OCIO/ACES color Management not working with distribute/backburner rendering.

[Bisara230]

When rendering using distribute or backburner network in 3dsmax 2024, the OCIO ACES color management is not working, even if the 3dsmax and Vray setup are the same on the servers.

[hermit.crab]

I'm skeptical if that is indeed the issue. Is there any difference without ACES?

[Bisara230]

Hello Hermit. Thanks for your reply. I don't understand your question. Do you mean if I sent the render to backburner using the Gamma color space (Srgb) instead of the ACES? Of course, is a difference. I post a ticket with Autodesk because it seems the .icio file is not included when it is processed by the network render, but this doesn't explain why is not working with Vray Distribute.

[Joelaff]

This only occurs if you try to use ACES? Nor problems with sRGB rendering?

If you also have trouble with sRGB rendering not matching:
You don't happen to still have Quicktime installed on any of the machines, and are using any format QT reads (like TGA, TIF, etc.) ? This can sometimes change the appears of textures on any machine with Quicktime.

[Bisara230]

It is only with ACES, I tested with Gamma 2.2 color management and is ok, no missing color buckets for that one. I don't use QuickTime at all, I only use 1000 by 1000 .png images, all have the sub fix _srgb as well. We have 4 rendernodes with the same Vray version and 3ds max version. at this moment I more concerned with not able to use distributed rendering.

[Joelaff]

OK. Then not that issue. We have not installed 2024 yet.So can't confirm anything here, sorry.

[Bisara230]

I think I found the solution and what was causing the problem, I was setting up the color manager as OCIO on 3ds max and Vray color management as OCIO as well. It only works when is assigned to Vray only.

[Bisara230]

[zhang_ligang]

I encountered the same problem, but it has already been resolved.

[hermit.crab]

FYI: We've logged the issue (internal bug-tracker id: VMAX-14155). There seems to be an issue when using DR together with the 3ds Max OCIO color management. Using the V-Ray one instead should yield correct results.

Note that it occurs in Arnold and Scanline as well, so it's Autodesk related.

[hermit.crab]

FYI: Autodesk answered us that the 3ds Max OCIO color management is not yet supported when network rendering.

[Joelaff]

Wow. That makes it completely useless.

[piotrus3333]

wait.
what???

[flat]

The release notes for 2026 include the following:

In addition, many issues affecting network rendering with OCIO-based color management have been fixed.

Has this problem been fixed? Please check with V-Ray.

[hermit.crab]

The release notes for 2026 include the following:

Has this problem been fixed? Please check with V-Ray.

I'll test it when we make some builds for 2026.