UI "Maxwell Render Job..."

Below Is an expandable view of the "Maxwell Render Job..." Jobtype Submission UI

Please click on the section of interest

Qube Job Basics

Name

Tooltip - Name of the job

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This is the name of the job of the job so it can be easily identified in the Qube! UI

Priority

Tooltip - Numeric priority (

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Every job in Qube is assigned a numeric priority. Priority 1 is higher than priority 100. This is similar to 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc. The default priority assigned to a job is 9999.

Instances

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Instances are the amount of times you would like to spawn a session of your application

Example:

On a 12 slot(core) machine running Maya if you set

"Instances" to 4

"Reservations" to "host.processors=3"

Qube! will open 4 sessions of Maya on the worker simultaneously consuming all slots/cores

if you set

"Instances" to 1

"Reservations" to "host.processors=1+"

Qube will open 1 session of Maya on the worker consuming all slots/cores ("host.processors=1+" is used for all slots/cores)

more on Instances & Reservations

Qube Frame Range

Range

Tooltip - Frame range for the job (e.g 1-100, or 1-100x3, or 1,3,7,10)

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Most jobs require a frame range in which to execute on the worker's you can set this range in a few different ways :

"1-100" will just render the range between 1 and 100

"1-100x3" will render the range 1 to 100 in chunks of 3

"1,3,7,10" will only render the selected frames 1,3,7,10

Execution

Tooltip - How to break up frame range to be executed. Use QB_START_FRAME, QB_END_FRAME and QB_FRAME_NUMBER

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When submitting a job to the farm it may be more efficient to "chunk" your job. This means that when the job is sent to the worker it tells the worker to render X consecutive frames before requesting more work.

The drop down options are below:

"Individual frames" this tells the worker to render 1 frame at a time

"Chunks with n frames" this tells the worker to render consecutively the number of frames specified in the parallel spinner

"Split into n partitions" this tells the worker to render consecutively the total frames in the range divided by the number in the parallel spinner

Examples:

range 1-100 with "individual frames" set will render 1 frame at a time

range 1-100 with "Chunks with n frames" and the spinner set to 10 will send 10 frames to each worker

range 1-100 with "Split into n partitions" and the spinner set to 4 will send 25 frames to each worker

rangeOrdering

Tooltip - Order to render the items. (Ascending=1,2,3,4,5...,Descending=10,9,8...,Binary=first,middle,last...)

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You can set the order in which your frames are rendered. The drop down options are:

"Ascending" this will render the frames counting upwards from your start frame

"Decending" this will render the frames counting backwards from your end frame

"Binary" Explanation needed

Preview Frames Submission

Use Preview Frames

Tooltip - Submit high-priority preview frames for this job

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Enabling preview frames will create 2 jobs:

A primary dependent job with a higher priority that will render the selected frames first

and a secondary job with lower priority that will render the remaining frames

This will return the selected frames faster so that you can troubleshoot your renders

Frame Numbers

Tooltip - Preview frames list for the job. Leave blank to use default (1st, last, middle) frames (e.g 1,2,10)

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Choose the frames that you wish to render first.

If left blank "Default" is selected which renders the first frame , the last frame and the middle frame in that order.

You can select the frames by adding comma separated frame numbers e.g 1,2,10,15,75

Preview Priority

Tooltip - Preview Frame Priority

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Choose the priority for the primary job.

Preview Subjobs

Tooltip - Number of subjobs to use for the preview frames

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Choose the instances/subjobs for the primary job.

Render App Auto-Threads & Uses the Entire Worker

New in 6.4-4

For applications that do not support setting the number of threads, this section is not visible.

Render on all cores

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Min Free Slots

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Render App Uses a Specific Number of Threads

Slots = Threads

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Specific Thread Count

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Maxwell: Version and Location

maxwell path

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Maxwell: Common Render Controls

Enable coOp Renders

Tooltip - Perform a cooperative render. Make sure you set the "Instances" parameter to more than 1, in the "Qube Job Basics" section above

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Setting this to co-op will create a secondary MXIMerge job that combines the finished MXI's upon completion

Coop Total SL

Tooltip - (Cooperative Rendering only) - Final quality level for the coop render, when the MXIs are all merged. Set to 0 for all instances to respect the value set in the "Sampling Level" box below'

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If Co-op rendering is selected you can choose the Sampling level for the final render

Sampling Level

Tooltip - Quality level for the render, overrides Sampling value saved in MXS.

