VRAY RENDER ELEMENT IMAGE PATH

Deadline
1

When I setup my render element image paths and then submit to deadline, the images are not saved or the path is different than I set them. Does something special need to be done for th render elements?

Thanks in advance.

2

In the 3dsmax submission script, under the Render tab, there are two options that may be causing this problem:

  1. Update Render Elements’ Paths
  2. Permanent RE Path Changes

What these are supposed to do is update the RE paths before submission so that they match up with the main output image path. However, in Deadline 2.7, there is a known bug where Deadline replaces spaces in the paths with underscores. If you are submitting your job with the two options above enabled, this could be the cause of this problem. Try unchecking these options and submit again to see if you continue to have problems.

In Deadline 3.0 (which should be released in the next week or two), this problem will be fixed.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
3

One problem I had was I was still using 2.0 submission not 2.7. Fixed that. Just submitted again without those options checked.

4

That was the problem and its all fixed now. Thanks Ryan.

5

Hi,

I am using Deadline 3.0 Sp1 but I dont see this option in the Render tab.

  1. Update Render Elements’ Paths
  2. Permanent RE Path Changes

Am I missing something obvious? I am getting the same issue with Vray render elements. Deadline creates a bunch of folders for the Render Elements on the NAS, but then logging at the slave log, it appears to try and write the TGA’s to the AppData folder for the Admin user. I am on Vista x64.

Thanks.
Bob.

6

Hmm, those options SHOULD be there:
franticfilms.com/software/su … dering_Tab

They’re above the “Ignore Missing …” checkboxes near the bottom of the tab page.

If you have Local Rendering enabled in the 3dmax plugin configuration, Deadline will have 3dsmax save the images locally first to the temp folder (which is why you’re seeing it in the AppData folder). Afterwords, Deadline moves the images to their final location on the network.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
7

Hello,

I see the options, and I can now get files to write. However, the files written are completely black and one is missing. If I just tell Max to render the scene, it writes the files out just fine.

Here is how the scene is set up:

  • Vray 1.5 SP1
  • Max render output (Save File) is OFF
  • Vray frame buffer is on
  • In the Vray Frame Buffer options, Enable Built in Frame Buffer is on, render to memory frame buffer is on, save seperate render channels is on, save RGB is on, save alpha is on. The path is set to the NAS path and the file is called passes.tga. This file does NOT get written with deadline, though it does if I just hit render in Max.
  • Under Render Elements, we have VrayLighting, VrayRawLighting, VrayShadows and Vray MatteShadow turned on. The path for each pass is explicitly set to the network share. We see that deadline creates a seperate folder in the share for each pass type, and it does write out the files. However, each file is completely black.

Please let me know if you need more info to repro or debug. Thanks as always for the help!

Bob.

8

Oh, I also have Local Rendering disabled in the Max plugin options.

Thanks.
Bob

9

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the info. I’m working out of one of our satellite offices for the next couple of days, and unfortunately I don’t have the resources at the moment to look into this. I’ve logged this as a bug, and I’ll try to look into it Thursday or Friday. If I need any additional info from you, I’ll let you know!

Cheers,

  • Ryan
10

Hi Ryan,

Did you get a chance to look into this?

Thanks.
Bob.

11

Not yet. I just got back yesterday and I’ve just been trying to catch up since. This might have to wait until next week.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
12

Hi Ryan,

Have you had a chance to look at this yet?

Thanks.
Bob.

13

This appears to be similar to the problem we were having here internally. Try submitting your vray jobs with the vray frame buffer turned off. This essentially leaves everything up to the max vfb, which is now working great for us. In a previous version, we used to have Deadline always turn off the vray vfb on submission, but we tweaked this to allow for vray’s tiled exr rendering through Deadline. However, because we were no longer disabling the vray vfb for normal vray renders (including separate vray REs), we were running into problems. The next release of Deadline will again always disable the vray vfb, except for the case where one is rendering to the vray raw image format (in which case only the memory frame buffer is disabled).

If you are relying on the vray vfb option to split up the render elements, it shouldn’t matter, because with the vray vfb disabled, the max vfb will still save out the separate elements.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
14

Hi,

This fix didnt work, unfortunately. However, it looks like we figured it out. We had the “Restart renderer between frames” set to off. Once we enabled that, the passes were written as expected, even with the VFB turned on. Thanks again for looking into this!

Bob.

15

Just wondering if you guys have had any success with Vray and it’s render elements through the Vray Frame buffer? We’re rendering out exr’s through vray with a few simple render elements included but once the file is submitted to Deadline the job fails. If we turn off the render elements then the job renders through the vray frame buffer without any issues.

We’re using Max 2009 32/64 and Vray SP2 at the moment and haven’t been able to get around this issue.

16

Have you tried turning off the Vray Frame Buffer before submitting the job? If that doesn’t help, also try checking the “Restart Renderer Between Frames” option. We’ve been rendering out RE’s with vray successfully for a while now (ever since we started to force the vray frame buffer off again).

Also, can you explain how the job fails? Are errors being generated for the job, are the RE’s coming out black, etc? If there are errors, can you post one?

Thanks!

  • Ryan
17

Hey Ryan.

we’re rendering it through the vray frame buffer so we could get all of our passes embedded into the exr. We can render it through max no problem and have it spit out the Vray render elements as separate files, but I was wondering if it’s possible to render out an exr that would contain all render elements inside the one exr file.

Whenever we send it to our farm to render the job seems to error out and just hang there.

18

Ah, I didn’t realize you were rendering to the tiled/raw exr format. See this post a few posts up:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1405&start=10#p7592

I believe to get this working in the meantime, you need to enable the vray frame buffer, but disable the memory frame buffer. Deadline 3.1 (due out at the end of March), will take care of this automatically.

Cheers,

  • Ryan
19

Great thanks Ryan. I’ll give it try and let you know how it goes!

20

I am running inot the same issue after i update with version 3.1 of Deadline, all my elements are rendered black (but with correct alpha)… What’s the fix for this ???