New render farm setup, problem with old max files

Deadline
1

Hi,

Little bit of intro to the background of my problem:

  1. Converted all stand-alone workstations setup to render farm with deadline 3.0
  2. Provided new workstations to designers and copied all their 3DS max 2008 files back to their drives
  3. All external file references messed up, so provided 3DS Max 2008 with the required user paths

The deadline submit to max script runs very well with any new scenes and materials. But, when any old files are opened up max gives error that the external files are missing. So, we went to the asset tracker of max and remapped all paths. Now, when we submit the job to deadline using the Copy LOCAL files to repository option, it does not give any error and the submission is successful. But, the job does not show up in the monitor at all. When we check the slaves, there is some error about this job in one of them. On checking the repository, the job is there with all its files. Now, when I try to cleanup the repository, the following error shows up:

There is an error in XML document (93, 20). (Job has been corrupted, it is recommended that this job be removed from the repository: R:jobs\999_100_999_3e44fdad\999_100_999_3e44fdad.job) (Deadline.Jobs.JobCorruptedException)
at Deadline.Storage.JobStorage.LoadJobFromFile(String filename)
at Deadline.Storage.JobStorage.LoadJob(String jobId, Boolean archived)
at Deadline.Storage.Caches.JobNormalStorageCache.OnFetchValueViaKey(Object key)
at FranticX.Collections.KeyValueCache.GetValueViaCacheEntry(CacheEntry cacheEntry)
at FranticX.Collections.KeyValueCache.GetElementViaCacheEntry(CacheEntry cacheEntry, CacheElement cacheElement)
at FranticX.Collections.KeyValueCache.GetCacheElements(Type elementType, CacheElement cacheElement, ExceptionCollection& exceptionCollection)

Can you tell me where I am going wrong?

Thanks

2

Can you send us the job file? We’ll take a look to see what the problem might be. The path to the job file should be:
\your\repository\jobs\999_100_999_3e44fdad\999_100_999_3e44fdad.job

Also, do you get this error when “Copy LOCAL files to repository” isn’t selected?

In the meantime, we’ll take a look to see if our submission script is messing anything up.

Thanks!

  • Ryan
3

Thanks for the reply.

I can send you the job by tomorrow.
I noticed something new today. This problem happens only with very heavy max files which are over 100MB and have more than 50 external files for a single frame rendering. Other older jobs run just fine.
The error does not happen with the “Copy LOCAL files to repository” not selected, but the render materials are missing and blank.

Regards,
Serd.

4

Dear Ryan,

Attached is the job in rar format. Please let me know what’s wrong here and how to fix it.

Thanks and Regards,
Serd.

5

The problem is with this particular texture file:
Woods & Plastics.Finish Carpentry.Wood.Paneling.1.jpg

The ampersand character ‘&’ is messing up our job XML file, which is resulting in the error you’re getting. If I removed this one file from the job XML file, the problem went away. I guess the current workaround would be to avoid using texture file names with ‘&’ in them.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
6

Hi,

Thanks for the solution for the above problem.

However, I have another issue with rendering the jobs using Vray sun and Vray lighting. When rendering is done through deadline, the output is overburnt as compared to local rendering which is just fine. This problem does not happen when we use normal lighting in 3DMax. I am attaching 2 sample jobs, one with Vray sun showing the output difference between deadline render and local render, and the other rendered in deadline with normal lights. We are using 3DMax 2008 with Vray 1.50 SP1. Please let me know how to resolve this issue as all the artists who use the Vray lights have lots of held up jobs.

Thanks & Regards,
Serd.
Jobs.rar (3.34 MB)

7

I tested this out here. The only difference was that the tiles in the floors weren’t visible. We’re running a special build of VRay, so I’m not sure if that has anything to do with it. Are you using any sort of gamma correction? We’ve heard of problems with this, but we’ve never been able to reproduce them here.
output.zip (1.46 MB)