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Render Time Limit

Tooltip - Time (in minutes) that the renderer is allowed to run (per-frame), overrides Time value saved in MXS.

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Resume Rendering

Tooltip - automatically resume the render if the MXI file exists

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Maxwell: Files

MXS scene file

Tooltip - MXS scene to render

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Browse or enter manually the location of the scene file to be rendered. This is a required field for submission

Important: Best practise is to ensure the scene file and all of its dependant files such as textures are on network storage accessible by the workers.

outputImage

Tooltip - full path and name of the image file.

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Browse or manually enter the location of the output image file you wish to generate

Important: Best practise is to ensure outputs are written to network storage accessible by the workers

MXI output file

Tooltip - MXI output file containing information about the rendering process. It allows for resuming previously rendered image. If not specified, the MSI will use the same name and path as the MXS scene

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Browse or manually enter the location of the output MXI file you wish to generate

Important: Best practise is to ensure outputs are written to network storage accessible by the workers

script

Tooltip - Load and run a given script

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Browse or manually enter the required scripts

Important: Best Practise is to ensure scripts are on network storage accessible by the workers

prescript

Tooltip - Load and run a given script

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Browse or manually enter the required prescripts

Important: Best Practise is to ensure scripts are on network storage accessible by the workers

postscript

Tooltip - Load and run a given script

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Browse or manually enter the required postscripts

Important: Best Practise is to ensure scripts are on network storage accessible by the workers

bitmaps

Tooltip - Set an alternative folder path for the bitmaps location. If "0", then will discard all the bitmaps

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Browse or manually enter the location of the bitmaps file you wish to generate

Important: Best practise is to ensure bitmaps are written to network storage accessible by the workers

overridemat

Tooltip - Override all materials in the scen using the material indicated in the path

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Browse or manually enter the location of the textures you wish to replace

Important: Best practise is to ensure textures are written to network storage accessible by the workers

curdir

Tooltip - Set the current directory of the OS. This could be useful for using relative paths for textures and other dependencies.

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Browse or manually enter the location of the current directory

dependencies

Tooltip - Set an alternative folder path for the dependencies location.

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Browse or manually enter the location of the required dependancies

resume

Tooltip - Continue a render from a previously saved MXI file. To resume a previously rendered images and update the MXI file, this flag must be added.

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Browse or manually enter the location of the MXI file to be resumed

renameoutput

Tooltip - When this flag is used, Maxwell Render does not write the MXI file directly in the given output path; it write a temporary file and when the writing process finishes it renames it to the final path.

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enable tick box to rename MXI file upon completion

Maxwell: Image

res

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region

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depth

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channels

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channel

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zmin

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zmax

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alphaopaque

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alphaembedded

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embedded

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channelsembedded

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color

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camera

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defaultmat

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burn

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gamma

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Maxwell: Rendering

pass

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multilight

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extractlights

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devignetting

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scattering

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displacement

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dispersion

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motionblur

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dodevignetting

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doscattering

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Maxwell: Render process

verbose

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threads

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priority

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slupdate

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mintime

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nomxi

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Maxwell: Internal (readonly)

Internal(Range)

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QUbe SimpleCmd and Shell Parameters

Cmd Template

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Shell (Linux/OSX)

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Qube Job Tags

Qube Job Tags

New in Qube 6.5

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see page Job Tags

Qube Worker Selection

Hosts

Tooltip - Explicit list of Worker hostnames to run the job on (comma-separated)

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Click browse to choose from a list of workers that you want to run the job on

Groups

Tooltip - Explicit list of Worker groups to run the job on (comma-separated)

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Click browse to choose from a list of groups that you want to run the job on

Omit Hosts

Tooltip - Explicit list of Worker hostnames to NOT run the job on (comma-separated)

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Click browse to choose from a list of workers that you do NOT want to run the job on

Omit Groups

Tooltip - Explicit list of Worker groups to NOT run the job on (comma-separated)

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Click browse to choose from a list of groups that you NOT want to run the job on

Priority Cluster

Tooltip - Worker cluster that the job has elevated priority to run on

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Click browse to choose from a list of Priority Clusters

Clusters are a way of distributing jobs across the farm with the ability to expand and shrink based on the submitted priority cluster

Example:

