This one's odd. Just 1 render node renders black frames, then renders fine on the 2nd try (backburner)

[Spatial]

This one's plagued me for a while and I can't find any rhyme or reason for it.

I have 4 nodes and 1 particular threaripper (5950x) will randomly start its range rendering purely black frames. If I'm there to catch it, I'll close the BB server, restart it and then it renders fine.
If I'm not there to catch it (say if a range begins after I've gone to bed) then I just have a folder filled with black frames amongst all the good frames from the other 3 nodes.

I don't even know where to begin other than re-installing everything. Any ideas?
I've double checked versions of all plugins match across all 4 machines. Just doesn't make sense that the 2nd try always renders perfectly

vraylog.zip

[vladimir_krastev]

HI, thanks for contacting us. Did you manage to resolve this issue? Is it happening in any scene, even a new simple scene?

[Spatial]

Sorry for the late reply, have been in an ongoing project crunch!

It hasn't resolved itself and has been as issue every day.
This project in particular is very large. I don't think I've seen it in simple scenes.

This is what generating light cache looks like right before it starts rendering black frames.
This time I was rendering from inside Max, vs over backburner.



It takes a very long time to first load, then start rendering this scene so its pretty frustrating.
I closed Max after this, made sure it was killed in the task managerl, reloaded the scene and then it renders fine. Very baffling.

Happened consistently every day over backburner over the last week too. Have to watch it like a hawk and restart the backburner server if I see it starting to render black.
This reeeeealllly sucks at midnight.

Currently installed:

Windows 10
3ds max 2023.3
Vray 6 Update 1 6.10.04
Forest Pack Pro 808
RailClonePro 528
Anima 5.0.1

It's such a weird one and only affects this machine out of around 7 that help render this project.
I guess I'll wipe my system of everything 3ds max related, all plugins, all scripts and re-installing everything fresh when this crunch ends.

I have new RAM arriving next week too coincidentally so will see if that changes anything

I guess I'll start unloaded xrefs from the scene the next time it happens and see if its an object or vray proxy flipping out somehow

[Spatial]

Running more tests it appears V-ray is randomly losing the scale and or position of objects in the scene and my camera ends up inside something, hence the black frame.
Very strange!

The orange mess render is from the camera down near the ground.
Then I zoomed far out and rendered again to see what was going on and the objects are going haywire.
I'm assuming my camera is ending up inside something.

Then if I reload max and render, its perfectly fine.
Tried resetting xforms on things. Nothing fixes it except a max reload.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for the updates. Have you tried to collapse all Rail clone objects to mesh before rendering? Have you tried to uninstall V-Ray and 3ds Max and clean all left over files? If you'd like to, please send us your scene using the support contact form so we can review it. Please include a link to this thread in your e-mail.

[Vizioen]

This might indeed be a railclone error, I've had weird errors with railclone too when not rendering on the machine that created the scene. Are you running latest version? Might want to give Railclone cache a try, maybe that fixes the random bugs.

[vladimir_krastev]

This might indeed be a railclone error

Troubles with geometry exploding due to railclone happens relatively often and it is a good practice to collapse to mesh whenever possible.

[RedStar]

One other thing to maybe look at. If objects are too far away from the 0,0,0 xyz origion it can cause some bizzare issues.

[Spatial]

Thankyou for all the suggestions. I went down the Railclone rabbit hole first, trying the cache settings both internal and external as well as converting to meshes. This did not stop the issue unfortunately.
I was doubtful on this one because if you look in the screenshot the Rc parked cars and the Fp vegetation are the only things actually rendering correctly.

Good suggestion RedStar, but we always move our projects to 0,0,0 for accuracy.

After trying to unload xrefs and removing layers methodically and trying to isolate more, I just couldn't stop it from happening.

Tonight I bit the bullet and uninstalled Max 2023, Rc, Fp, Anima, Vray, PhoenixFD.
Methodically cleaned up any files left behind in Documents, appdata and program files and re-installed everything fresh.

I opened the problem scene that consistently displayed this issue and it rendered fine first go! And on 2nd load! Think things are looking up.
God knows what ghosts I had in my system.

Thanks everyone

[vladimir_krastev]

God knows what ghosts I had in my system.

Lets hope the issue is resolved now. If you continue to have troubles, contact us here or trough the ticketing system.