Max2009:Deadlinev3.0.32934 Issue

Deadline
1

Ryan,
Please see attached Max 2009 file with error reports from monitor & slave.
Not seen this error before…
Mike
3dsMax20009x64_Test_File_&_Error_Reports.zip (76.6 KB)

2

Hey Mike,

I couldn’t reproduce this at first, but I was able to determine that this error was being thrown by the python script. It turns out this problem only occurs when overriding the bitmap pager setting because there is a typo in the logging of the original setting. To fix the problem, open \your\repository\plugins\3dsmax\3dsmax.py in a text editor. Around line 385, you should see this:

Change it to this:

You’ll see that the ‘%’ is being changed to ‘%s’, which fixes the problem.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

Thanks Ryan.
That fixed the problem.

An additional problem is that Maxwell 3dsmax renders which are through the perspective viewport also crash as the renderer requires a camera…
Not sure if you want to handle this or its one for SMTD sanity checker?

Also, once I had fixed this issue, my basic Maxwell render scene (as provided before), but with a basic target camera as the viewport, seems to have 2 further bugs…

  1. The Maxwell part of the render seems to abort during rendering, part way through the render and reports back to Deadline that the job completed successfully.
  2. When I boot up my copy of 3dsMax9x64 with creativity extension & sp1 after submitting this job to Deadline, my user profile 3dsmax.ini settings have been over-written to the default…!

(edit) The above line should have read 3dsMax2009x64 and not v9. Also, to be clear, the same local machine was also used in slave mode to net render the submitted file and then upon booting up a fresh copy of 3dsMax, the 3dsmax.ini settings seem to have been reset.

Maybe its just me…I will do some more testing…

Mike

4

Update.
Just checked other versions of 3dsMax and the 3dsmax.ini is reset to factory defaults in 2009x64 and 2008x64 BUT NOT v9x64.
I didn’t check any of the x32 versions. Is this just me? Can someone double-check for me!
Mike

5

Looking into this now. My initial guess is that it has something to do with overwriting the Bitmap Pager setting, since this is the only setting that would cause Deadline to touch the 3dsmax.ini file. Can you confirm if you’re using this feature?

6

There was a bug in the plugin script function ‘SetIniFileSetting’ that was causing the function to return before completely writing out the ini file. So the ini file wasn’t being reset to its default, it was only being partially saved out. This will be fixed in the next release.

I should mention that we’re working on a maintenance release that should be released before the end of October. It won’t require a new license (if you’re already running 3.0), and will fix minor issues like this that have come up since release.

In the meantime, the workaround is to not use the override bitmap pager setting. Sorry if this causes any inconveniences.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
7

Thanks Ryan.
I was just about to write another post that confirms it is the bitmap pager setting being enabled that causes the problem!
However, I noticed that this is only in 2008 and 2009. How come 3dsMax9 is not affected by this bug?
Just need to resolve the other Maxwell issues…
Thanks,
Mike

8

The bug with the SetIniFileSetting function was that it would stop writing out the ini file contents after the setting you changed was written out (in this case, the BitmapPager setting). Perhaps in 3dsmax 9, the setting is near the end of the ini file, so it didn’t appear that it was getting truncated. Just a guess here…

For the maxwell camera issue, we’ve added a general sanity checker that displays a FATAL message instead of the usual notification if the renderer is Maxwell and the selected viewport isn’t a camera.

For the other maxwell problem, where it is telling Deadline that it rendered successfully when it actually didn’t, I’m not sure what we can do about that. Is this a random problem?

Cheers,

  • Ryan