DR problem buckets

[tricky]

The following image should explain, but does anyone have a similar problem? Some of the buckets are rendering darker than others.



All 4 machines are identical (Dual Xeon, 2GB Ram etc)

[tricky]

It *must* be that one of the computers can't find the HDR map or the texture on the curb (black area, lower right). Not sure why though, as all the drives are mapped exactly the same. Why couldn't one PC find the maps that the other PCs could?

On every machine, should the 3dsmax.ini file have a map address for every single texture used? I'll give this a go. (I've never had to worry about this b4 though!)

[tricky]

Don't you love having conversations with yourself?

Right, I modified the ini file on each PC so that the map paths are identical. This had no effect whatsoever. Back to square one then.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[tricky]

Tried recreating the HDR map and the curb map with no effect.

Strange thing is, the paving brick material, which is also on our network, always renders just fine.

Am I missing something obvious?

[tricky]

Just so that you know, I copied the HDR map into the Network folder on each slave machine. It 'seems' to have rendered this time.

I'm not sure why the curb map was missing though (only a few kb in size) - that seems to have cleared up since remaking the material.

So, a tip for you all is to always copy the HDR map into your slave network folders.

[simonreeves]

I was going to say try deleting everything in the network folders, seemed to mine sometimes