Scanning scene Last marker is at ./src/vrenderlight.cpp. line 535;

[djanim8]

All of a sudden I'm getting the following error: "Scanning scene Last marker is at ./src/vrenderlight.cpp. line 535; Exiting VRenderLightObj.init()" and it's completely halted a "need it now" render on our farm. What is causing this?

Edit: Merging the objects into a new scene seemed to fix that error, but now I'm getting this on our render farm: 3dsmax adapter error : Autodesk 3dsMax 18.7 reported error An unexpected exception has occurred in the network renderer and it is terminating. 3dsmax adapter error : The pipe has been ended : 109 3dsmax adapter error : The pipe

[tashko.zashev]

Hi,

It would be difficult to say what is the reason for this render crash without being able to reproduce it here. What it is the exact software configuration, 3DS Max/ V-ray versions? Are you using any additional plugins ?
Can you send us that scene for investigation ?
If you have the 3DS max mimidump file for this crash, please send upload it here or send it to support@chaosgroup.com. It can be very helpful for this troubleshoot.

Edit: Merging the objects into a new scene seemed to fix that error, but now I'm getting this on our render farm: 3dsmax adapter error : Autodesk 3dsMax 18.7 reported error An unexpected exception has occurred in the network renderer and it is terminating. 3dsmax adapter error : The pipe has been ended : 109 3dsmax adapter error : The pipe

Do you get any warnings for missing plugins for this scene?

[djanim8]

We're running the latest nightly builds for VRay and Phoenix as of 3/15 (phoenixFD_adv_30301_max2016_vray_30_x64_27276 and vray_adv_35004_max2016_x64_27279) We have 3DS Max 2016 with the latest service pack updates. This happens on all of our render farm machines, but the one I'm working on is an Intel Xeon dual 3.4 8 core processor, with a 192 gigs of ram.

Where do I get the mini dump file? The only thing we're running in the scene is VRay and Phoenix. I've narrowed it down to one phoenix simulation that is causing the error. It was working fine before, but all of a sudden stopped rendering. After merging it into another scene, and trying to render just that ship and it's simulation, we get the first error again.

I'm attempting to send the max scene and one frame of the sim data via email.

[tashko.zashev]

Where do I get the mini dump file? The only thing we're running in the scene is VRay and Phoenix. I've narrowed it down to one phoenix simulation that is causing the error. It was working fine before, but all of a sudden stopped rendering. After merging it into another scene, and trying to render just that ship and it's simulation, we get the first error again.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]36991[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the screenshot.
The 3dsmax_minidump.dmp should be in the Temp folder right after the crash occurs.
To get a quick access to this folder open Win Explorer and type %temp% in the address bar.

Please archive this project and the crash Dump file (if exists) and send them both to support@chaosgroup.com.

[djanim8]

sent the max file, one frame of the simulation and the dump file. This is super urgent for us now

[svetlozar.draganov]

We got the scene but we are wondering how to run the render now, do we have to use a Render Manager or rendering it locally from 3dsMax UI should replicate the issue?
There is a plugin used in the scene which we don't have it, this might be involved with the issue somehow. Have you got that plugin on all machines?

I'll find someone to check the dump file and will let you know if we find something in it.

[svetlozar.draganov]

That scene consumes more memory that I have on the test machine, do you know how much memory is needed for the rendering?

[svetlozar.draganov]

The scene renders complete black here without any crashes, maybe we are missing some assets or something like that.
Can you send us the complete scene with the assets (Save as Archive) and the plugin?

[djanim8]

That is a max creation graph that isn't required to render. It's just an informational thing. We've rendered stuff both local and on the render farm with no problems, and the render farm machines don't have that creation graph either. The errors happen both on the render farm, and when we render it locally. The local error is what I screen grabbed earlier, but when we render on the farm, it gives us a different error.

That was the complete scene (minus the textures) I can get the textures do you if you need those. I'll remove the creation graph as well.

[djanim8]

I sent an email with the textures and max creation graph file we're using. We use that creation graph in all of our animations to get speed of the boats, and haven't had a problem with it in the past.

For the memory, I'm not sure how much it requires, but 2 of our machines have 192 gigs of ram, and 2 others have 128.

If this helps, when I render it, this is the performance of the machine as it's rendering. The only thing open is 3DS Max, Chrome (for this thread) and the typical background processes.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Thanks for the files, I downloaded them and now the rendering is different for sure.
First the transforming vertices stage has been running for 45mins and the whole available memory of 53GB has been occupied.
Running out of memory will make the tests invalid because even if it crash we won't know whether it is because of a bug or due to insufficient memory.

Have you got the same issue with less complex scene, less Cells and particles?

(OK the machine final gave up. I'll try to optimize something but I don't know if I would be able to render it at all)

[djanim8]

We have 3 other boats in the scene, but we're rendering them individually and comping them later in after effects. The other 3 files rendered fine. The grids were all duplicated and only the size of the grids changed based on the size of the ships. They have less cells overall, but the settings are the same. About 50 mil cells per grid. This one originally had close to 90 mil cells, but I reduced it to 50 mil and simulated again, but with the same results. I believe the only other difference is the velocity multiplier is set to 5 on this ship in the Phoenix FD properties dialog. We did this because we weren't getting a realistic wake/foam from the ship based on photos we've seen on the internet.

I tried to reduce the particles today and simulated at less than 1 mil cells, paused the simulation after about 100 frames and it still crashes.

[djanim8]

I was looking at the render settings and saw that the ocean sub divisions somehow got set to 50... I didn't set them that high, so not sure how it happened, but setting them to "2" made it render without crashing.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Glad to hear you figure it out.
I did a few renders here without displacement and they went fine.
50 Subdivs is indeed a very high value but if there is enough memory it shouldn't be a problem.

Are you sure that during the whole rendering V-Ray has enough free memory to work with?
Can you try to increase it slightly and let us know at what value it starts to crash?

[djanim8]

Yup, going to try a few different things, using the latest nightly builds. I've never messed with the ocean sub divs before, I'm guessing at some point, we tried to change the ocean level to 50 and changed that instead. What is a "good" value for the sub divs? and what is it used for?