No render elements when rendering a region? (3dsmax, Vray 3, DL9)

Deadline
1

I’ve been having issues lately that when i send a region the render elements are not saving out, the beauty pass renders and saves just fine, but elements get overlooked. if i render the whole scene it’s fine…

does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

Luke.

2

What are the V-Ray VFB settings? Recently, Chaos Group added a few new options to the Split Output controls, so if have the option to output Render Elements as separate files to a sub-folder, and you have enabled the Local Rendering option in the Deadline Submitter, the file names might get out of sync and fail to copy to the final destination.

We have worked on fixing this for Deadline 10, but as a quick workaround, does it work ok if you uncheck the “Enable Local Rendering” option in the Options tab?
docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produ … ptions-tab

Background: When Local Rendering is turned off, V-Ray is responsible for writing the files to the final destination. However, if there is a network hick-up, there is a possibility that the files might not be saved correctly. When the Local Rendering option is on, the V-Ray output is redirected to a temp. folder on the local Slave machine, and once the rendering is done, Deadline attempts to copy the resulting files to the actual output destination on the network. If a network hick-up occurs, Deadline will make several attempts, and if the network is still down, you can still go and fish out the output manually from the temp. folder on the Slave’s C: drive.
However, if the file names Deadline has computed do not match what V-Ray ended up writing, the copy process could fail. This would be noted in the Slave’s log file where it says something like “Failed to find output file…” in the end of the rendering report.

3

Thanks for the reply mate, I’ll check it out and report back!

much appreciated.

4

So no luck by switching the “enable local rendering” option off…?

any other suggestions?

5

Hey Luke,

Can you send over some reports from the jobs not outputting the elements?

This doc explains how to extract Job Reports:

https://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/products/deadline/10.0/1_User%20Manual/manual/logs.html#job-reports-and-history

Thanks!

Charles

6

yeah sure, can you pm me your email address?

thanks again!

7

Usually the support system is a safer place for this sort of thing (won’t get lost as easily). You can send them over to support@thinkboxsoftware.com and mention this thread in it.

8

So, something about this sounds very familiar… Do you have this guy checked? If so, can you uncheck it?

image.png

Can you get exact versions of Deadline, V-Ray and Max? I’m fairly sure I’ve seen this in either V-Ray 3.5 or 3.6.

I think that both Mike and Bobo have a better idea on this front than I do, but they’re currently travelling. What’s your urgency on this guy? I can try to tap some other internal resource here if needed.

9

yeah sure…

3ds Max 2016
VRay 3.60.03
Deadline 9.0.4.0

and the separate render channels option is unchecked…

10

Any chance you could update to a newer build of Deadline 9?
We are currently on 9.0.12.0, which is 8 updates and over half a year ahead of your version.

All relevant bug fixes added to Deadline 10 have been back-ported to 9, so I hope that using the latest version of SMTD and the 3ds Max plugin will solve your problem.

You can download the installer from downloads.thinkboxsoftware.com with a regular Amazon.com account.

P.S. After looking at the log you provided via the support ticket, the error is definitely in the 3dsmax.py in your \Repository\Plugins\3dsmax\ folder. In earlier versions of Deadline 9, there was a bug in a portion of the code that manipulates the split buffer of V-Ray by executing a custom script on the slave to re-set the path to the Tile-specific name. It was missing handling for the cases of Local Rendering vs. No Local Rendering, and always repathing to the local temp. folder on the slave. But you are not rendering with Use Local Rendering checked, so the file gets written to what amounts to a black hole and is getting lost…

That bug was fixed on July 28, 2017, your build is from June 12, 2017. Hence the problem.
If you cannot update your network to Deadline 9.0.12.0, I can send you the latest 3dsmax.py for Deadline 9 to try it out and see if it fixes the issue…

11

I’m actually waiting on the link to download Deadline 10 from our retailer…
So i’ll chase them up (they’re moving offices atm)…

thanks for the help!

Luke.

12

Well, the good news is the link is no longer a dark secret. :smiley:

You can grab it from downloads.thinkboxsoftware.com/