Network Rendering Vehicle Head Lights creates flickering

[ddustin]

Hello,
We are using Conventional Max lights in a Project with Vray as the renderer.
When we render the scene on our network we get frames where individual lights flicker on and off.
If we render on one machine, the lights do not flicker.

I have painstakingly gone through each machine to ensure they all have all the same updates (Vray 2.10.01) and all the same max updates.

All the machines are XP64, 8GB of RAM, Dual Quadcore Xeons and we are using Max2010.

The renders are mainly previews now, but regardless, if we render all on one machine there is no light flashing on and off.
I will post render settings in a bit, but if anyone has any suggestions as to specific setting, let me know and we will post them.

We can't put up the animation as this is an active legal case.

Thanks,
David

[ddustin]

Some interesting observations, when rendering to the network and using our workstations as render nodes, some frames will render correctly (all lights on).
It is usually the workstation that created the file (sent to netrender) that renders with the lights all on as they should be.

The other workstation will render all the lights on IF all the nodes applied to the render (Workstation 1 always ON, Workstation 2 always ON)
IF just the 2 workstations are rendering, they will alternate frames where the lights are on and off (Workstation 1 always ON, Workstation 2 always OFF).

The light that is turning on and off is an instance of the other headlight (is it possible it is due to being an instance?).
There are about 28 lights all together in the scene, and only 2 of them flicker on and off.
The flickering light is a regular max Spot..
David

[ddustin]

have replaced the offending lights with the same type (Spot lights), there are no keys on these lights.
The results are exactly the same, the lights flash on an off at odd times.
There are many other lights of this same type in the project that do not flicker..
Any thoughts?
If it were someone else asking me what the cause could be, I would suggest there were some nodes that had not been updated, but I have gone through each one to make sure (and they have been updated)..

[ddustin]

We isolated the issue to a setting in the offending spot lights. Shadows were enabled (with ray tracing).
Now netrendering works as it should...