AWS Thinkbox releases Deadline 10.1
Originally posted on 28 August 2017. Scroll down for news of the 10.1 update.
Thinkbox Software has released a public preview of Deadline 10, its render management system.
The update streamlines the process of rendering in the cloud via Amazon Web Services, part of Thinkbox’s new parent company; and introduces a new Remote Connection Server for connecting over public internet.
New AWS Portal aims to make cloud rendering via Amazon Web Services a “few-click process”
Although it isn’t the first update to come out after Amazon acquired Thinkbox this March, Deadline 10 is where the product’s new ownership really makes itself felt.
The release adds a new AWS Portal feature, the “first step” towards making rendering the cloud via Amazon Web Services a “few-click process”.
According to a post by lead developer Jon Gaudet in Thinkbox’s forum, Deadline 10 natively integrates with AWS via users’ existing AWS accounts, tagging AWS instances for tracking.
The software then automatically connects to the user’s on-premises render farms, synchronising with local asset servers to ensure “all appropriate files have been transferred before rendering begins”.
The update also introduces a new Remote Connection Server feature to “[enhance] the secure connection to and interactions with remote and cloud-based render farms over public internet”.
There’s no mention of cloud service providers other than Amazon, although Gaudet notes that Thinkbox remains “committed to delivering new capabilities for on-premises deployments” in future releases.
New DCC software available to rent per-minute via Thinkbox Marketplace
In separate news, Thinkbox has also added new software to Thinkbox Marketplace, its online platform for buying on-demand metered licences of Deadline and the DCC applications rendered through it.
Usage is billed per-minute, but must be prepaid in blocks of anywhere between 50 and 70,000 hours.
Maya and Arnold have just been added, and 3ds Max is “coming soon”. Other tools available include the Krakatoa, Maxwell, Mental Ray, Redshift and V-Ray renderers, plus Katana, Nuke, RealFlow and Yeti.
Updated 17 October: Thinkbox Software – or strictly, AWS Thinkbox, the new official name for the company – has released Deadline 10.1, the first major update to the product in two years.
The release features “massive changes under the hood”, including improvements in scalability: Deadline’s Remote Connection Server now supports “thousands” of slave instances running concurrently.
In addition, AWS Thinkbox has removed Mono as a dependency in favour of .NET Core.
Deadline can also now detect when it is running on AWS resources, such as EC2 instances, on which it is now free to use, and no longer requires any licensing set-up.
In addition, Houdini can now be used in Deadline’s AWS Portal, while on-demand Houdini Engine licences are available via the Thinkbox marketplace.
Pricing and availability
Deadline 10.1 is available for Windows 7+, Windows Server 2008+, Linux distros, and Mac OS X 10.9+.
With the official release of Deadline 10.0, pricing was updated to $48/node/year, including maintenance, although commercial licences, priced at $195/node, were then still available on request.
Read a full list of new features in Deadline 10.1 in the online release notes