That’s interesting that it works on one machine (yours) and not your slaves. Have you tried reinstalling 3dsmax on any of your slaves? The best plan of attack would be to pick one machine, and maybe start by uninstalling/reinstalling 3dsmax and see if that makes a difference. If not, maybe even try wiping it and starting from scratch with a fresh 3dsmax and Deadline installation. In either case, leave all 3dsmax defaults the way they are (ie: user path configurations). If you can get it working on one slave, then you can configure the rest of them using the image of the working one.
I don’t think so. The slave does communicate with the lightning plugin using a socket connection, but that’s local to the machine, so a firewall shouldn’t get in the way.
You could always try adding DeadlineSlave.exe and 3dsmax.exe to the exceptions list to see if that makes a difference though.
Hi Russell,
Long time no talk, I was busy with a certain job for a bit before I could turn my attention back to making this work. So as of now I don’t have it even working on my main computer I’ve uploaded an error log maybe this could clear some things up for you(and me). I saw some things that looked like they could’ve meant something but since I’m not a programmer I’m not entirely sure of what I’m looking at. Hope this helps. I also managed to get backburner working the problem was within my antivirus program I had to make it an exception like you suggested.
Thanks again for all your help! Error_log.txt (80.6 KB)
I took a look at the error log, and it appears to be the same error you’ve been getting on your other machines. I had asked a few posts back if you could run a test to ensure that lightning.dlx plugin can actually be loaded: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2558&start=30#p17127
Have you had a chance to try this yet? This test will confirm if the problem is with the plugin itself, or if it’s the way Deadline is telling max to load the plugin. I’m thinking it’s the latter, but confirmation of this will allow us to investigate further in this direction.
Where is the 3dsmax plugin.ini file located? I used search on my computer and nothing came up. If it’s looking to load the 3dsmax\lightning64Max2011.dlx file should it be located here: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2011\plugins. Because I copied and pasted it there if that’s where it’s looking, if Max is looking for it through the repository that folder is located on a network drive could that be a problem?
C:\users"user name"\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign\2011 - 64bit\enu is where the 3dsmax.ini is located, they changed it after max’08. But I managed to solve the problem on my computer all I had to do was copy and paste the lightning64Max2011.dlx file to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2011\stdplugs and not the regular plugins folder. Though this managed to work on my main computer it tries to start on the renderfarm computer but shuts max down before it gets a chance to render the image. I get an “Onconnect socket closes” Any idea of what that could be from? Thanks for all your help this far I definitely would’nt have gotten to this point without you!
I was referring to the plugin.ini file, not the 3dsmax.ini file, but the path I had advised you to check wasn’t 100% accurate either. I had said “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2011\plugins”, when I meant to say “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2011\plugin.ini”.
Also, I check the log you posted, and you’re still getting the same errors:
So it still appears to be the case that the slaves can’t load lightning.dlx. Did you copy this file to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2011\stdplugs on the render nodes? Again, I should refer you back to this post (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2558&start=30#p17127), which you can use to determine if 3dsmax on the slaves can actually load this file without any issues.
I should note that you shouldn’t have to manually copy lightning.dlx to your 3dsmax installation folder in order to render with Deadline (Deadline takes care of this automatically). But I think there is something unique about your setup that is resulting in Deadline not setting up 3dsmax to load lightning.dlx properly. However, for now, I would prefer to confirm that your slaves can actually load lightning.dlx properly, and if it can, we can then focus on why Deadline isn’t setting things up correctly.