DR causes other machines to crash

[Infrared digital]

Hi

I have just upgraded to 1.5 Final but found that when trying to render to other machines which are slaves - max crashes on the main machine.

When the main machine doesn't crash, the DR doesn't draw any help from the slaves.

Very strange situation - has anyone experienced this ?

thanks

N

[Candelero]

Are all the PCs (slaves) updated to the same V-Ray version and set correctly?

Best regards,
nikki Candelero

[vlado]

There is a bug which is already corrected for the next build, but in the mean time, on the render slaves, set the environment variable VRAY_DR_SUBNET to 0.0.0.0 and it will be fine.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Infrared digital]

Hi Vlado / Candelero

Thanks for your replies, I have had a good look but where can I find this environment variable ?

thanks

N

[vlado]

You must create it from the Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables; it will prevent V-Ray from sending a notification message to the client machine when 3ds Max starts (which is what caused the crash on the client).

Best regards,
Vlado

[Infrared digital]

Thanks Vlado, that seems to have done the trick but, I cannot get the slave to help with the rendering of the image on the main machine.

[vlado]

You will have to start the slave before starting the DR rendering on the main machine, like with previous V-Ray versions, for the time being.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Infrared digital]

Do you mean having the VRayDummy90.max open and on the taskbar before hitting render on the main machine ?

[vlado]

Yep, exactly.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Infrared digital]

Right, I always did that so, thats fine but, I have another problem which doesn't make sense.

The machines in this room are as follows:

Main machine - full Max 9 64bit and VRay 1.5 Final 63 bit

Machine 2 - full Max 9 64bit and VRay 1.5 Final 63 bit

Machine 3 - slave for DR & BB - (currently not communicating with the other machines)

When I render from the main machine all the buckets rendered by Number 2 are without the texture maps. There are no missing maps and everything is correctly UNCed in the main model.

When I render the same model on machine 2 distributing the rendering to the main machine - all the buckets render fine.

I had to create the environment variable on machine 2 because it was crashing the main machine but now I think this is preventing the textures from rendering out from machine 2 during DR.

This is a weird mess.

[Infrared digital]

Ok, the environmental variable has been removed from machine 2 but the textures are still missing from its buckets.

[vlado]

The environment variable does not affect the textures in any way.

For the missing maps, you may be able to get more information about the issue if you turn on the "Check for missing maps" option in the System rollout of V-Ray before submitting the scene; this will cause the DR slaves to check if any files are missing before the rendering begins and you will get a warning about this; to check which files are missing, see the vraylog file on the render slave. This might help to shed some light as to what is going on.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Infrared digital]

Hi Valdo

I'm getting the main machine crashing when the VRaydummy is opened on machine 2.

Both machines are running full versions of max and vray.

I haven't been able to test the missing textures yet.

[vlado]

I'm getting the main machine crashing when the VRaydummy is opened on machine 2.

Yep, this is why you need the VRAY_DR_SUBNET environment variable; it will stop the crashes.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Infrared digital]

Hi Vlado

This is what I get from the VRaylog.txt.server file on the slave machine 2 when it attempts to render;

================================================== ============
Console created, V-Ray Adv 1.50.00 from Jul 28 2007, 14:37:36
================================================== ============
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:15] Extracting sequence data from RendParams.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:15] Setting up V-Ray parameters for frame rendering.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:15] Extracting sequence data from VRender.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:15] Forcing multithreading
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:15] A render elements manager with 0 elements detected
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:15] Current project folder is "C:\Documents and Settings\Default User.WINDOWS\My Documents\3dsmax"

[2007/Sep/6|09:38:15] Checking for missing files.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] warning: The following files are missing:
I HAVE DELETED THE MISSING FILE EXTENSIONS
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Entering beginSequence().
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Setting RenderGlobalContext.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Broadcasting NOTIFY_PRE_RENDER.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Creating render callback from built-in VFB.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] warning: Subpixel color mapping is on: rendered result may have incorrect brightness.

[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Calling renderBegin().
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Sending RenderBegin().
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Caching camera animation.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] beginSequence() done.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Entering endSequence().
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Calling renderEnd().
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Calling renderEnd() on render materials.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Sending RenderEnd().
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Sending RenderEnd() to atmospheric effects.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Sending RenderEnd() to render effects.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Sending RenderEnd() to the tone operator.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Sending RenderEnd() to environment maps.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Unloading bitmaps.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Freeing render instances and lights.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] Broadcasting NOTIFY_POST_RENDER.
[2007/Sep/6|09:38:16] endSequence() finished.