Irradiance map for animation bug/limitation

[CarlosBZ]

So what is the answer?
We can't get our animation to render now?

No animation in BB with "Animation" IRR setting? Go back to the old way?

For us at this moment the animation prepass works in one single machine and we haven't check if DR works as Candelero said it works fine, this is the test with one machine and prepass/render:

http://www.dreamImg.com/Vray-Forum/test3.mpg

It continues to not work with BB and don't know how to make it to work.

[meanadam]

Ok. So we try a few tests of the scene scaled down (in case it is a file size or network issue), but that didn't make a difference.

Since CarlosBZ just said it works locally - we tried that. And we see the same problem - max just kicks out when the frame starts. Vray says loading 5 IRR maps successfully.

So then we copied the IRR maps to the local drive, re-pathed the animation setting - and it still crashed, same spot, same way.

[CarlosBZ]

Ok. So we try a few tests of the scene scaled down (in case it is a file size or network issue), but that didn't make a difference.

Since CarlosBZ just said it works locally - we tried that. And we see the same problem - max just kicks out when the frame starts. Vray says loading 5 IRR maps successfully.

So then we copied the IRR maps to the local drive, re-pathed the animation setting - and it still crashed, same spot, same way.

this is what is working right now with our systems:

the "animation prepass" function (Vray 1.50 final)

Procedure:

1. Animation prepass in one single computer
2. Auto save is checked, filename is set.
3. Global switches/don't render final render is checked (assumed)
4. render frame by frame (every frame)

an irradiance map is computed frame by frame, for example: if the animation is 30 frames then 30 vrmaps are created: filename prefix + # sequence.

5. Animation(rendering)
6. Browse for vrmaps, selecting one filename becomes a prefix and chops the numerals, ei "test-std0000.vrmap" becomes "test-std.vrmap" in the slot.
7. Global switches/don't render final render= unchecked.
8. Render on a single computer = it's done.

when we tried prepass in multiple computers it worked, I mean, the vrmaps are done but they are wrong, I don't know why (err... that's the big question mark) every frame is kinda different so an horrible flicker pops up.

to notice the differences:

http://www.dreamImg.com/Vray-Forum/test2.mpg this test is done with multiple computers calculating the prepass


http://www.dreamImg.com/Vray-Forum/test3.mpg this test is done with one single computer on the prepass stage then you can render in multiple computers or one single computer.

note: all computers are path sync'd, no mistakes or double paths (I mean: all slaves are exact copies with the exact same user's paths.

[olitech]

Don't know if this is your problem, but we encountered the same situation and finally tracked it down to network permissions.

We have a huge network and realized that some of our servers didn't have read/write permissions. It had nothing to do with backburner at all.

[meanadam]

YES. We were asking about that 2 days ago. Is there is some new process in the Animation setting that is trying to access some folder outside the Vray or Max folder? We had more trouble with the render nodes - but the admin logins were crashing too.

Side note: we finally got the animation to run at 1/4 size today. We'll try again tomorrow at full res.

[CarlosBZ]

YES. We were asking about that 2 days ago. Is there is some new process in the Animation setting that is trying to access some folder outside the Vray or Max folder? We had more trouble with the render nodes - but the admin logins were crashing too.

Side note: we finally got the animation to run at 1/4 size today. We'll try again tomorrow at full res.

great!

please, would you post your procedure if succeed? (I mean, on animation/prepass with BB if that was the case)

[vlado]

Is there is some new process in the Animation setting that is trying to access some folder outside the Vray or Max folder?

Nope; only the relevant irradiance map files are accessed, but if many machines are doing so, it might stress the network quite a bit.

Best regards,
Vlado

[LucidV]

Re: Irradiance map for animation bug/limitation

I have a render farm of about 16 workstations on my network. I was trying to figure out why my Backburner net render was not able to read the pre-rendered IR map of my animation.
My bad habit is naming files by date. I had naturally named my IR map for the current date. It seems that it was not loading it for that reason because when I changed the name of the same file to a "word name" it loaded perfectly.
Just an FYI for someone....

[mokiloke]

What should the secondary bounce be on. If I put it on lightcache - flythrough or lightcache-singleframe, is this ok and will it get saved with the irrmap. Do I switch secondary bounce off when i do the final render.

[meanadam]

@CarlosBZ - It worked... sortof. I think our test is just so small, that we aren't seeing as many errors.

We still can't get the DR to work, and we are still at 1/4 frame. It worked for a while, then the spawners died off. It still says the IRR maps are pushing to the spawners in the vray log, the spawners say "vray_server_scene.max" and not "dummy" - but they just don't pick up or error out. Now they aren't working at all, again. I assume if we go back to full res frame on the net render final pass it will start crashing again, although we are trying some other settings there - as I think the IRR map size is too large (7-10mb per frame).

We are using Animation prepass and final with LC. I am suspicious of this LC on fly-through mode. It only renders LC on the 1st frame NOT like it used to run samples of the WHOLE animation. I think we tried QMC or DMC or Brute Force - but the render times got 20x longer, so we didn't play that game very long.

Fortunately we are just fooling around on some internal projects - if this were an actual paid job, we be rolling back vray.

Hope we can get this figured out soon.

[meanadam]

Somehow I think we overlooked this on our original tests. It seems if the computer running the local job is logged in as administrator it seems to work - regardless of the spawners logins. (We tried this the other way around before, and didn't make a difference).

So still - something with the way Vray is pushing files - it must be writing to a different folder? This has been my issue all along. Could Valdo please confirm or deny that Vray is saving files in a new location than before?

UPDATE: I spoke to soon. It looked like it was working, but they dropped now. Aprox 50 frames in about 20mins. Now we down to just the local machine. Vray still says it is rendering to the spawners.

[vlado]

Could Valdo please confirm or deny that Vray is saving files in a new location than before?

Nope, V-Ray is not writing anything different than before.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jonahhawk]

@CarlosBZ -

.....It worked for a while, then the spawners died off. It still says the IRR maps are pushing to the spawners in the vray log, the spawners say "vray_server_scene.max" and not "dummy" - but they just don't pick up or error out. Now they aren't working at all, again. I assume if we go back to full res frame on the net render final pass it will start crashing again, although we are trying some other settings there - as I think the IRR map size is too large (7-10mb per frame).......

We are having the exact same issue with DR. The spawners drop after a couple frames when we do precalc, when we render final, etc. Sometimes the buckets don't even come up. This can be overcome temporarily by restarting the spawner on each node. But it fails again after a few frames, two or three.

For static(camera move only) we have resorted to precalcing and rendering in chunks. Send IR precalc for 400 frame chunks to several farm nodes. then send the render passes in the same chunks. This keeps the IR map size down and network loads a bit more soluble. We send in chunks that overlap a bit timewise so we can blend any differences in lighting in post. It's quite a process but it is working.

[mike_kennedy]

make sure you do not havea number at the end of the file name, stick in a letter, if you have a number and save doing a sequence it can cause issues. I would guess this is a network issue.
Cheers
Mike k

[mcvltd]

I'm having the same troubles with the animated vrmap over DR (not using BB).

First frame is fine, then spawners start dropping out all over the place. If you restart a spawner it'll join back in again.... for a while.

Shame, because this could be a really good feature.