update any component of Muster to the latest version
  • [CONSOLE] Changing a skin is now correctly saved in the preferences
  • [CONSOLE] Settings for the emergency queue have been moved to the root level of the jobs popup menu for a better accessibility
  • [CONSOLE] Several confirmation dialogs have been implemented across the settings to avoid loosing changes
  • [CONSOLE] The scroll windows now have a minimum handle size, in the past it was difficult to scroll windows with a long content inside
  • [CONSOLE] The viewer downsampling setting is now saved into the workspace. You can also apply or set as default the 1:1 and FIT buttons
  • [CONSOLE] Chunks and frames in the sequences viewer can not be drag-marked using the SHIFT and CTRL key. You can unmark them by adding the ALT key
  • [CONSOLE] The log view now has line numbers on the left
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an issue where it was not possible to resize a window by dragging the upper left corner
  • [CONSOLE] Fixed an issue in the job view where the job filtering was not working as intended under certain circumnstances

Version 9.0.1 includes some minor new features and the support for the Raspberry PI 3 platform

  • [GLOBAL] Support for the Raspberry PI 3 Raspbian platform
  • [CONSOLE] Images and sequences viewer caches properties launched from Notificator can now be configured
  • [CONSOLE] Images and sequences viewer default values can now be saved to the current workspace
  • [CONSOLE] Image viewer now uses the OpenGL Core profile when available
  • [CONSOLE] A new flag -forcegl2 is available when launching Console or Notificator to force OpenGL version 2.1
  • [CONSOLE] Images and sequences viewer now supports images down samplings to allocate less VRAM or RAM
  • [MRTOOL] Two missing flags to control chunks priorities and interleave have been included in mrtool

Welcome to the first release of Muster 9. Muster 9 has been completely redesigned and optimized with the inclusion of long waited features requested by users during the life cycle of Muster 8.

Be aware that there are some core changes between Muster 8 and Muster 9. The queue database format is no longer compatible and an upgrade of the queue from a previous version is not possible. That means you'll need to rebuild your queue from scratch.

Since Muster 9.0.2, regular databases or sqlite files can be automatically upgraded from Muster. You'll need databases and queues starting from version 8.5+

This is a list of the new Muster 9 features:

