I’m not sure this is the correct forum to ask this question, but is didn’t happen until I started using Deadline.
I’m having complete objects not render over the network with Deadline and Mental Ray. I’ve had textures and x-refs disappear in the past because the paths weren’t correct, but this is different. All the paths are correct, and there are no x-refs.
They render fine locally. I can even use the Distributed Bucket Rendering option (using the same machines in my Deadline farm) without any errors. It’s only when I send them through Deadline that things disappear. They act like the “renderable” attribute is off.
The objects that won’t render tend to be instances. I’ve tried making them unique, but they still don’t show up.
Has anyone had any similar problems? Is it even related to Deadline? If I should be asking this somewhere else let me know.
Thanks.
I tried about 50 different settings but I think I got it. When I shut off scanline rendering in Mental Ray everything worked.
I did a web search and found this from the mrmaterials web site.
"The scanline option is enabled by default and it allows mental ray to use both methods of calculation to render a scene. When enabled, the scanline option handles the direct illumination (primary rays) only. As expected, raytracing handles the indirect illumination, reflections/refractions, etc.
BTW, if you turn off scanline, that doesn’t mean you’ll lose the direct illumination in your scene, it just means raytracing will take over that task.
So, why would we want to turn scanline off? Zap has explained that the scanline option speeds up simple scenes, but doesn’t really help complex scenes that much. He also mentioned that it creates some memory consumption that isn’t flushable. Therefore, turning it off on complex scenes with BSP2 will help free up some extra memory."
That’s all cool. It works now, but it’s still wierd. I don’t understand why I’d be able to render tile locally, but not through Deadline.
Hope this helps anyone else who has a simular problem.