Max7 having problem with Vray1.09.03r

[nikulu]

Sorry for double posting but it is really hard for me to believe only 2 other forum members are having the same problem as me.

My office purchased 2 seats of Vray1.09.03r this past summer and we have had no problem running Vray with Max6. 2 weeks ago, we upgraded to WinXp Sp2 with Max7 running the same Vray. Everything is fine except we cannot save IRmap while using Backburner. If the same file is rendered locally with the same machine, IRmap is saved.

Can someone please help me out? I have emailed Chaosgroup and PM TishoChaos but haven't heard anything from them. Anyone else knows any other channel to reach Chaosgroup or has a solution to this problem please help. Please do not suggest using the Public Beta version as a solution, because it IS a Beta version.

Thank you in advance for replying.

[Da_elf]

i dont believe ive ever come across anyone who has saved an irradiance map through backburner. was it working before you went to XP?

[RErender]

I have saved many irmaps with backburner, If I were to guess I would say the problem is XPSP2 and permisions, Make sure your server logons have Admin rights to the directory you are trying to save the maps to, also I would turn off any firewall on the system you are trying to save to. Another thing that may help is making sure you are using UNC paths ie.

"\\machinename\C:\Maps\"

Lastly you could try my Imap Control script at http://www.varcht.com/tools.htm and try to save the maps that way.

good luck

[lukx]

turning off firewall didn't changed anything

[TishoChaos]

Hi nikulu.

We got your emails and considered them, so the new vray build should fix your problem.

[nikulu]

Thank you all for your replies.

Da_elf: I was able to do so with Max6 with previous projects. In fact it was a critical thing to do while rendering out an animation.

RErender: I will go back and double check those settings. Have you encountered this problem with Max 7?

lukx: I still can't figure anything out. I guess I am dumb as a stick.

TishoChaos: So is this a max 7 bug? I would love to blame it on Max 7 than on Vray. I am such a strong supporter of Vray in my studio and we are planning on buying more Vray. However, this problem may prevent my boss from doing so. I guess the solution is waiting for 1.5 to come out?

[vlado]

Looks to me more like a permissions thing than a bug in VRay, but I will run a few tests here. Is there anything particular in the way you have set up your render farm (i.e. what user rights do the slave machines have while rendering)? We don't have WinXP SP2 here though.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Dynedain]

It's not a permissions thing. As you saw in the other post, I'm having the same problem on 1.45 (but haven't tried it yet on the new build). The user that Max and Vray run as on my rendernodes has full permissions on the network shares and has no problem saving at the end of a render, only has problems with saving the irrmap.

[nikulu]

vlado:

The user permissions are the same as before we upgraded to Max7. I think this is a Max7 issue, not Windows XP related. I did a test on an older render box running Windows 2000 SP4 with max 7 and got the problem: IRmap not saved. My problem is identical to Dynedain. If an IRmap is rendered locally, it's fine and the render farm has no problem rendering the final image.

Thank you for looking into this issue. I have an animation gig coming up and not able to render IRmap over network is going to be a kick in the nuts.

[tricky]

I am getting the exact same thing.

Our machines have just been rebuilt and reinstalled with XP (NOT WITH SP2), and Max 7 has been installed as we received it with our subscription.

I am almost all the way through a major animation job, and I need another couple of Backburner calculated irmaps to finish it off. Set them going yesterday but they didn't save the irmaps!!!!!! I can't do them locally because my workstation PC doesn't seem to support the 3GB switch (whereas the render machines do), and the scene is too complex to render without it!

What do I do??

I just read TishoChaos note about a new build fixing the problem, but from my early tests, the latest betas of Vray are very different to version 'r' that we are still using, so my scenes will not render correctly.

Is my only option to uninstall Max 7 off all my machines and go back to Max 6? (this is likely to cause auth issues right?)

[tricky]

Does that VArcht tool work with Max 7?

[tricky]

OK - sorry to pester, but I really need an URGENT solution to this. As a last resort, I just tried installing Max 6 to get the things rendered, but as I have done various mods to the Max files and saved them with Max7, now I can't open them with Max6!!!!!

[nikulu]

vlado said he is going to recompile a Max7 version of Vray. Hopefully that would fix the problem. I have an animation coming up soon.........

[vlado]

Unfortunately, there is bad news: auto-saving of any maps from VRay will NOT work in 3dsmax 7 in SLAVE mode (local rendering works fine though). A recompile does not change this. The problem is that in slave mode, 3dsmax7 is terminated forcefully once all frames are complete, without giving plugins any chance to do post-render work (like saving the irradiance map in the case of VRay).

We have notified the sparks support team in discreet about this and are waiting for a response.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Dynedain]

Wow, that's a tough thing to work around. I know this is probably asking too much, but can vray save out the irrmap (and lightmap, photons, etc) when it is done with them instead of when the render is completed?

Or, can vray not send the "finished" signal to max untill after the saves?