I took a look at your log file you attached. It does look like this is a problem with Design 2010. When you submit your file in sp1 you need to tell deadline that you are using Design. So if you are using their submit dialog just be sure to check “use design version”, or if you are submitting from command line be sure to include IsMaxDesign=True in your info file. That should take care of your problem.
There are two ways to tell this was a design problem one the lightning.dlx error and also in the log it said it couldn’t find the ini file. Basically it was looking in wrong place for the settings. These are the same two issues I was having before.
Just a note to the Devs perhaps it would be less confusing if 2010Design were considered a completely different version? That way you just specify Version=2010Design or select it from the drop down in the dialog. That would also simplify your python script as well.
Wow, I can’t believe we overlooked this. Thanks!
To Eric:
Yes, it does look like the problem is related to you using the Design edition. Are you submitting from the Monitor or from within 3dsmax? The integrated 3dsmax should be detecting if you’re using Design and set the necessary setting during submission, but if you’re submitting from the Monitor, you need to check the Use Design Edition checkbox.
Cheers,
I never even noticed that “Design Edition” checkbox! But now when I submit a job, I get this error:
“An error occurred in StartJob(): GetConfigEntry: Script accessed non-existent config key RenderExecutable2010Design (Deadline.Plugins.RenderPluginException)”
This is when submitting through the Deadline Monitor. I haven’t set up the plugin for submitting through 3ds Max yet, as I wanted to make sure it was working first.
Hmm, that would indicate that you may have an older version of the 3dsmax plugin. I know you mentioned that you had installed the patch from the forum. Did you apply this patch to Deadline 3.1 or Deadline 3.1 SP1? It should only be applied to Deadline 3.1, since SP1 contains a newer version of the plugin. I’ve checked a fresh install of 3.1 SP1, and the 3dsmax.dlinit config file contains a RenderExecutable2010Design entry. Can you check the 3dsmax plugin configuration in the Monitor to see if there is a render executable setting for Max 2010 design?
I’ve also attached the plugin here, so you can move the contents of \your\repository\plugins\3dsmax to a back up location, and then unzip the attached file to \your\repository\plugins\3dsmax. Note that you may have to reconfigure the 3dsmax plugin configuration from the Monitor.
Cheers,
Looks like replacing that plugin as well as making sure the “Use Design” checkbox was checked resolved the issue. I had indeed installed that downloaded patch over the 3.1 SP1 install, so it looks like I broke it trying to fix it. Thanks for all the help, everyone.
Cheers,
Eric
Hello, Forgive me for sounding like a newb as I’ve tried to follow this thread as it seems like I’ve encountered the same error but I still don’t understand how to solve it. I’m using 3ds Max Design 2011 64 bit on Win 7 Pro with Vue xstream 8.5 plugin. As I’ve read in a few previous posts
I’m not sure exactly how or where to change IsMaxDesign=True in the info file. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Here is the error I get when I try to render to a slave:
Error Message
An error occurred in StartJob(): 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.
=======================================================
Slave Log
OK"
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.Loading of custom driver failed.” will be handled by pressing “OK”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “Warning” will be handled by pressing “OK”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.Welcome To Vue 8 xStream!.” will be handled by pressing “Don’t show this dialog again;Close”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.Vue 8 xStream.” will be handled by pressing “OK”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.3ds Max Performance Driver.” will be handled by pressing “OK”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.* Autodesk Customer Involvement Program.*” will be handled by pressing “OK”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.nPower Software Plugin Product Selection Dialog.” will be handled by pressing “Solids Bundle (Solids + Translators);OK”
0: INFO: Stdout Handling Enabled: False
0: INFO: Popup Handling Enabled: True
0: INFO: Using Process Tree: True
0: INFO: Hiding DOS Window: False
0: INFO: Creating New Console: False
0: INFO: Render Executable: “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2011\3dsmax.exe”
0: INFO: Render Argument: -p “dl.ini” -q -s “D:\users\Administrator.Render-Farm1\AppData\Local\Prime Focus\Deadline\slave\plugins\deadlineStartupMax2011.max”
0: INFO: Startup Directory: “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2011”
0: INFO: Process Priority: BelowNormal
0: INFO: Process is now running
0: INFO: Waiting for connection from 3dsmax
Scheduler Thread - Render Thread 0 threw an error:
Scheduler Thread - An error occurred in StartJob(): 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.
I’m assuming you’re using the Design edition of 3dsmax, correct?
If that’s the case, are you submitting from the Monitor or from within 3dsmax? If it’s the former, you need to enable the “Use Design Edition” option before submission. This is so that Deadline can copy the plugin files to the correct folder. If you’re submitting from within 3dsmax, that information should be sent automatically to Deadline.
Setting “IsMaxDesign=True” manually is only required if you are writing your own custom submitter, but if you are submitting from the Monitor or within 3dsmax, you don’t need to worry about it.
