Phoenix error when running 3DS Max 2024 on a render farm

[lrewerts]

I've recently built three machines to add to a local render farm, each running 3DS Max 2024 with V-Ray 6.10.08 and Phoenix 5.21.00, and all are falling with the same error when they accept a job, even jobs that don't use Phoenix. Does anyone know what is causing this error? Thanks!


Autodesk 26.1 reported error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\Phoenix FD\3ds Max 2024 for x64\deadline_plugin\Phoenix\Phoenix.py", line 3 File "<string>", line 8, in 'find' f... [error truncated in Server window]

[georgi.zhekov]

Hello,
Are you using Deadline to submit the jobs and if yes, which version of Deadline?
The script that is causing the issue is related to the submission of Phoenix Standalone jobs via Deadline.

Thanks!

[lrewerts]

Hello, thanks for the quick reply. No, we use Backburner and always have. To be honest, I had never even heard of Deadline until we began having this problem. We have 30+ machines on the farm and only the last three, all recent clean bullds within the last month, that are showing this error.

This is the error as displayed by the Backburner Server application on one of the new machines. This machine is configured as a workstation while the other two are configured as render nodes, but the error is the same.

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey,

Unfortunately we can't reproduce this on our side. Are there any specifics to the job submission? What are the exact steps to break it?

Which version of Backburner are you using?

Can you send over the whole log from the server?

Thanks!

[lrewerts]

Good morning,

No specifics that I can name. It happens on every job and there are no steps other than to simply submit a job to the render manager. The server accepts the job and opens and begins to load it in 3DS Max but shortly thereafter fails with this error. The log from the newest machine is attached. We are using Backburner 2019 (2019.0.0.5), which is the last version released by Autodesk.

[georgi.zhekov]

Thanks for the log. Nothing suspicious from what I can see.

How about just for the test you delete the folder C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\Phoenix FD\3ds Max 2024 for x64\deadline_plugin\

Since you're not using Deadline you should be able to safely delete the deadline_plugin folder (it's used only by the main Deadline Repository in order for the workers to be able to execute Phoenix Standalone jobs). Does the Backburner submission work without the folder?

Thanks!

[lrewerts]

Thank you, that seems to have solved the problem. The same job that was crashing previously is now rendering normally. I'm not sure what was causing it to try to launch Deadline but now that it's gone there are no more errors. Thanks for the help!