vrayspawner 2013 issues - stopping and starting all the time

[tricky]

We've had a very - well...reasonably - stable pipeline for a good while now using Max2012. Unfortunately, because of Autodesk's ridiculous subscription policies, we are being forced to install Max2013 across our systems (workstations and slaves). In a nutshell, because we have come off the subscription program due to major pipeline problems when we tried to upgrade to 2013, we are no longer able to activate our copies of 2012 without going back on the subscription. At the moment, we are refusing to do this because of the upgrade issues we have always had when going to their latest 'stable' versions! The only way we can activate max is by installing 2013!

Confused? We are too.

Anyway...back to my issue. We are just trying to get DR running but are having a few teething problems that I haven't seen for a while. We install vrayspawner2013 as a service on our slaves and make sure they start with the correct user accounts (just as we did with vrayspawner2012). However, what happens is that you can see in task manager the 3dsmax.exe process start and ram building up. It gets to around 400MB and then disappears before starting again. This is continuous. No jobs are being sent to it.

Where should I look first?

I have tried turning off windows firewall but this has no effect. I have installed the latest update to max2013. I have uninstalled and then reinstalled vray.

[Bruce Hart]

Hi Tricky - try going to the start menu - and run Chaos - Licencing - Administration - Remove V-ray licence service, and run spawner again....see if that helps

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Have you started at least one BackBurner job ?
Remember that Vray DR requires to run at least one BB job in order to be set up correctly - this is also required if BB is updated.

[tricky]

Have you started at least one BackBurner job ?
Remember that Vray DR requires to run at least one BB job in order to be set up correctly - this is also required if BB is updated.

Backburner has been run on these machines, but only with a Max2012 job, not a Max2013 job. I will try sending a BB 2013 job.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Let us know if this works or not.

[tricky]

Hi Tricky - try going to the start menu - and run Chaos - Licencing - Administration - Remove V-ray licence service, and run spawner again....see if that helps

Have tried this. No joy.

[tricky]

Could it be spawner 2012 AND 2013 running as a service at the same time? Are they allowed to work together? We have some projects that still use 2012, but newer ones use 2013.

[tricky]

Aha - it seems that running the 2 versions of spawner as services is the route of some/all of my issues. I am conducting further tests.

In one of my tests using a teapot, a Forestpro object and a railclone object, the prepass buckets from the render slave seem to look a bit different as the scene renders, but after the actual rendering, the image seems OK. I attach a screengrab showing this:-

Come to think of it I have noticed this quite regularly in the past, but never really thought anything about it. Is this normal behaviour?

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Two versions of Vray Spawner will definitely cause such issues - I wasn't realized that you are using them both at the same time.
We recommend using Vray Spawner only for one Max version - and remove all other ones.
Please also note that you have to run at least one BackBurner 2013 job - otherwise Vray DR won't work.

[tricky]

Two versions of Vray Spawner will definitely cause such issues - I wasn't realized that you are using them both at the same time.
We recommend using Vray Spawner only for one Max version - and remove all other ones.
Please also note that you have to run at least one BackBurner 2013 job - otherwise Vray DR won't work.

Understood.

Can you explain the bucket discrepancy I am seeing above? Is it anything to worry about or is this typical?

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Understood.

Can you explain the bucket discrepancy I am seeing above? Is it anything to worry about or is this typical?

Yes sometimes this is happening - but if the final render is correct there is nothing to worry about.
By the way is this render created with the same Vray version with the same Max? - it could be also related to different versions or different spawners.

[tricky]

Same versions of Max, same versions of spawner.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Can you show us the final result ?

[tricky]

Next time I see it I will post a result, but as you say, it doesn't appear to affect the final result. I just wondered if something 'under the hood' was not working as efficiently as it should.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Did you get this behavior on all scenes or only on particular ones ?
What is the exact version of the Vray builds that you are using ?