To improve usability and provide more flexibility, the Deadline scheduler node in TOPs has gone through a parm interface redesign in Houdini 17.5.216 (today's daily build).

First, the Scheduler Parms are changes outlined in red:


The working directory (location where all intermediate and generated files for the jobs) section allows to provide the Local Root Path, Farm Root Path, and Relative Job Directory. It seems that most users have all the farm machines using the same mounted path as the local machine, so the improved parm interface defaults to using the Local Root Path for all machines on the farm. A toggle allows to override the Farm Root Path to provide a different value (e.g. farms with different mount points or cross-platform machines). This can be a literal path, or another variable (such as $PDG_DIR) which can be mapped via Deadline Repository Configuration's Mapped Paths.

The Relative Job Directory will be appended to both the root paths above. It is the parent directory used by all work items that are executed using that specific Deadline scheduler node. It defaults to using the hip file name.

Next, the Job Parms changes are also outlined in red:


The new Paths section allows to override paths for Hython and Python. These default to $HFS/bin/hython and $HFS/bin/python, respectively, and requires the farm machines to have $HFS mapped through Deadline's Repository Configuration's Mapped Paths. Note that on Windows, the .exe extension needs to be added.

Example of Deadline Mapped Paths using 2 different versions of Houdini:


A simpler way, if all farm machines are the same, is to set the paths directly on the scheduler's node parm interface:


Finally, the Job File and Plugin File Key-Values have been changed to use multiparm types, instead of the previous key-value dict parm types. This works around some limitations and brings it in line with the other shipped scheduler nodes. These key-value entries are written out to the job file and plugin file generated to schedule jobs through Deadline.

These changes will require re-creating the Deadline scheduler nodes in your hip files, or at least reverting the interface. Also if you are using scheduler job parm overrides with the Deadline scheduler, you'll need to re-create the node or revert the interface. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.