Deadline and 3ds Max 2013: missing lightning.dlx error

Deadline
1

Hi there everyone,

unfortunately I’m having issues deploying Max 2013 on my farm. Deadline seems to be complaining about:

3dsmax startup: Error getting connection from 3dsmax: Deadline 3dsmax startup error: lightningMax.dlx does not appear to have loaded on 3dsmax startup, check that it is the right version and installed to the right place.

Is there anything I can do about this or what else to check so that Deadline does indeed load the plugin up?

Thanks in advance, cheers…

2

Deadline Version: 5.2.0.47700

lightningMax2013.dlx is present in my repository.

3

Nope. Still the same error even when I force the plugin in the 3ds Max plugin directories (so that it should get sourced no matter what). :cry:

4

thinkboxsoftware.com/news/20 … -2013.html

Make sure you are using the latest PU hot-fixes for Max2013.

Autodesk broke Deadline in its initial release.

Mike

5

Hmm… thanks for the tip, Mike, I’ll double check that, but I thought I created a deployment of the Max installation that included a Product Update 5.

I’m installing the PU 5 on the test machine right now, separately, just to eliminate this issue.

6

If this doesn’t fix it, then I can think of one other reason for it failing.
Are you using user profiles in 3dsMax?
Are you on the v5.2 beta?

7

Ok, so I just installed the Product Update 5 and it still fails:

I’m not using User Profiles (though I switched to them when trying to “fix” this bug).
I don’t think I’m on the 5.2 beta, but I could be wrong. The version is: Deadline Version: 5.2.0.47700, FranticX Version: 2.0.0.47694

Edit: nope, it’s the final release: thinkboxsoftware.com/deadlin … e-27-2012/

8

See this snippet from the other week, when I encountered the same issue and Ryan showed a quick fix for the issue. Autodesk, got to love them :slight_smile:

Good news! It seems like Autodesk has finally fixed the bug where passing an absolute plugin ini file via the command line was broken (it’s been broken since 2010). This is the reason we’ve been copying dl.ini to the Max root folder. I just tested with 2013 (user profiles on and off) with absolute paths, and it worked! So we’ll be including this fix in the upcoming 5.2 maintenance release.

For now, it’s a quick tweak in your 3dsmax.py plugin file. Look for these lines:

This is a workaround for 3dsmax 2010 where the ini file passed to the command line needs to be in the 3dsmax install root folder.

if self.Version >= 2010:

Just update the “if” statement to exclude 2013 and later, like this:

This is a workaround for 3dsmax 2010 where the ini file passed to the command line needs to be in the 3dsmax install root folder.

if self.Version >= 2010 and self.Version < 2013:

Save the file, and you should be good to go! Let me know if this works for you.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
9

Hell yeah!

Thanks a lot, Mike! This fixed the issue! :slight_smile:

You’ve got another beer from me. :sunglasses: