Reoccuring problem: Scene works fine and then suddenly: Dark buckets while using DR

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Hello everyone,

I have a reoccuring problem that I can´t solve.
Pretty often it happens that suddenly, sometimes after a crash or when handling huge data, my rendernodes start producing darker buckets than my host workstation.
The thing I do not understand is, that the scenes work fine at the beginning - and then suddenly that error occurs and even restarting the PCs won´t fix the issue.
The renders look as if maps were missing, but even with absolutely no maps in the scene, not even an HDRI in the environment slot, the rendernodes produce dark or black buckets.
The rendernodes access my main workstations HDs as network drives and they have full access to all folders. I´ve been working like this for years, usually without any issues.


There has to be a solution for this, but I don´t even know what I am looking for.

I use vray 3.60.04 on all PCs.

Can you give me at least a keyword to look for?


EDIT: One thing that might be worth mentioning: When that error occurs, the rendernodes also become very slow, rendertimes increase a lot. It feels like the bucket render times increase to 200,300,400% of the former value.

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I was working on 2 different still images, both use that same scene and settings. While the first scene worked perfectly fine, the error happened while rendering the 2nd scene (And I only saved scene 1 with a different name and continued working).
When I load the 1st scene, it renders fine again. Loading the 2nd one produces the errors again. The only difference between both scenes is, that I used a Phoenix FD fire simulation in the 2nd scene. But even after deleting it completely, it won´t render correctly. I even deleted everything except a single sphere in scene 2 - and still, the rendernodes produce dark buckets.

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OK, I figured out that if I load a render setting preset, the rendernodes will render correctly again. BUT only for one rendering. After I finish the rendering or stop and restart it, the rendernodes will again render dark buckets.
This must be a bug. Is it not known? I am not doing anything special here, am I?
At the moment I work on a PHoenixFD smoke cloud. The scene worked fine for 2-3 hours, did a lot of test renderings during this time. Then I changed the step % settings for the rendering and then the "bug" occured again. The rendernodes render dark buckets, as if they are missing light information. After reloading the vray render preset, they will render fine ONCE.
This is incredibly annoying. What can be the source for the error?

EDIT: Funny enough: When I render an animation, after loading the render preset, the FIRST image of the animation renders fine, the 2nd and following images have dark buckets.

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It starts getting mysterious here.
Please have a close look at the following image:
As you can see, the render has completely dark buckets. Those are the render buckets from my rendernodes.
You can also see that I switched of the environment lighting.
My main workstation (host) renders fine - those are the blue buckets.
There is an active Vray light and a Vray camera in the scene (you can see it in the Vray Light manager).
But in the scene explorer, neither the lights nor the camera show up! When I select them manually and create a new layer with them, it creates an empty layer in the scene explorer.
What the hell is going on here.

When I turn ON the environment lighting (via HDRI), the rendernodes render darker buckets than my workstation, but not completely black. So they do ignore the light that comes from the vray light.
"Hidden lights" is ticked in the vray dialogue.

EDIT: Adding new lights to the scene doesnt change the problem. So the bug with the layer explorer has nothing to do with the render errors.

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Solved the problem....

Under "Global switches", in EXPERT mode, set the "Adaptive lights" to "Full lights evaluation".
Then the rendernodes render WITH the vray lights.

[kosso_olli]

To me this sounds like the classic issue of different software at the render nodes compared to the host machine. Either Max (including service packs, this often makes a difference), V-Ray, or Phoenix-FD.
Also, sometimes ticking "restart servers on render end" may help.

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To me this sounds like the classic issue of different software at the render nodes compared to the host machine. Either Max (including service packs, this often makes a difference), V-Ray, or Phoenix-FD.
Also, sometimes ticking "restart servers on render end" may help.

I tried all of that before. The machines were always restarting. And the max and vray versions are identical. Even completely rebooting the system didn´t help.
If you read my way too long post carefully, you will also see that the scenes work perfectly fine for a certain amount of time and then suddenly stop working. Also, the very first render after reloading a render preset worked fine, too.
My best guess is that some kind of "cache" determines when the adaptive lights restriction kicks in and eliminates the light sources for the rendernodes.