3dsmax not Failing on Missing Xrefs/Ext Files

Deadline
1

Just having a bit of a problem with missing/ dropping out xrefs when rendering some scenes.
I have the “Ignore Missing Xref Errors” turned off as well as the “Ignore Missing External File Errors” turned off.
In the job I can see that those are set to false as well and in the job log I can see this

2016-09-23 13:53:12: 0: INFO: Lightning: TYPE_MISSING_EXTERNAL_FILES = FAIL 2016-09-23 13:53:12: 0: INFO: Lightning: TYPE_MISSING_UVWS = IGNORE 2016-09-23 13:53:12: 0: INFO: Lightning: TYPE_MISSING_DLL_FILES = FAIL 2016-09-23 13:53:12: 0: INFO: Lightning: TYPE_MISSING_XREF_FILES = FAIL

But the job renders successfully.

Submitted using the SMTD and using Deadline 8.0.7

Job_2016-09-20_13-33-11_57e172d608afd915941d96e4.txt (76.8 KB)

2

The Lightning “Ignore…” options control whether the Deadline connection plugin between 3ds Max and Deadline will react to 3ds Max throwing an error message about a missing XRef, Plugin etc. So if you have set it to not ignore missing XRefs and the scene does not fail to render, it means that 3ds Max did not see a missing XRef and did not throw an error. So I suspect the issue is outside of Deadline’s control…

The question changes to: why is 3ds Max not rendering an XRef that it seems to consider existing. I assume that the same scene loads and renders correctly on your workstation(s). Can you try running 3ds Max without Deadline on the relevant slave to see if the XRef will still be missing when the scene is loaded and rendered?

3

Hi Bobo,
thanks for your response.
I ran the job on the my machine using the Slave and it rendered successfully.
I opened the file on my machine and it did bring up the window saying I have a missing Xref.
I clicked render through the max interface and again it showed a window for missing Xref, I closed it and it rendered the image, obviously without the missing xref but it looks the same as the one I got from the job I submitted to Deadline.

So it seems like max is giving me the missing xref warning, it just doesn’t make it to Deadline somehow.

However if I try to render in workstation mode I can see the missing xref window momentarily before Deadline shuts down the job and throws an error.

Error: Dialog popup detected: Title "Missing XRefs", Message "Browse..." at Deadline.Plugins.PluginWrapper.StartJob(String& outMessage, AbortLevel& abortLevel)

Not sure maybe there is a missing xref window suppression that is happening, I know there are some settings for that, but I am not sure if that is the case.

4

That message you posted is not a handler, it is instructions what strings to user if you wanted to make one. But since there isn’t a handler (at least in my installation here), it fails as it should in workstation mode.

You said

I assume you mean it did not fail and produced an image, but it was missing the XRef?

If that’s the case, the ball is back in Deadline’s court.
I will have to let our support engineers / developers look into this.

However, the information in your last post was extremely helpful, thanks for running the tests!

5

Yes, that’s what I meant.
Forgot to mention, I’m running this on 3dsmax 2016, and deadline 8.0.8 not 8.0.7 as I said earlier.

6

Hey,
just wanted to check on this bug, see if anyone was able to figure this one out. We can’t update deadline for a while so I wasn’t able to test this bug on versions above 8.0.8.1

7

Just an update here. I was informed about what we’re assuming is the issue here (mainly not checking the output correctly from the render plugin). I’ll get someone to look into this for you and see where we can fix it up.

Should I just create a scene and remove the XRef’d items to duplicate the problem?

8

Thanks for looking into this Edwin,
Basically if you create a scene with an XRef and then change the path of it to make it the wrong path that should trigger a missing XRef warning, and should also fail the task in deadline.