non-zero error code, 1

Deadline
1

Hi, I’ve been having some issues with a particular submitted file in Deadline. After combing through the maya file to eliminate any noticeable errors that may cause trouble, I still can’t figure out what the issue is. If you have any solutions, they would be greatly appreciated. The log for the slave spits out the following every time:

Error Message
Exception during render: Renderer returned non-zero error code, 1

Slave Log
g Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/include/production.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/lib/production.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/include/shaders_p.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/lib/shaders_p.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/include/shaveMRShader.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/lib/shaveMRShader.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/include/subsurface.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/lib/subsurface.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/include/surfaceSampler.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/lib/surfaceSampler.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: // parsing C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/include/zDepthDOF.mi
0: STDOUT: // loading C:/Program Files (x86)/Autodesk/Maya2008/mentalray/lib/zDepthDOF.dll
0: STDOUT: // generating Maya nodes…
0: STDOUT: File read in 17 seconds.
0: STDOUT: Result: c:/deadline/slave/jobsData/base_house_workshop_0011.ma
0: INFO: Deadline Slave ignoring error: “Warning: Found camera TurntableCameraShape.” because it is not usually fatal.
0: STDOUT: Warning: Found camera TurntableCameraShape.
0: STDOUT: mental ray: got 8 satellite CPUs.
---- January 22 2009 – 02:02 PM ----
0: STDOUT: DB 0.0 f// Maya exited with status 1
0: INFO: Process return code: 1
Scheduler Thread - Render Thread 0 threw an error:
Scheduler Thread - Exception during render: Renderer returned non-zero error code, 1

Error Type
RenderPluginException

Error Stack Trace
at Deadline.Plugins.PluginLoader.RenderTasks(Int32 startTask, Int32 endTask)
at Deadline.Plugins.Plugin.RenderTask(Int32 startFrame, Int32 endFrame)
at Deadline.Slaves.SlaveRenderThread.RenderCurrentTask()

2

Seems to be a general Maya error. In this thread, someone talks about running into the same problem with another render farm management system:
forums.cgsociety.org/archive/ind … 15353.html

The thread is about 9 months old, so I’m not sure if this bug still exists in Maya 2009.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

Ok, I think I remembered what I did to solve this the last time it occurred. While it is a tremendous pain to go through, recreating your render layers from scratch seems to fix the problem. There probably are occasional remnants of deleted objects that had been imported into the scene that are causing it to futz out, and recreating render layers allows you to start fresh.

I’ll give an update after reapplying everything and submitting again…

4

so now it seems that I only get the error when I submit render layers using mental ray, and not those with maya software. this is quite the predicament. i’ll keep tinkering.

5

going through the error log, i noticed this line:

0: STDOUT: mental ray: got 8 satellite CPUs.

however, the machine this slave is running on has only 4 CPUs. could this be the problem?

6

I doubt it. This is just standard mental ray output, which is printed out for all jobs. I think that message indicates that 8 satellite CPU licenses are available, not that 8 CPUs will be used for rendering.

7

been digging even further into this dilemma, and I noticed that the frames are rendering successfully to both local and network drives, and the error is thrown (I suppose) on completion of the task. deadline then marks the task as failed and requeues it, even though the frames were successfully rendered. VERY strange.

8

In most cases, all Deadline has to go off of is the result that the renderer returns, so if it returns non-zero, that means that something has gone wrong. Unfortunately, there really is no way for Deadline to tell if the problem occurred after the output was written successfully. Theoretically, it could check if the output exists, but that’s not reliable because the frames could be corrupted, or you could be trying to overwrite existing frames. So because the render is essentially telling Deadline that it failed, that’s what Deadline has to go with.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
9

I was really hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but removing all render layers fixed the problem. I really wanted to find some other solution to this, but it seems yet again I have been bent over by the wrath of Autodesk, and will have to create separate files for each render pass. Joy.

Thanks for the input though, it was most helpful.