V-Ray Blend Material textures missing in headless renders (3dsmaxcmd / render farm)

[mario_fernandezmarin]

Hi everyone,

I’m running into a strange issue and hoping someone has seen this before.

When I render my scenes using 3dsmaxcmd or through our render farm, some textures are missing in the final output. However, if I render the exact same scene from the 3ds Max GUI, everything looks fine — all textures show up correctly.

After some testing, I’ve noticed that the missing textures are specifically the ones used in V-Ray Blend Materials (VRayBlendMtl). Other V-Ray materials render without any issues.

The Asset Tracker shows no missing files, and the paths are all correct and accessible.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any idea why these textures would fail only in headless rendering modes?

Thanks in advance!

[hermit.crab]

Not entirely sure this is a texture issue. Which 3ds Max version do you have installed? Do you use the new OCIO color management defaults? I've replied to your ticket asking for the particular scene to troubleshoot.

[hermit.crab]

As I've written you in the ticket, the difference should be mitigated if you add the -gammaCorrection:1 flag, ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶t̶u̶r̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶3̶d̶s̶ ̶M̶a̶x̶'̶s̶ ̶C̶o̶l̶o̶r̶ ̶M̶a̶n̶a̶g̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶(̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶O̶C̶I̶O̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶a̶u̶l̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶)̶.̶

EDIT: No, it actually ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶l̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶ ̶̶̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶̶̶d̶̶̶e̶̶̶f̶̶̶a̶̶̶u̶̶̶l̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶̶̶2̶̶̶.̶̶̶2̶̶̶ ̶̶̶G̶̶̶a̶̶̶m̶̶̶m̶̶̶a̶̶̶ comes out as "Un-tonemapped".

EDIT2: The issue is the network rendering limitations from Autodesk (which affect 3dsmaxcmd), which were fixed in 3ds Max 2026.

The workaround is to set V-Ray to do the color management.

[hermit.crab]

What we found during the troubleshooting, after mario_fernandezmarin upgraded to 3ds Max 2026:

1. The flag I mentioned earlier (-gammaCorrection=1) indeed acts as some sort of a switch for OCIO in 3dsmaxcmd. Without it, images outputted through 3dsmaxcmd come out as "Un-Tonemapped" (tested with Arnold, Scanline, V-Ray). This is surely an Autodesk issue and we'll report it to them.
2. I found an issue on our end when outputting images through 3dsmaxcmd or 3ds Max Common output with very bright lights and the default Render Output Defaults. Logged as (internal tracker id: VMAX-14873). To workaround it, you must go to Rendering > Color Management and set the Render Output defaults to "No Conversion" and use the "Save in Image" option in the OCIO layer.

When mario_fernandezmarin tried the suggestions on his production scene, the output was identical.