How can I use GETFRAME on a headless cluster in MATLAB (R2013a)?

I have a large number of figures that I need to plot and capture using GETFRAME. Because the computations are time consuming, I have to send the job to a cluster. When I use GETFRAME, I get the following error message:

 Error using getframe (line 53)

 getframe requires a valid figure window.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

To run MATLAB on a headless computer, you would use the following command:

matlab -noFigureWindow

You can then plot your figures and save them as follow:

surf(membrane)

print myFigure.eps

close

However, if you use the command GETFRAME, this latter causes the error

 Error using getframe (line 53)

 getframe requires a valid figure window.

because the graphics card did not render a figure that GETFRAME can take a screenshot of. Additionally, because workers perform jobs in the background and no display is exported, capturing a snapshot is not possible in the way GETFRAME is implemented.