I have a problem with a 3ds Max 11 Vray 2.1 archvis scene supplied by an external client (including all textures, ies lights, pc2s, and proxies) . The paths to the assets in the scene are obviously mapped to the clients local/network drives - not ours.
From many years experience with 3ds max we do not remap paths using the asset tracker. The reasons for this is that it can reset IES lights to their defaults and it can also reset pointcache animations to start at frame 0. Instead, we have always created an .mxp file, and opted to ‘Use Alternate Path File’ when submitting jobs via Bacburner (or edited the job setting in Backburner to add the alternate path after submission). This has always worked perfectly, and does so with this problem scene.
I know we can specify an .mxp file via the 3ds Max Deadline script , and I’ve done this, but I’m getting random results - with some textures, pc2 files missing from the rendered frames (e.g. missing maps and people with heads, but no bodies).
Has anyone else found this?
The most frustrating part is that Deadline is using the .mxp, but not properly; and we don’t have this issue using the same scene .mxp via Backburner.
I’ve performed a number of controlled tests with simple scenes but sadly can’t identify a common cause.
The alternate path file an important feature for us, so any help would be appreciated.
I took a look through our code, and the MXP file is being applied before the scene is loaded, so I don’t think it’s an issue with “when” we’re applying it.
However, I wonder if the problem is with how we’re applying it. The Max SDK has two options: it can load the MXP file or merge it. Here are the different explanations:
Load:
Merge:
Currently, we are merging it. Maybe that’s the problem? Do you know if backburner loads or merges the file?
Can we discuss the meaning of the word “random” in your post to get a clearer picture of the problem?
When you say “random”, do you mean that if you resubmit the same scene multiple times, you are getting DIFFERENT wrong results each time?
Or do you mean that the results are CONISISTENTLY wrong (I mean, the SAME texture missing, the SAME bodies missing etc.) each time?
This is quite important, because in the first case it would mean that Max is misbehaving and producing inconsistent results from the same data, while in the second case it would be us not passing the data correctly. Since you have tried simpler scenes, you probably have the right info, just did not communicate it completely through your post…
Sorry for not being clear … by “random” I meant the scene picked up some textures (but not all), some pc2’s (but not all) etc.
But it’s the same assets that are CONSISTENTLY wrong/missing in the scene after a number of submissions (i.e. the SAME texture missing, the SAME bodies missing etc. each time).
With the simple test scenes I’ve performed, it all worked beautifully as expected so I’m really struggling to know what’s wrong.
Hence it’s not a clear cut “this is broken” type problem
That would seem to imply that the mxp file is just loaded, and not merged, although I would expect both to work…
When you submit the job to Deadline, do you have the option enabled to ignore missing external files? If it is, can you try disabling it to see if the job at least fails? I’m just wondering if 3dsmax is aware of the missing files…
That’s weird that the render succeeds when there are missing assets…
I guess all we can do is try simply loading the mxp file instead of merging it to see if that helps, OR, making it an option that the user specifies during submission. The latter is probably better. We should be able to do this for Deadline 5.1 (which is currently in beta). The 5.1 release is still a few months away, so if you want to join a beta, see here for more info: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5919
The benefit of you joining the beta is that you can confirm if the “load” option works prior to the release. If it doesn’t, it gives us an opportunity to try and fix this before the release.
For this very purpose I modified the 3ds Max submission scripts (Monitor submissions) to include the options for Pre/Pos load and Pre/Post frame maxscripts.
I wrote a few PostLoad scripts that do exactly this. Take the file and re-map all the assets to the appropriate locations based on simple string parsing.
All you need to do is to supply the script along with the job submission and maxscript will take care of the paths prior to rendering.
I’ve been doing this for quite some time (since I very often work locally on my workstation with local paths, due to speedy SSDs in my workstation and only then I copy everything over to the network for rendering), so I’d say it’s a proven and pretty reliable method of “not having to care” about the paths at all.
If you want, I can give you my maxscripts for that and even share the altered submission scripts so you can setup the same thing on your farm.
Hi Ryan
I’m more than happy to run with the beta and test this. I agree that a merge/load tick box would be great at this stage to see what difference it makes.
Can you let me know when and what beta version I need?
Cheers
Jim
Hi Loocas
Have you had any issues with your scripts resetting ies lights to their default values or resetting pointcache animations to start at frame 0, in the same way using 3dsmax asset tracker does?
I guess this may not even be an issue depending on how you work. My problem is that we take scenes from other artists and have no control over such things.
I’d like the mxp functionality within Deadline to work for us (as mxp’s is how we’ve always done it) and to be able to use the 3dsmax submission plugin, but I really appreciate your kind offer, and if the mxp route fails I’ll be begging you for your scripts .
Best wishes
Jim
I don’t use IES lights, to be honest, so I can’t say I’ve had any issues with these as I simply haven’t tested this at all.
But I’ve seen point caches being tripped. I believe that usually happens with PC2 caches. Since I stopped using these some time ago (various reasons), I haven’t seen this issue. But, with my scripts the .mc and .xml cache files work perfectly fine with my scripts. No issues so far what so ever and I’ve been using it for quite some time.
There are some situations where you can’t use MXP files at all since some of the 3rd party plugins simply don’t expose their external reference files to the Asset Tracker in Max (cough finalRender cough), so I use these scripts to be run on PostLoad to re-path everything in the file based off of simple string parsing methods (so I can re-path any number of external paths to any other number of other external paths).
Anyways, if you want to try my scripts, just let me know, I’ll send you the modifications to Deadline necessary as well as my MAXScripts.
