Whenever I send a job with ignore missing external files checked, it still errors on frame 0 of the render by saying that the job is missing map files. How do I handle it so that it will ignore the missing files for frame 0 as well? Tks.
-Christian
Mike Owen explains the problem here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4050&p=16230&hilit=ERR%3A+Map#p16225
It’s a 3dsmax issue that we haven’t found a workaround for yet. We explicitly tell 3dsmax to ignore missing files, but it decides to fail the render anyways on frame 0. 
Cheers,
- Ryan
Hi,
Ryan - Could you give Bobo a nudge as I know he is looking into this issue for us?
Apart from a studio building something like a private sanity checker to try and make sure 3dsMax files are submitted with all maps/assets paths being valid.
Another issue which tends to catch out artists regularly, is the “missing maps” dialog when a 3dsMax file opens. Naturally, an artist tries to fix the missing maps by browsing to them, in effect, creating a “local session path” which can be seen in under “Customise”, “Configure User Paths” and click on the “External Files” path. Now if the user has made any of these local paths then it will be visible here, together with the standard “3dsMax” - ‘project folder’ based directories, which can be safely ignored. Now everything will be fine rendering locally, but send it to Deadline or in fact, any render manager, and the job will fail, particularly on frame-0 as these local paths are missing.
Thinkbox have provided the means to import a *.mxp file (check out the “Save as…” button at the bottom of the dialog mentioned above), when you submit a job to Deadline.
However, I think we could improve this process more! What we could do is have a sanity check that checks for the existence of any local sessions paths beyond the standard “project folder” based ones and flag it to the user before submission. If the user “right-clicks” the sanity check to auto-fix, then Deadline could be made to automatically create a *.mxp file which is then submitted with the job, which will fix this problem of missing assets.
Getting back on subject, although this will help, it won’t fix the bug on frame-0 which is firmly an Autodesk bug, which I have just submitted an official bug report on.
Mike
EDIT: Feel free to contact Autodesk directly, quoting BUG report: #06730837 on this issue. The more the merrier!