3ds Max can fail to load a scene file in a variety of ways. One common case is if the Worker doing the rendering doesn’t have all the dependencies required to render. This can be confirmed if it works on other machines and if manually opening the scene file on that machine fails outside of Deadline.
Some diagnostics the customer can do to help themselves:
- Check the version of Max used on the workstation, or on any farm machines that may be working (if any)
- Check the plugins in use in the scene and compare their versions across working and non-working machines
- If the Worker is running as a service, stop the Launcher service and open the Worker application on that machine
Missing DLLs
The Worker is missing dlls that are required to render the scene.
If the Worker has dlls it breaks when plugin.ini is not present under AppData/Local/Autodesk/3dsMax/ It has path to plugins for Max Plugin directory and Max/Plugins/NVIDIA/Plugins/
Ensure that the dlls are installed on the render node. If the dlls are not needed you can optionally enable the “Ignore Missing DLLs” feature in the SMTD at Render > 3dsmax Startup Rollout
For plugins.ini not present, copy it or create one:
[Directories]
Additional MAX plug-ins=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2017\PlugIns
Additional MAX plug-ins NVIDIA=C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2017\PlugIns\NVIDIA\Plugins\
[Help]
3DSMax 2022 and later
The issue appears to be that Deadline doesn’t load 3dsmax 2022.3 plugins which live in the now legacy standard “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2022\Plugins”.
The workaround we’ve used is to use the new 3dsmax 2022 environment variables (Help) and set ADSK_3DSMAX_PLUGINS_ADDON_DIR to C:\Program FIles\Autodesk\3ds Max 2022\Plugins.