Hair/fur not rendering with MR Prim

[davision]

I am trying to use the MR Prim mode of hair/fur with Vray 2.0 on 32-bit max.

I'm getting an error when rendering which says "An exception occurred when loading DRA"

I see the DRA file is being created properly in the /hair subfolder, so it's not a write-access issue that I've seen Vlado mention before for hair problems.

I've never seen this error before -- but I'm not sure if I've used 2.0 for hair up to this point. (I'm using a very simple scene to test this -- just a sphere with default hair modifier as a test).

[vlado]

I can reproduce this on one of our machines, but not on others. I'm not yet sure what is causing it - I'm not sure it's specific to V-Ray 2.0 either (that part is the same as V-Ray 1.5). We have it noted and we will look into it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[davision]

I'm running a dual Xeon (six core Westermeres) with 12GB of RAM. Win 7 x64. In case it's config related...

Also, on 64 bit Max (on same machine) the same simple hair scene just crashes. "3ds max application has stopped working".

[vlado]

I'm running a dual Xeon (six core Westermeres) with 12GB of RAM. Win 7 x64.

Hm, that's odd, the machine that has the problem in our office is the same configuration. I seem to remember the hair&fur engine having issues with many-core machines, but I thought it was fixed in the latest service packs of 3ds Max... but maybe not.

Best regards,
Vlado

[davision]

You probably tested this -- but the same simple scene does render okay in mental ray on the 12-core machine. So maybe that indicates it's the information exchange between hair/fur and vray -- and not hair/fur by itself?

I dunno though -- you're the expert.

One more note: I'm fairly certain I did use MR Prim with vray 1.5 on this same computer successfully... but I can't be sure. Might have been previous workstation.

_Matt_

[vlado]

You probably tested this -- but the same simple scene does render okay in mental ray on the 12-core machine. So maybe that indicates it's the information exchange between hair/fur and vray -- and not hair/fur by itself?

It could be; like I said I haven't looked into this yet so I don't know for certain what is causing the problem - I just noted the fact.

Best regards,
Vlado