Unknown Escape Sequence?

Deadline
1

Someone came to me with this error and I’ve never seen it before. Were still running deadline 4.1 max 2011.
Any ideas?

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Error Message

An error occurred in StartJob(): 3dsmax: Exception caught in 3ds max: unknown escape sequence

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Slave Log

hing the regular expression “.* Autodesk Customer Involvement Program.*” will be handled by pressing “OK”
0: INFO: Any popup windows with titles matching the regular expression “.nPower Software Plugin Product Selection Dialog.” will be handled by pressing “Solids Bundle (Solids + Translators);OK”
0: INFO: Stdout Handling Enabled: False
0: INFO: Popup Handling Enabled: True
0: INFO: Using Process Tree: True
0: INFO: Hiding DOS Window: False
0: INFO: Creating New Console: False
0: INFO: Render Executable: “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2011\3dsmax.exe”
0: INFO: Render Argument: -p “dl.ini” -q -s “C:\Documents and Settings\svcrender\Local Settings\Application Data\Prime Focus\Deadline\slave\plugins\deadlineStartupMax2011.max”
0: INFO: Startup Directory: “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2011”
0: INFO: Process Priority: BelowNormal
0: INFO: Process is now running
0: INFO: Waiting for connection from 3dsmax
---- August 15 2011 – 10:48 AM ----
0: INFO: Connected to 3dsmax plugin version Lightning 4.1.0.43189 Sep 1 2010 11:26:15 R
0: INFO: Scene file to render: C:\Documents and Settings\svcrender\Local Settings\Application Data\Prime Focus\Deadline\slave\jobsData\WOC_8_v02.max
0: INFO: Camera: Camera-SC05\8_UPDATED
0: INFO: Restarting 3dsmax after each frame: 1
0: INFO: Showing frame buffer: 1
0: INFO: Overriding render output: \Bentfile02\world_of_coke-2719\3D SHOTS\Shot 8\3D RENDERS\WOC_8_v02_Beauty\WOC_8_v02_Beauty_.tga
0: INFO: Overriding save file option: True
0: INFO: Frame number base: 0
0: INFO: Remove padding from output filename: 0
0: INFO: Ignore missing external file errors: 1
0: INFO: Ignore missing UVW errors: 1
0: INFO: Ignore missing XREF errors: 1
0: INFO: Ignore missing DLL errors: 0
0: INFO: Disabling Multipass: 0
0: INFO: Loading 3dsmax scene file
Scheduler Thread - Render Thread 0 threw an error:
Scheduler Thread - An error occurred in StartJob(): 3dsmax: Exception caught in 3ds max: unknown escape sequence

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Error Type

RenderPluginException

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Error Stack Trace

at Deadline.Plugins.ScriptPlugin.StartJob(Job job)
at Deadline.Plugins.Plugin.StartJob(Job job)
at Deadline.Slaves.SlaveRenderThread.RenderCurrentTask()

2

We’ve never seen that before either. The problem appears to be happening when Max is trying to load the scene file. If you go to a slave that reports this error, are you able to boot up Max in interactive mode and load the scene file manually?

3

My render slaves cant really open files since they ran out of the 30 test period years ago. The file throws the same error on all my render slaves and we opened it fine on 2 machines in the room. We launched it from both working machines and got the same error.
I can try having it render over the net on one of our room machines to see if it throws the same error, but i dont know if that will help.

Fred

4

Weird. Is it just one scene in particular that does this, or is it more widespread?

I checked our code, and when we tell 3dsmax to load the scene file, we also tell it the camera name. Maybe there is an improperly escaped character in the camera name?

5

Yeah, Just one file. And the artist is a new guy, so something is different. Ill check the camera name. I didn’t realize you could have illegal characters in the camera name?

Thanks

6

Yeah, I’m not even sure if that is possible. The only strings that Deadline passes to Max are the scene file path and the camera name. The scene file path is printed out in the log, and it looks fine, which is the only reason I’m thinking it could be the camera name. :slight_smile:

7

Hey, the Camera name is ALSO printed and it looks bad :slight_smile:

Camera-SC05\8_UPDATED

There shouldn’t be a backslash in a camera name, as Max could assume it was an escape sequence…

8

It’s also possible to enter a “tab” at the end of a camera name which is even harder to see when your debugging :slight_smile:
IIRC (working remotely), we put a private sanity check in place to handle ALL illegal chars as Max allows all kinds of bad things in a camera name. Perhaps lightning.dlx could help by wrapping an extra set of quotations around the camera name to handle everything?

9

Yeah, we could the camera name in quotes in the output. We’ll also wrap the paths we print out with them too.