Hello,
I’m testing 3ds Max 2010 x64 on one of my farm machines (running Deadline 3.1.0.36430) and am getting the “lightningMax.dlx does not appear to have loaded on 3dsmax startup” error when attempting to render. I checked it out with Dependency Walker as per the instructions in a similar post and saw errors finding the MSVCR90.DLL and DWMAPI.DLL files. I reinstalled the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable, but that didn’t help matters. Any suggestions?
Cheers,
Eric
Hey Eric,
Try installing the Visual Studio 2008 Redistributable:
x86: microsoft.com/downloads/deta … laylang=en
x64: microsoft.com/downloads/deta … laylang=en
Let us know if that works!
Cheers,
Hey Ryan,
I just installed the 64-bit Visual Studio 2008 Redistributable, and I’m still getting the same errors and the same missing files in Dependency Walker.
Eric
Maybe try Windows updates and ensure you have .NET framework installed up to v2 on the slave machine?
franticfilms.com/software/suppor … alling.php
Did you try restarting the machine after installing the 64-bit Visual Studio 2008 Redistributable? Not sure if that would help, but it’s worth a try.
I ran Windows Update and installed the latest version of the .NET framework, but still get the same error. Rebooting didn’t help things.
FYI, this was working fine in 3ds Max 2009.
Thought I’d include the error log from the slave here to see if that helps things. I’ve attached it to this post.
The max 2009 plugin is built with Visual Studio 2005, and relies on the VC++ 2005 Redistributable. However, the new max 2010 plugin is built with Visual Studio 2008, which is why we figured installing the VC++ 2008 Redistributable would be the solution. Now that you’ve installed it, maybe search your system for msvcr90.dll to see if that file was actually installed on your machine or not.
I verified that the msvcr90.dll file is installed, and also installed the x86 version of the VC++ 2008 Redistributable to be on the safe side, but no go. Dependency Walker still says the file is missing.
Is it possibly an issue with the Deadline 3ds Max plugin I have installed on the repository? When I originally installed 3ds Max 2010 and was having issues, I installed the plugin that was attached to one of the posts on this forum, which may be older than the one that came with Deadline 3.1SP1. Do you have a patch with the up-to-date 3ds Max plugin that I could reinstall to make sure that’s not the issue?
The 3.1 SP1 installation would have installed over the patch you downloaded from the forum, so you already have the most up to date version of the plugin.
I’m not sure why Dependency Walker would fail to find msvcr90.dll if it’s installed on the machine. I’ll do some digging to see if I can find a reason for this.
Can you check the version of mvcr90.dll? You find this in the file’s properties. The version on my machine is 9.0.30729.1.
Further troubleshooting: I copied the msvcr90.dll from where it was installed in C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS to C:\Program Files\Frantic Films\Deadline\bin, and Dependency Walker no longer gives an error on that particular file for lightning64Max2010.dlx, but it still gives a few other errors, and I still get the same error from the Deadline slave when rendering. I’ve attached a screenshot from Dependency Walker.
Also, we have version 9.0.21022.8 of msvcr90.dll.
I just found that there is a VC ++ Redistributable SP1, which can be downloaded from here:
x86: microsoft.com/downloads/deta … laylang=en
x64: microsoft.com/downloads/deta … laylang=en
Try installing these to see if that helps. I imagine the current problem is that the lightning.dlx plugin is expecting a newer version of the dll.
Cheers,
Hey Ryan,
I saw the VC++ Redistributable SP1 (with version 9.0.30729.1 of msvcr90.dll) and tried that as well, but still got the same thing. I tried copying both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of msvcr90.dll (one at a time, of course) to C:\Program Files\Frantic Films\Deadline\bin and rebooting, but I still get the error when rendering.
Eric
On one of our test machines with 3dsmax 2010 installed, I uninstalled VC++ 2008 Redistributable SP1 and tried to render. Of course, Max crashed because it too relies on msvcr90.dll.
Then I installed non-service pack VC++ 2008 Redistributable. This time, Max started up fine, but I got the same error as you when it tried to load lightning.dlx.
Finally, I installed VC++ 2008 Redistributable SP1, and Max started up and loaded lightning.dlx without any problems.
So this test combined with your findings would indicate that the problem is no longer related to msvcr90.dll. Maybe the next thing to try would be to load the lightning.dlx plugin outside of Deadline and try to use it to render within max. I’ve attached a document that explains how to get Max to load lightning.dlx and how to run debug commands to test the render. Just ignore the part about attaching 3dsmax to a debugger, since all we’re looking for is if max loads the plugin.
Cheers,
Hey Ryan,
Those instructions indicate that the path to the lightning.dlx is C:\deadline\temp\lightning. But on my install, the path is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Frantic Films\Deadline\temp\lightning. I added this line into the plugin.ini file in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2010:
Lightning=C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Frantic Films\Deadline\temp\lightning
After loading 3ds Max, the DeadlineUtil interface doesn’t load, and the “DeadlineUtil” command is undefined.
Eric
Yeah, the documentation is a little old. 
Up until this point, you’ve only been testing on a single machine, correct? Are there any other machines you could try this out on? It would be interesting to know if this problem is limited to this one machine or more widespread.
I installed 3ds Max 2010, VC++ 2008 Redistributable SP1, and the latest NET updates on another one of our slaves running XP 64-bit, and get the same lightningMax.dlx error when attempting to render.
Are you using Design 2010 by any chance? This is identical to the problem I was having with that version, I had to modify the 3dsmax.py file to get it to work. I thought they had fixed it in sp1.