Cheers,
Thanks for your response, I’ve been submitting from within 3DS Max Design but I still get the error. I also tried submitting from the monitor (though this isn’t my preferred method) as well and still get the same error and I do have “use design edition” checked on. Any other suggestions as to what could cause the problem? I’m only testing on the demo license right now with 2 computers but if I get this working my company will buy 10 licenses and upward. Could I have downloaded/installed the wrong version? I’m using 4.1
Thanks for the additional info. This should work fine in 4.1, so the next thing to do would be to send us a full render long for a job that produced this error. Just right-click on the job and select Job Reports -> View Log Reports. This should show where Deadline is copying the lightning file and should help us track down this problem.
Thanks!
Ok I followed your directions and I’ve attached it to this post I hope this helps narrow down what the problem could be.
Render-farm1_00000_20100927123703.logReport (10.4 KB)
Thanks for the log. Can you confirm that the user profile folder used by 3dsmax design on this machine (Render-farm1) is this:
D:\users\Administrator.Render-Farm1\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign\2011 - 64bit\enu
I think you can check this by launching 3dsmax on the machine and selecting Customize -> Configure User Paths.
Cheers,
This was the path on my slave machine D:\users\Administrator\Documents\3dsMaxDesign
This was the path on my main machine D:\users\ohogan\Documents\3dsMaxDesign
I think that explains the problem. Deadline is copying our custom dl.ini file to “D:\users\Administrator.Render-Farm1\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign\2011 - 64bit\enu”, but the user folder defined in Max is “D:\users\Administrator\Documents\3dsMaxDesign”. It looks like we need a way in Deadline to determine the user path if it’s not the default one. Do you know if these paths are stored in an ini or similar type of file in the 3dsmax root folder?
A workaround for now could be to disable using local user profiles on your render nodes. You can do this by setting the useUserProfiles option in InstallSettings.ini to 0 (this file can be found in the root 3dsmax install folder).
Cheers,
On the slave computer I changed installsetting.ini to 0 and I still get the same error. Did I need to do that on my master computer also? I see what you’re saying now and that the problem is the system paths, they just need to be configured properly some how I’ll look into it and see if I can do anything. Thanks for your help so far.
You should only have to do it on the slave folder, but let’s try one more thing.
First, I’ll explain why we copy that dl.ini file. In 3dsmax 2010, there was a bug where we could not specify an absolute path to an INI file via the command line. It had to be a relative path, and that’s either relative to the 3dsmax root folder, or the local user folder (depending on if useLocalProfiles is disabled or not).
We can check if this has been fixed in 3dsmax 2011. To do this, go to \your\repository\plugins\3dsmax, and make a backup copy of 3dsmax.py because we will be editing it. Then open 3dsmax.py and find this section of code:
# 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:
if self.Version >= 2010:
pluginIniDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName( self.MaxRenderExecutable )
Remove the “if self.Version >= 2010:” line, and uncomment the line above it. The result should look 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:
pluginIniDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName( self.MaxRenderExecutable )
This change means that version 2011 will try to use an absolute INI path, and if Autodesk fixed that bug, this error you’re seeing should hopefully go away. So save the file and submit a new job and let us know the results.
Cheers,
Still no luck I tried editing the 3dsmax.py file and still got the same error, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to set the installsetting.ini back to 1 so I tried with both 1 and 0. Unfortunately there was no difference.
Would it matter who was logged onto the computer? Since it seemed that was part of the naming path convention?
If the fix worked, it would have worked in either case. The next thing to try is to see if 3dsmax Design 2011 can even load our Lightning plugin. As far as I know, it should work fine, but it’s worth testing nonetheless.
-
Copy \your\repository\plugins\3dsmax\lightning64Max2011.dlx to the slave you’re doing your tests on. Let’s assume you copy it to a folder called c:\temp\lightning.
-
Edit your 3dsmax plugin.ini file and add an entry for Lightning:
Lightning=c:\temp\lightning
- Launch 3dsmax, and check your Plugin Manager to see if Lightning was loaded.
If it’s loaded, then at least we know that it’s not a problem with Lightning itself. You can then remove it from your plugin.ini file.
Cheers,
I haven’t tested it yet but just out of curiousity is regular max compatible with the design version when using deadline, I know it works with backburner.
As far as I know, it is. I think the only difference between the two is a different layout and different options available, but I think it’s the same underneath the hood.
I should’ve told you this before but it does work with my main computer with the monitor on it when I have the slave running as well it will load up the job and complete it using just my computer and not the slave setup in the renderfarm. Another thing that might help you narrow the problem is that when I tried to initially set it up with backburner I could see all the slaves but it would only use one at a time so everytime I would hit the refresh button a different machine would come. After some research I’ve also discovered I needed to tweak some settings since im running on a 64bit machine and backburner is a 32 bit program. But all of this “settings” is what initially made me try Deadline in the first place to avoid a lot of setting up I read that as long as Deadline can see the network it should run which saves me from using a Manager with backburner. Here are some other factors the might come into play that could be a cause for error, the renderfarm is connected to a through a 48 gig switch with about 20 computers with one line connecting it to another 16 gig switch by my work area, I’m going to try and connect it directly to my machine to see if that “solves” anything.