bright glass on particular render node

[armilla]

Hi,
We're having issues with a particular machine in our render farm, which produces brighter glass than the other 15 machines. All of them are set up the same, with identically mapped drives, max7 and 1.47.03. The IR map for the sequence was rendered every 10 frames using incremental add, and the glass in question is a vray material (see settings below). The frame with brighter glass is posted below, along with one of the normal frames for comparison. I realise it's a very subtle difference, but when we run through the entire sequence, it produces a noticeable flicker. I've circled the most obvious area, but the first floor balustrades use the same material, and also appear brighter. It's like it picks up more specular on that particular machine or something. Any ideas?
















Thanks.

[Austin]

Are you using an HDR for exterior light and/or reflections? I've run into an issue with HDR images before. Apparently the exposure setting while importing an HDR map into max is stored within Max, not the file. So if one computer has recently imported a different HDR with a different exposure setting, it will maintain that exposure setting for all other HDR files until changed back.

Hope this helps.

[jacksc02]

whats the specs of the render box causing the problem?

[DaForce]

Yeah it looks like its the glass thats the issue (assuming there is glass at the end of that hallway) because the glass up the top around the rail changes as well.

So you may have different version on the machines or it could be the old , instead of a . for the decimal place problem.

[armilla]

Thanks for the replies guys.

@Austin: We're not using HDRIs

@jacksc02: It's a dual Xeon 3.6HT 2GB RAM with XP SP2, as are 9 of the other machines

@DaForce: Yeah we're sure it's the glass, and yes it is glass at the end of the corridor. What do you mean by "it could be the old , instead of a . for the decimal place problem."? The version of vray is the same.

[DaForce]

There is an issue if you have a , instead of a . for your decimal place in windows you will get darker renders. Might be worth checking, i think its a fairly outside change that thats the cause but only takes a second to check.
Go into control panel then Regional and Language settings , on the regional options tab click the Customize button nd make sure the decimal ymbol is a . (dot) not a , (comma)

Apart from that, make a new simple test scene with some glass and a few other simple objects send that out for all the machines to render and see if you still have that problem on that machine.