Render frames smaller than settings say

[^Lele^]

Confirmed in max 2021.1.
Resetting render settings and quick rendering crashes max to desktop, which produces a nice minidump.
Thanks for this.

[alexander.kazandzhiev]

Hi, it's an interesting one. The scene seems to have an invalid effect attached (it's enough to open the Environment and effects dialog and 3ds Max will crash). I'll be trying to understand a bit more on this, but I guess not much could be taken from it. As a workaround one could delete the problematic effect before anything else with MaxScript, for this particular scene:

deleteEffect 1

Best regards,
Alexander

[Guest]

Hi, it's an interesting one. The scene seems to have an invalid effect attached (it's enough to open the Environment and effects dialog and 3ds Max will crash). I'll be trying to understand a bit more on this, but I guess not much could be taken from it. As a workaround one could delete the problematic effect before anything else with MaxScript, for this particular scene:

deleteEffect 1

Best regards,
Alexander

Yes this was another bug I have been experiencing as well. Some of these files were created in older versions of VRay and 3ds Max. They may have PSD manager plugin in environment/effects. But certainly along with this bug, the incorrect resolution mentioned by the OP and the VFB not rendering anything all appear to only happen in these types of files that are a few years old. Merging into a new scene is the only work around I found.

[^Lele^]

So that is what the mysterious render effect is, PSD manager?
It can't be queried for class (returns "undefined", max itself doesn't recognise it) and can only be removed.
It's not us, either: the same exact thing happens with Scanline as main renderer: open the environment dialog -> CTD.
It'd be nice if the developer was advised of this, regardless of fixes (which may have to be on the Autodesk side.).

[Guest]

I can confirm deleteEffect 1 fixes all the bugs, thank you Glad to hear it is not a VRay issue either, but as you say, the developer of PSD manager should be made aware.

[^Lele^]

I made a callback, which should clean such issues with borked effects automatically on file load.
Put this into your scripts/startup, and it should just print out a listener line if a file is loaded with bad effects, stating it deleted it (or them. one line printed per effect deleted.).
Unfortunately i can't make it more informational, as the effect can't be queried for properties (name, class, and so on), but it should avoid max crashes and non-rendering.

[Guest]

Thank you, that is very helpful.

[^Lele^]

Please re-download and overwrite the script.
I forgot 3 characters, it would only delete the first such effect.
The zip linked now works on multiple ones, in case.

[dans]

I'm the developer of psd-manager and had a look at the provided max file (would have been glad to look at it earlier, if someone hat contacted me).
The max file is simply broken (inconsistent data), it has no trace of a psd-manager effect in it or anything pointing to it ever having been there in the first place. This max file basically says "I contain 1 render effect", but there is actually nothing there. So 3ds max crashes when it tries to do anything with it.

If you have a normal max file with a missing plugin effect, it would show up as usual in the UI as a missing plugin. You will receive a message stating which plugin is missing (the max file holds which original plugin DLL was used to create it etc). You can modify and save the file again, the effect data will stay intact. In this case here however, there is no such information in the provided file (I actually checked the binary data using a hex editor). So from the max file I can say - nothing points to psd-manager being used here. If ever, then the problem is with the code that removed it before it was saved.

I have never seen such a file before. I was wondering if there is any code in V-Ray that deals with removing old V-Ray Lens Effects that still were implemented as render effects? I just thought of these render effects, because James mentioned it being related to older V-Ray files.

Daniel

[^Lele^]

Indeed, the effect had absolutely *no way* to be queried, it could have been anything at all from what we could see.
Thanks Daniel for taking the time to look into this, anyway!

[Luchifer]

If this still has anything to do with my original post, I don't use PSD Manager, which is probably why there is no trace of it.

[damaggio]

I just wasted a good half an hour on this stupid button trying to understand why my image was saved half the size....This is the worst button in the frame buffer and needs some serious rethinking or redesign.
It's impossible to see when is on or off.

[fixeighted]

Maybe an earlier version? They appear to have changed it so it's now as the attached.

[damaggio]

So it's orange now..I still would rather see 100% all the time on that icon, not a 50% button, there's not even a 100% option in there so you cannot revert to normal, the only clue that is "ON" is a slight different color grey icon when becomes enabled, that button is very close to the other buttons too, there should be more space,it's easy to select that by mistake and not notice...Well thanks for the image, good to know of the improvement.

[fixeighted]

Ah no, I meant to show that it is grey when off, orange when on. It was totally irritating when it was just grey/slightly different grey before