Render Farm "Failed to initialize plugin"

[toddglee]

We are getting errors on the render nodes running Phoenix FD 3.1 "failed to initialize". We were not having this problem with 3.0. Any ideas?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

Please download the latest build from chaosgroup.com in case your 3.10 installers were downloaded in the first days since the release a few weeks ago. If this does not solve it, the only other possible reason is that you have installed a Phoenix version which is not the one you need with your V-Ray installation - e.g. if you have V-Ray 3 installed, you need the Phoenix installation with vray30 in its name, and respectively you need a nightly with vray4 if you have V-Ray Next, of the defscanline Phoenix install if you don't have V-Ray.

Cheers!

[toddglee]

Come to think of it I did have a demo version of VRAY installed but we have the Scanline verion of Phoenix. I will uninstall VRAY demo and see if it works since I am not using VRAY in the scene.

[toddglee]

Well I uninstalled VRAY demo and am still getting the error. Is there a way that I can roll back to Phoenix 3.0? Are older installation files still available? That version was production tested for us no problem. Thanks!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

You don't need to roll back - if you get this error, this means that you have an incompatible plugin that prevents Phoenix from loading. Can you try to manually remove all files containing "vray" from the plugins directory and the run the Phoenix install as an administrator? Also, did you make sure to download Phoenix from chaosgroup.com again?

Cheers!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

If this does not solve it, we could schedule a remote session in order to check what's wrong.

[toddglee]

Here is what I have tried: Uninstalled and reinstalled Phoenix and License Server with latest build. Uninstalled Vray demo and removed all associated files from plugin directory. Is there some instructions to installing Phoenix on a render farm machine? I am not doing it but our IT guy downstairs is doing it. He says it is asking for user name and password and Host an port number. The dongle is on my local machine, should he be pointing it to my machine? Remote session will not be an option because this is a secure facility. Thanks.

[flipbook]

If you are just using it for rendering then just select render slave as installation option on the render nodes, job done. Rendering doesnt need a license.

[toddglee]

Thanks, I'll let them know.

[toddglee]

Still didn't work. The exact error is backburner is "Autodesk 3dsMax 18.0 reported error: DLL <C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2016\Plugins\phoenixfd.dlr> failed to initialize.

[toddglee]

The version we are installing is "phoenixFD_adv_31000_max2016_defscanline_x64.e xe"

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey,

I have 3 more ideas:

- If possible, can you send me over one phoenixfd.dlr taken from a machine on the farm so I can check it.

- If the above is not an option, try installing this build: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jg...5J_IAtpWpTTycM

- Finally, you could try installing the VC++ 2015 redistributable from Microsoft's site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down....aspx?id=48145

Cheers!

[toddglee]

We have not tried the things suggested above because I am thick in a deadline and don't have time to do any more troubleshooting at the moment. Interesting fact though, we only installed it on one node, and that node now throws the failed to initialize error no matter what scene is sent to the farm, even from systems that don't even have Phoenix installed.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

This error is specific only to the system it occurs on - it doesn't depend on the scene.