Saved GI Maps just not working / loading

[sv]

Have rendered out and saved an irradiance map for use in an animation - every 10th frame, half the size of the final frame. Rendering through backburner it just wont open on any of the nodes. They are P4 HT's with 650 Megabytes of Ram.

The solutions i have tried are as follows:

Rendering from a saved file on a network drive: Wont load
Rendering from a saved file on a local drive, each machine has the file saved to the same place i.e. C:GIcam5.vrmap: wont load
Looked at the .ini files and they all have this location added under the [BitmapDir] section.: wont load
Rendered with "include maps" on in the network render slot: wont load

I AM using UNC mapping, not mapped network drives.

Incidentally, when i also try the scene with a saved lightmap - which is over 500megabytes, each render node returns an error - unexpected error has occured in the network renderer and it is terminating. I have just given up on this. This is pretty bent to be honest - why develop this technology if it doesn't work? I am presuming that this is a backburner issue, not a Vray issue. For anyone who is interested, we only have a 100megabit network. I hope the answer isn't to get a Gigabit network switch, or just render multiframe incremental / incremental add to current map?

Any thoughts ladies and Gentlemen? Thanks in advance.

[Dynedain]

check to make sure you dont have "include maps with job" checked in the network render window

That's the only thing that comes to mind...assuming that other maps work fine

[sv]

All other materials / bitmaps work fine but i did have the option on for one render but it made no difference - it still didn't load.

Why should i not have this on just out of interest? someone on this forum once suggested to have it on.

[Dynedain]

I just thought it may be causing a problem since irrmaps can get so big.

Do you have the same version of vray running on your rendernodes as on the machine you are submitting the job from?

[sv]

of course -
they are new pc's, fresh install of software on them, we only have 3dsmax and vray 1.45.70 installed on them.

I know that 1.45.70 is the beta, but we have done it now and are sticking with in.

It is all working like a dream, apart from this problem. I am currently just going to leave them on incremetal add to current map, but i don't want to be doing this everytime - the render times need to be much small than they will be with this option on for the future. Do you think it is because of a 100megabit network, not a 1000megabit. I have read that people have seen this before, but people with gigabit networks dont seem to have any problems at all with passing saved maps.

Very annoying.

[Dynedain]

100bT vs Gigabit shouldn't matter...we use 100 just fine

But something just caught my eye about what you said with it crashing when the lightmap gets big.....how much ram do you have on the rendernodes, and what OS are they running?

[sv]

sorry for the late reply,

We have 640Meg Ram on each of the render nodes, running XP professional. Not a great amount of ram i know, but there you have it.

On the workstations we have 1.5gig of ram, and they do run a hell of a lot better, don't really get problems here. I can understand not being able to load the lightmap file as it is 500meg, but the IR maps are only about 25meg, so i would have thought these would have been fine? Do you recogn this is the problem?

[sv]

another thought - i have heard about this 3gig switch thing. I haven't put it on because i'm not really sure what it does and everyone knows that when something is working (as previously everything was hunky dory) you don't piss about with it! would you recommend applying the 3gig switch?

[Dynedain]

It wouldn't hurt to try. The 3G switch allows a machine to use more than the normally alloted 1G of ram. Check out the "ultimate 3g thread" for more info

It is entirely possible that your rendernodes are failing because of insufficient ram

[sv]

yeah, thanks Dynedain for your prompt replys.

Will have a look at the 3gig switch thing and will let you know.
Cheers man.