Distributed Render Buckets - Returning different colours

[Macker]

I have looked high and low for a solution to this problem, and whilst I've found many, many topics with people suffering the same affliction I've yet to find an answer...

From what I can tell, the problem only occurs when a texture is involved; anything using just a colour, or noise map etc seems to render just fine. The problem looks like some kind of gamma disparity between the workstation and nodes, though whether this is the case I don't know. I appreciate that the problem is subtle, but sometimes it is worse, sometimes not...

Just as a side note, the "darker" looking buckets are the ones rendered by the local workstation, and the lighter (incorrect?) ones are the nodes.






I've seen loads of topics on this, so has anybody worked out what it is or how to fix it?

All our workstations are on max 2014 and the latest VRay build, as are the nodes.

[Macker]

Increased contrast...

[jstrob]

Make sure your spawner service log on with your account or an account with all the permissions. By default it logs with the Local system account.

I use this bat file for this:
sc config "VRaySpawner 2015" obj= ".\Myuser" password= "Mypassword"
net stop "VRaySpawner 2015"
net start "VRaySpawner 2015"

sc config "VRayRTSpawner" obj= ".\Myuser" password= "Mypassword"
net stop VRayRTSpawner
net start VRayRTSpawner

Also make sur every chaos group or autodesk executable files are allowed through your windows firewalls on each machine.

then restart all of your network a few times.

[tashko.zashev]

Other things to check :

*) all render nodes to have same 3DS Max SP installed
*) make sure you have all the machines regional settings set to same symbol, dot ".", for an example.

[samuel_bubat]

It´s a really annoying problem.
For the moment it doesn´t happen with my current projects. But it´s likely to appear again.
In my case I could track it down to some kind of gamma issue. But there doesn´t seem to be a real solution for the moment
as the problem happens randomly across most projects and it ´s hard to reproduce or narrow it down.
It helps at least for some time to change bucket size and save the file under a new name. But after some renders
it usually appears again.

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...-buckets/page5

[tashko.zashev]

It´s a really annoying problem.
For the moment it doesn´t happen with my current projects. But it´s likely to appear again.
In my case I could track it down to some kind of gamma issue. But there doesn´t seem to be a real solution for the moment
as the problem happens randomly across most projects and it ´s hard to reproduce or narrow it down.
It helps at least for some time to change bucket size and save the file under a new name. But after some renders
it usually appears again.

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...-buckets/page5

The problem with different buckets rendered by some of the render slaves or all of them is very difficult to be settled using the regular process (log files, render images, tests using the same versions, e.t.c.) All of them look similar, but most of the times the solutions that comes out are different. Actually there are too many factors that could break the V-Ray DR and most of them are related to network, software versions, OS settings, additional software settings like firewalls and antivirus.

[Macker]

Well to be honest guys, it's not really good enough given the amount charged for the software. It's a pretty fundamental feature that simply doesn't work correctly, and it's not like it's a recent bug either. Why is the DR so susceptible to not returning correct results because of outside factors? Surely there must be a way of making it work independently of these things?

We have all of our firewalls and antivirus disabled within our graphics team, we have all the same software versions too.

[chriserskine]

I was having a similar problem while on 2014. but it seems to have cleared up since going to 2015.

but i guess having fresh installs and making sure they all have the same service packs helps.

edit. I'm using vray 2.5

[tashko.zashev]

Hi,

Well to be honest guys, it's not really good enough given the amount charged for the software. It's a pretty fundamental feature that simply doesn't work correctly, and it's not like it's a recent bug either. Why is the DR so susceptible to not returning correct results because of outside factors? Surely there must be a way of making it work independently of these things?

We have all of our firewalls and antivirus disabled within our graphics team, we have all the same software versions too.

Actually we try to keep the things simple as much as possible and automate the entire process. Since the option to transfer all maps is available for the latest version, most of the issue related to missing maps are solved. For issues related to the OS or additional software like antivirus , firewalls, e.t.c we could probably print warnings in the log and inform the user about settings or software changes that breaks the DR process in some way.

Did you manage to solve the bucked difference reported in the first post using our suggestions?
If you still have problems, please contact us via our support mail (support@chaosgroup.com) and we will try to assist further. There is an option to arrange a remote session and investigate the issue directly on your machine.

[Notoriousbug]

Hello, I had the same problem too, inexplicably, only few render nodes rendered darker buckets from the same bitmap (grid and ground)
I thought there was some plugin missing and comparing them it turned out to be the same on every pc, same version of sp5 3ds max 2014, vray 3:00:08 ...
and I solved in this way:
- I changed the range of textures that gave problems to 1.0 (instead of recommended)
- I then applied a color correction map to which I have assigned range 0.454
now buckets are fine and same brightness across the frame

Hope that could help someone and feel free to let me know if you solved as well this way
Stefano