  • We have included a gorgeous images and sequences viewer totally integrated inside Muster. You can now preview your frames while being rendered as well as preview completed sequences. The image viewer supports the most used images formats including OpenEXR with HDR support and has direct bindings with your jobs, you can re queue individual frames and/or chunks directly from the image viewer window. We also extended the preview feature to the Chunks Details view. You can watch real time updated thumbnails inside the view and directly re queue chunks and/or frames. The image viewer is totally OpenGL accelerated and supports GPU and RAM caching to watch sequences with their native frame rate
  • The web interface has been rewritten from scratch. While being more minimalist, it has been designed for fully responsiveness for mobile devices and it is based on the Twitter Bootstrap technology. It is also an excellent point of start for your own interfaces based on the REST APIs (distributed in a non-minimized form)
  • Muster now supports IPV6 as well as double stack bindings. It is also possible to bind the network ports to a specific IP address / network interface
  • A new backup facility has been included. This is totally different from the archive operation that still exists, but while an archived job still stays into the queue, the backup database can be used to completely remove no longer needed jobs and restore them later if required.
  • General redesign and optimization of the internal data. Now Muster is able to read and write queue objects concurrently and the overall speed increased by an average 300%
  • Engines (templates) now supports multi versioning. You can easily define multiple version of an engine and configure multiple paths according in the client preferences. This is completely handled in the templates configuration dialog and requires just one single template. Double check the templates documentation to implement versioning in your existing custom templates
  • Chunks support prioritization. During jobs submissions you can specify how chunks will be processed providing several predefined priority modes
  • Single frames renders (image slicing) now supports submitting multiple frames in a single job
  • Muster now supports frame ranges instead of the fixed start-end frame logic. You can input a frame range in the form 1-10b1n1p4 , where b, n and p specify by frame, start numbering and padding. Also separate frames list are supported like 1,5,20-30. Check the templates documentation to understand how to migrate your existing templates
  • The queue supports an emergency mode. This is a completely isolated queue that runs on an higher priority than the regular queue. It is also possible to abort regular queue jobs if emergency queue has pending jobs
  • The mails templates no longer exist. Mails notifications are now sent and built through the global template(0) with access to the Muster inner objects. This opens to a total customization of the mails sent by the Dispatcher
  • The dispatcher mailer daemon now supports TLS/SSL configurations through libcurl. It is no longer required to run a forwarder for mail servers that requires authentication
  • The entire frames check logic has been rewritten from scratch and now supports file opening, OpenEXR files and frame ranges/lists. Also the frame check can be run again against a completed job
  • Notifications have gone through a complete review with the users and groups system. You can now configure specific notifications for each group and user as well as inherit values from groups. Also Muster now offers to configure notifications via mails, notificator, or mobiles (mobile app will come later)
  • Users and groups permissions have been revamped and now offers a preview of the inherited properties during configuration
  • It's now possible to completely remap hot keys into Console and bind them to a custom workspace
  • Muster can now parse multiple output folders according to the template settings. If a template supports multi-layered rendering and supports outputting multiple output folders, the frames checks and the frames mask are setup according
  • Templates supports macros that may be edited interactively and then accesses through the templates codes
  • The log parsing and reporting has been completely revamped. Now a strict relation between the errors in the logs files and the chunk is preserved. You no longer get a single log line for a failed chunk, but a complete error reporting available in the chunks view with an entry for each faulty line. Also it's possible to create overrides rules for each template and/or job to skip specific warnings and errors, or to include new checkings
  • Jobs support chunks parallel dependencies. You can have two jobs running simultaneous with a 1:1 dependence between their chunks
  • Multitask templates are now available. You can build a template that runs several different tasks chained by dependencies and/or return values
  • OpenEXR is supported in all image based operations as well as in single frames slicing and assembling. Templates have been updated according
  • You can now run each database on a different connection and on a different engine. This allows i.e. to run the regular queue on sqlite while keeping the history and the backup database on Mysql
  • Several warnings and checks related to chained jobs have been implemented. Now Muster requests a confirmation to delete jobs dependacies too
  • Jobs can be filtered by ID in the jobs view
  • The status of the nodes is now stored inside the database for off-line query
  • A inheritable maximum priority value is now available for users and groups
  • Jobs implement extra fields like camera left/right/center , sequences and shots
  • Bulk operations are now available on folders with fast child selection context menu options
  • The Console submission view is now foldable
  • Start and end time estimation on folders is now available
  • Headers customization can be reset to the default values
  • Fixed an issue that reported a wrong disk usage in the instances details
  • User preferences can be read/write from a different path using an environmental variable or a command line switch
  • Automatic removal and archiving of jobs can be triggered depending on the job status or directly from a specific template using dedicated class members
  • It's now possible to re-index the database with a specific option
  • Some warnings can now be skipped and configured i.e. when submitting a job using a local path
  • The Max connector now supports images slicing
  • Fixed an issue in the workstation logs view where the logs were not deleted properly
  • Network ports changed from 97XX to 98XX to allow running version 8.X and 9.X side by side
  • Changed the way preferences are stored on the Mac and Linux platforms, files are no longer saved with backslashes but the final folder is normalized according
  • Tuning settings for the Dispatcher and the instances are now exposed to optimize heavily loaded systems.
  • The LDAP query configuration has been optimized to supports different configurations and it produced standard queries that should be more compatible with existing LDAP systems
  • The Maximum instance limit on a user or group can now be ignored if available instances are found
  • Single instances and broadcast templates now supports the instance job progress
  • All the external applications connectors have been updated to support the new “template version” field
  • Mrtool now accepts multiple IDs (comma separated) for operations on jobs and instances
  • muster/9.0/release_notes.txt
  • Last modified: 2021/10/06 06:49
  • by admin