When rendering locally we get both clean voxel pass renders with krakatoa as well as all the krakaota render elements in the same folder. When submitting to deadline , with the standard max gui submitter that comes with deadline, We get no render elements ( somtimes just empty folders that have the render element names) and unusual white splotches. After submitting we also get errors about render elements paths having illegal characters and each krakatoa render element has a new self generated path which we don’t want.
This might be a better question for the Krakatoa forums, but I can explain why your element paths are changing. The option for this can be disabled in the 3ds Max Pathing Options rollout under the Render tab in the max submitter. Just disable the “Update Render Elements’ Paths” option.
If this doesn’t help with the missing/blotchy render elements, you should post about this problem on the Krakatoa forums.
Okay, we resolved the splotches, but our render elements still aren’t rendering when submitted to deadline, but render just fine localled through the max frame buffer. No difference when disable or enable “update render elements paths”
Just to clarify we have no paths specified for the individual render elements. when we render locally it just adds a suffix onto the end of the standard output file name from the render dialog and spit out the elements.
Can you post a log from a job that doesn’t produce render elements? Just right-click on the job in the Monitor and select Job Reports -> View Log Reports.
We currently have no idea why your render elements wouldn’t get saved, especially if you have the option enabled in the submitter to update the RE paths. Hopefully a log will shed some light on what’s going on, because Deadline should be logging each file it is writing to disk.
it says my render element output path is empty. But, it renders out the render elements just fine locally and I have update RE filenames when I submit to deadline.
Does it render the render elements locally if you open the MAX file from the Deadline Repository’s job folder?
It sounds like the scene saved for rendering on Deadline does not have the paths, while your local one does.
Can you zip and upload the scene found when you select the job in the Monitor and press Ctrl+D to explore the job folder?
When I did my test, while it would not render for some other reason, the scene I found saved in the Job folder had the correctly renamed paths with the sub-folders. It is possible that the repathing code is doing something wrong with your paths.
Once again, can you create the simplest scene imaginable (say, a PRT Volume from a teapot and a spotlight) with the same render elements you had in your more complex scenes, and the same path names, reproduce the problem and upload the original MAX file and the one sent to Deadline? I would love to see what the scenes look like and search for the problem (which is most probably in SMTD and not in Krakatoa).
When I opened the base file, it had no render output path assigned, and the RE also did not have any.
But when I opened the Repository file, it had a render output path set to
“Y:\popejoan2_pjn-2475\296\0280\elements\3d\cgfx\v018farmtest\RE_farm_test_.exr”
and render elements set to something like
“Y:\popejoan2_pjn-2475\296\0280\elements\3d\cgfx\v018farmtest\Krakatoa SpecificLight_Krakatoa_SpecificLight\RE_farm_test__Krakatoa_SpecificLight.exr”
which looks good to me.
The error you posted claims that the file in the Repository (being rendered) has empty RE paths. I cannot explain that if the file you named “_repository” is indeed the one sent to Deadline, since it has paths…
Am I missing something? Why were there no output paths whatsoever in the non-repository scene?
My mistake I didn’t give you the latest version of the test file. ill upload that asap. The correct file does indeed have a standard output path with empty Render Element output paths. When I open the repository file The RE paths are generated when submitted to deadline and yet render nothing.
I switched my machine to Krakatoa v1.6.1 and submitted a job to Deadline (which runs on the same machine).
To do this, I had to set the output path of the beauty pass to my own path, but the Render Elements were still using empty paths when I started the submission.
In the Pathing options of SMTD, I had the 3 related options checked - Update Render Elements’ Paths, Also Update RE Filenames and Permanent RE Path Changes.
The job rendered and produced render element output for 3 out of the 4 passes, with the following issues:
*Diffuse Render Element saved correct alpha, but no RGB. This is because it only works in Phase modes with a Specular component, like Phong Surface. In Isotropic mode, it does not get populated at all.
*ZDepth was correct, containing the distance in world units in the floating point R,G and B channels.
*Krakatoa_SpecificLight saved to the same file name and folder, so the content of the file was overwritten and contained the data from the SECOND render element.
To solve this problem, one would have to rename the one Krakatoa_SpecificLight render element to something like “Krakatoa SpecificLight Spot002”. Otherwise, there will always be a collision between the sub-folder names which are given based on the element name and type.
*Once I renamed the second SpecificLight RE to have a different name, I received the missing sub-folder and the Render Elements output was correctly saved into it.
Now there is one more detail that might be important: My SMTD is set to “Enable Local Rendering” under the Options tab. This means that all files (Render output file and Render Elements files) are first saved in a temp folder locally, then copied to the final destination on the network once the task succeeded. In a real network with a lot of traffic, this should ensure that no file access errors would sneak in during the saving of the render data. Please make sure the option is checked in your SMTD dialog when submitting…
In short, I could not produce bad output with your original file, except for missing the one SpecificLight element due to naming collision. The Diffuse RE is supposed to be black in Isotropic mode and would output correctly in Phong Surface or Marschner Hair mode. Using Local Rendering should ensure all files are saved locally first and then sent to the final destination correctly (this includes multiple attempts in the case of a network congestion).
Please let me know if my findings do not match what you are experiencing!