Wrong light count and long render times

[glorybound]

I'm trouble shooting some long render times, and I notice something. The V-Ray dialog box says I have 3 light, but I only have two, and it says it's rendering from camera "V". The camera I'm rendering from is named, "Vray Physical Camera. I have a lot of proxies, and modest render settings (see below), but my times are through the roof. Currently my, "Building Light Cache..." is 27 hrs. I turned my displacement off, so it's not that.

my settings:
LC Subdivs 800 - size 0.015 (screen)
LC Prefilter samples 32
IM Min -6 Max -2 Real Hsph 36 - Interp 28
DMC - Glog.mult 2.0
DMC - Adapt 0.9 - Noise 0.01
Glossies: 14 - Shadow : 10
AA: 1-3 - ClrThr 0.015

[vlado]

The third light is a "GI" light used for producing GI on Standard materials.

The "V" is in 3ds Max 2013 only, where we missed a few cases where we need to convert strings from Unicode to MBCS.

What is your dynamic memory limit set to?

Best regard,
Vlado

[glorybound]

I see... it just looked odd. My memory limit is set to 0 auto.

[vlado]

Then it might be due to some material; what happens if you override the scene materials with a default grey one?

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

let me try that.

I'm getting the render host is not responding, too. I have already shut down everything once, but that didn't resolve anything.

[glorybound]

actually, it has gotten worse. The light cache started at 158hrs and is jumping fast; it's currently at 358hrs

it's also takes a long time updating instances.

[glorybound]

here is the model, if you care to take a peek. I have spent the entire day trouble shooting this. The attached zipped file contains the model, without the proxies, or texture maps.

http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/5fu3o6

[glorybound]

Okay. It might be multiscatter. I've used it before, with a lot more geometry, without issues. I've already tried with it off, or at least I thought, and it still rendered slow. Now, with it off, it's rendering perfectly.

[glorybound]

it's definitely multiscatter. I removed the multiscater helper, manually copied just as many proxies, and it renders fine. I posted over in i-cube's site, but things usually go unanswered over there.

[glorybound]

another issue, on the same project, but not a Multscatter problem. I can't render anything larger than 1700x1100, and If I try, none of the slaves respond. I can ping the machines, so they are available. I do have compress on save enabled, since it is a large file, but nothing. The warnings pops up instantly, as if it's not even trying to communicate, and the slaves all show 100% RAM usage. Something is happening, but it's not rendering. I have all my assets copied locally, on all the machines, so it's not transferring much. I tried letting it run over night, thinking they will eventually engage, but they never do. When I drop the resolution down to 1700 X 1100 all the machines start participating like they should.

[glorybound]

I rendered out a lower resolution successfully, so I thought I would try to inch up the resolution, but none of the slaves engage during the pre-pass. I'm rendering out a 3400 x 2200, and only the main workstation is processing, but all slaves are running at 100%. They are using all their resources, so much that it takes 5 minutes to access the services, but they are not contributing to the pre-pass. I'm not getting any errors in the VRay Message log, either. In an earlier try I get warning that the irradiance map failed to copy (or something to that effect).

[jacksc02]

Bobby,
Without having looked at your scene have you got any "penetration" on your multiscatter?

[glorybound]

I removed the multiscatter, which helped the render times, but still none of the slaves are helping out with irradiance map.

Bobby,
Without having looked at your scene have you got any "penetration" on your multiscatter?

[vlado]

If you look at the the V-Ray log file on the render slaves, what does it say?

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

If you look at the the V-Ray log file on the render slaves, what does it say?

Best regards,
Vlado

The log file is to long to post, but it has a lot of this:

Validity for node "X" is [forever], node handle is XXXX