Phoenix for Maya : D.R. ?

[lepixel]

Hi,
(is there any official thread to post and read about Phoenix for Maya ?)

A very fast and succesfull instal, plug-in loaded in 2 seconds, first flames fired after 45 seconds

Question about distrib. rendering, I've tried to to do some DR with a Phoenix sim. but with no succes.
(Phoenix 's been installed on slaves machine, everything rebooted), slaves seem to be lost : the master computer made almost all job and of course slaves produced black buckets.

So, is D.R. yet implemented ? did I miss something ?

Except this "little" and logical concern from the prod. director I am, Phoenix seems to be a great simulation engine, the shading in the viewport is really amazing !! The settings far more obvious than Maya fluids.
Great work !

[sersia]

Hi,

There is no problem for smoke and liquid with DR for me. But there is a problem just for flame with DR.



Best Regards,
Sangho Jung.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Thanks for the pointer, we will check it out.

Apart of this, the DR should be no problem, if all slaves can access the Phoenix cache files. I.e. currently, these are not distributed automatically. Also, for the feature Maya version we are considering to distribute the Phoenix for V-Ray plugin with V-Ray for Maya. So you will not need to install PhoenixFD to the slave machines just for rendering.

[lepixel]

... if all slaves can access the Phoenix cache files..

Hi,
yes ! I didn't pay attention for the cache I think it was local on the master so the slaves didn't seen it !!! I'll try to set the cache on the shared volume for the render farm,

Except this I've been playing for 5 hours this night and no crash during all this time (impressive) I'll try an animation tonight .

I'll keep you informed...

[lepixel]

if all slaves can access the Phoenix cache files.

I've just checked the scene and the cache is on the shared volumes so in theory all slaves could see it (and yes it's a flame).
(all slaves crashed on this try)


I've tried too to launch an anim render without the render farm and I've got his :

Warning : [PoenixSimPlugin] error loading the frame data.
Error exception: [module=2] : Irradiance map thread

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Yes, all these issues must be fixed in the next nightly (and beta when its released).

[lepixel]

This is why we signed up for the beta !! Hunt is opened

[lepixel]

Little update,
D.R. is still not rendering fire (with the last Nightly builds for Phoenix and Vray 2.1) and indeed smoke is well rendered by slaves.

Slaves say : Warning : Unknown property "flip!yz" in object "PhoenixFDSimulator1@cache@0"
Error loading frame data

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Are you sure you are running the same PhoenixFD version on all machines? This "flip_yz" parameter was recently added. I'll make some tests tomorrow.

[lepixel]

Okay, my mistake, I thought the farm has been updated (as it should has been...) so I did make the update, no more xy error, but no more smoke either ... I've tried with slave with the last n.b. of Phoenix and slave without Phoenix installed : same result, slaves can't render the scene (at all).

"Failed to create object of type "PhoenixFDSimVol"
"Failed to create object of type "PhoenixFDSim"
"Failed to create object of type "PhoenixFDCache"

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The error means that the Phoenix plugin for VRay is not loaded properly. Make sure that vray_phoenix.dll is in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2012\vray\vrayplugins. It can be some kind of installation issue.
Also, you can even skip the installation for the slaves and copy just vray_phoenix.dll. The other files are not needed for rendering.

[lepixel]

Thanks, I'll try this tomorow the farm is busy for the night ...

[lepixel]

Hi,
so, for the master no problem, but what is the location on the slaves to put the vray_phoenix.dll ?

Thanks.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The same location as for the other vray plugins. This is the "V-Ray plugins destination folder" path in the installation.

[lepixel]

So it's well installed at the right place, but still no success for D.R.