A job submitted to /root/ will run on all machines with /root/ assigned as a cluster.
- At a standard priority
A job submitted to /root/a will run on all machines with /root/a assigned as a cluster
- At a higher priority than /root/ meaning that the job will pre-empt a job with the priority cluster

Host Order

Tooltip - Order to select Workers for running the job (comma-separated) [+ means ascending, - means descending]

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Click browse to choose from a list of Host Order Options

Host Order is a way of telling the job how to select/order workers

- "+host.processors.avail" means prefer workers which have more slots available
- "+host.memory.avail" means prefer workers which have more memory available
- "+host.memory.total" means prefer workers which have more total memory
- "+host.processor_speed" means prefer workers with higher cpu speeds
- "+host.cpus" means prefer workers with higher total cpu slots

Requirements

Tooltip - Worker requirements needed to be met for job to run on that Worker (comma-separated, expression-based)

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Click browse to choose from a list of Host Order Options

Requirements is a way to tell the workers that this job needs specific requirements to be met in order to run

drop-down menu items:

"winnt" this will fill the field with "host.os=winnt" which means only run on Windows based workers
"linux" this will fill the field with "host.os=linux" which means only run on Linux based workers
"osx" this will fill the field with "host.os=osx" which means only run on OSX based workers

The above is not the limit of what "Requirements" can do see a list below of other alterable variants:

"host.processors.avail.=4" means only run this job on workers that have 4 or more slots available
"host.processors.used=0" means only run this job on workers with 0 slots in use
"host.memory.avail=400" means only run this job on workers that have 400 memory available

Reservations

Tooltip - Worker resources to reserve when running job (comma-separated, expression-based)

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Click browse to choose from a list of Reservation Options

Reservations is a way to tell the workers that this job will reserve the specific resources for this job

Menu items:

"host.processors" this will fill the field with "host.processors=X" which means reserve X slots on the worker while running this job
"host.memory" this will fill the field with "host.memory=X" which means only reserve X memory on the worker while running this job

The above is not the limit of what "Reservations" can do see a list below of other alterable variants:

"host.license.nuke=1" when a Global Resources entry has been made you can reserve any arbitrary named item.

See also Job Reservations

Restrictions

Tooltip - Restrict job to run only on specified clusters ("||"-separated) [+ means all below, * means at that level]

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Click browse to choose from a list of Restrictions Options

Restrictions is a way to tell the workers that this job can only run on specific clusters

Example:

submit a job that will run only in /farm:
"qbsub -cluster /root -restriction /root"
submit a job that will prefer to run in /farm/nuke, but could run in any host in /farm or in the first level below /farm
"qbsub -cluster /root/a -restriction '/root or /root/*'"
submit a job that will prefer to run in /farm/nuke/workstations, but could run in any host at any level at /farm or below
"qbsub -cluster /root/a/workstations -restriction '/root or /root/+' hostname"

Flag	Decimal Value	Hex Value	Description
auto_mount	8	0x8	Require automatic drive mounts on worker.
auto_wrangling	16384	0x4000	Enable auto-wrangling for this job.
convert_path	131072	0x20000	Automatically convert paths on worker at runtime. New in 6.4-2
disable_auto_complete	8192	0x2000	Normally subjobs are automatically completed by the system when a job runs out of available agenda items. Setting this flag disables that.
disable_cpu_limit	4096	0x1000	Normally, if a job is submitted with the number of subjobs greater than there are agenda items, Qube automatically shrinks the number of subjobs to be equal to the number of agenda items. Setting this flag disables that.
disable_windows_job_object	2048	0x800	Disable Windows' process management mechanism called the "Job Object" that Qube normally uses to manage job processes-- some applications already use it internally, and job objects don't nest within another well, causing jobs to crash unexpectedly.
elite	512	0x200	Submit job as an elite job, which will be started immediately regardless of how busy the farm is. Elite jobs are also protected from preemption. Must be admin.
export_environment	16	0x10	Use environment variables set in the submission environment, when running the job on the workers.
expand	32	-x20	Automatically expand job to use as many subjobs as there are agenda items (limited by the total job slots in the farm).
grid	4	0x4	Make all subjobs start at once (useful for implementation of parallel jobs, such as satellite renders).
host_list	256	0x100	Run job on all candidate hosts, as filtered by other options (such as "hosts" or "groups").
mail	1024	0x400	Send e-mail when job is done.
migrate_on_frame_retry	65536	0x10000	When an agenda item (frame) fails but is retried automatically because the retrywork option is set, setting this flag causes the subjob to be migrated to another worker host, preventing the frame from running on the same host.
p_agenda	32768	0x8000	Enable p-agenda for this job, so that some frames are processed at a higher priority.
uninterruptible	1	0x1	Prevent job from being preempted.

