Network plugin location problems

[tricky]

I recently made all our render machines look at a network location for all the shared common plugins as I was getting frustrated with manually logging into each node in turn to modify plugins whenever changes/updates were made. It seemed to work fine to begin with, but now I am having a problem with BerconMaps 3.0 - basically, the render machines don't render their buckets properly where the BerconMap is: the tiling seems to be wrong.

The network location of the shared plugins is as follows:-

\\server\bank\NODE PLUGINs

So I modified the plugin.ini by adding the following line at the end:-

Common Plug-ins=\\server\bank\NODE PLUGINs

Any ideas?

[DanielBrew]

I'm having exactly the same problem but our plugins are stored locally on each rendernode. How long have you been using BerconMaps 3.0 for? I changed over yesterday and only noticed the problem today. I think it's a bug in BerconMaps tile, if you start Max, load a scene with a BerconTile in it and hit render it doesn't render correctly. If you change one parameter in the tile then undo it then renders fine. At least that's what's happening here.

[tricky]

Hi Daniel

We've been using version 3 for a while now. Its a fantastic script, but I always find myself fighting with the settings - mainly mapping. This problem is weird though. I can't be sure if it is just BerconTiles as it seems to be happening with BerconNoise as well.

I will try making a change and undoing it...

[tricky]

Tried the making a change idea with no luck.

It seems that my render nodes just aren't seeing the scale of the map properly. This has only started happening today as far as I can tell.

[DanielBrew]

Do your files render ok locally?

What I meant with the make a change and undo thing is I can replicate the problem locally. If I:
1. Shut down Max.
2. Open Max.
3. Open a scene with a BerconTile in it.
4. Render locally.

The mapping on the tiled material is screwed.

Then if I make a change to the BerconTile, undo the change and render again the mapping is ok.

[trixian]

The new bercon maps don't seem to be backward compatible. If you have the old version in a scene, but replaced the dll with the new one, max throws a missing plugin error at startup.

[tricky]

You can run both of them side-by-side to aid compatability with older scenes. The slight downside is that they are named exactly the same in the material editor!

[tricky]

Do your files render ok locally?

What I meant with the make a change and undo thing is I can replicate the problem locally. If I:
1. Shut down Max.
2. Open Max.
3. Open a scene with a BerconTile in it.
4. Render locally.

The mapping on the tiled material is screwed.

Then if I make a change to the BerconTile, undo the change and render again the mapping is ok.

Bugger. This exact same thing is happening to me! This is critical for our current jobs. We need to use BerconTile 3.0 as it supports MultiTexture. MasterBercon - can you sort this pretty please (I did give you a dontation when 3.0 came out)?

Basically, We are using XREF scenes and we are experiencing the problem. If we merge the Xref scene in and hit render, the problem persists. However, if we then change one parameter, such as the tile width, and then immediatly put it back, it renders fine.

HELP PLEASE.

[tricky]

DanielBrew: have you had any luck with this problem? It is causing us major headaches here. I have tried to get hold of the author, but so far I have had no success.

[DanielBrew]

No I've gone back to using Max's Tiles. I've emailed MasterBercon as well and not had a reply but that was to ask about making a donation. I guess he could be on holiday.

Btw Can you change the title of this thread? It doesn't mention BerconMaps.

[tricky]

No I've gone back to using Max's Tiles. I've emailed MasterBercon as well and not had a reply but that was to ask about making a donation. I guess he could be on holiday.

Btw Can you change the title of this thread? It doesn't mention BerconMaps.

Not sure how...

[ruud3dv]

Any updates on the problem with Bercon Tiles? I just started using it (3.0) and it's well worth a donation if the renderslaves would render properly.

Rendering locally doesn't show any problems with tiling here, but it seems the slaves are using the default tiling settings, instead of the modified settings in my materials.

[tricky]

No solution. Its caused us major headaches so we're not using it any more despite how great a tool it is. I just hope the author can find time to fix it. I'd happily give him another payment if he could do that.

[ruud3dv]

Too bad... this thread indicates the problem is known by Bercon since June, so I won't hold my breath for it to be fixed.

[ruud3dv]

Wow, that thread contained the fix too!

I should've read more carefully: dgsantana supplied a recompile with the bug apparently fixed. He only compiled for 2010/2011 x64, but for me that's enough.

Did some basic tests with BerconTile, and now both local and renderslaves render perfectly!!!

Donation on it's way, this plugin rocks!