Dependency

Tooltip - Wait for specified jobs to complete before starting this job (comma-separated)

Click Add to create dependant jobs

you can link jobs states to each other by several factors

"complete" means only start this job after designated job completes

"failed" means only start this job if the designated job fails

"killed" means only start this job if the job has been killed

"done" means start this job if the job is killed/failed/complete

Email (job complete)

Tooltip - Send email on job completion (success or failure)

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Sends mail to the designated user based on the status of the job being complete

Email (failed frames)

Tooltip - Send email on job completion (success or failure)

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Sends mail to the designated user based on the status of the job being failed

Blocked

Tooltip - Set initial state of job to "blocked"

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Enable this tickbox to ensure after submission this job is in a blocked state

Stderr->Stdout

Tooltip - Redirect and consolidate the job stderr stream to the stdout stream

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Enable this if you would like to combine you logs

Job Label

Tooltip - Optional label to identify the job. Must be a unique within a Job Process Group (pgrp).

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Legacy method of labelling jobs see Job Tags

Job Kind

Tooltip - Arbitrary typing information that can be used to identify the job. Common usage: it can be used to restrict only 1 of this "kind" of job from running on a worker at the same time by setting the job\'s requirements to include "not (job.kind in host.duty.kind)"

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see How to restrict a host to only one instance of a given kind of job, but still allow other jobs

Process Group

Tooltip - Job Process Group (pgrp) for logically organizing dependent jobs. Defaults to the jobid. Combination of "label" and "Process Group" (pgrp) must be unique for a job.

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see Process group labels

Retry Frame/Instance

Tooltip - Number of times to retry a failed frame/job instance. Value of -1 means use the default for the studio.

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Set this to retry any failed frames or instances automatically

Retry Work Delay

Tooltip - Number of seconds to wait before automatically retrying a failed frame/work.

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Set this to create a delay in second between the frame/instance retries

Subjob Timeout

Tooltip - Kill the subjob process if running for the specified time (in seconds). Value of -1 means disabled.

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Use this if the acceptable instance/subjob spawn time is known.

Frame Timeout

Tooltip - Kill the agenda/frame if running for the specified time (in seconds). Value of -1 means disabled.

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Use this if the acceptable frame time is known.

Qube Job Environment

Cwd

Tooltip - Current Working Directory to use when running the job

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Explanation needed

Environment Variables

Tooltip - Environment variables override when running a job

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You can specify key/value pairs of environment variables

This is useful when you might need different settings for your render applications based on different departments or projects

Impersonate User

Tooltip - Submit a job as a specific user. Default is current user. Format <optionladomain>\<username> (advanced --requires impersonate user permissions)

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You can specify which user you would like to submit the job as

This is useful for troubleshooting a job that may fail sent from a specific user

Example:

Setting "qube\josh" would attempt to submit the job with the domain "qube" and the user "josh"

Note: "impersonate user" permissions need to be set on the user submitting this job

Qube Job Run-time-OS-specific Environment Variables

Windows-only Environment Variables

Tooltip - Windows Environment variable overrides when running job

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Used to provide OS specific environment variables for Windows

Linux-only Environment Variables

Tooltip - Linux Environment variable overrides when running job

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Used to provide OS specific environment variables for Linux

Darwin-only Environment Variables

Tooltip - OSX Environment variable overrides when running job

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Used to provide OS specific environment variables for OSX

Qube job Validation & RegularExpression-based Output Parsing

Min File Size

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regex_highlights

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regex_errors

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regex_outputPaths

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regex_progress

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regex_maxlines

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Qube Actions

GenerateMovie

Tooltip - Add linked job to generate movie from output images

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Select this option to create a secondary job that will wait for the render to complete then combine the output files into a movie

Note: For this to work correctly the "Qube (ImagesToMovie) Job..." has to be setup to use your studios transcoding application

Qube Notes

Account

Tooltip - Arbitrary accounting or project data (user-specified)

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This can be used for creating tags for your job

The created tags can be searched in the "Performance Charts" Tab

You can add entries by typing in the drop-down window or select already created accounts from the drop-down

UI "Maxwell Render Job..."

See Also