Proxy disappearing on odd frames...

[sebbiej]

Hi there,

I've got a re-occuring problem with proxies when rendering out a scene through Maya's batch render... It's specifically the interior of an aircraft where I am using proxies for all of the aircraft's seats.

I'm using absolute paths for the proxies (one proxy is brought in, then that is instanced around the interior). The proxies are stored on a central server, with 7 slaves all being used for distributed rendering.

It still happens with "Transfer Missing Assets" on.

The proxies are missing (on random buckets within the frame) on every other frame when batch rendering. I've been able to fix the messed up frames by re-rendering the frames with by frame set to two, but I've got no idea how this could be happening, especially as randomly as it being every other frame that is coming out incorrectly.

Could it be a bug, or something wrong with our set up?

Anybody else had this happen?

Thanks for your time.

[vlado]

Are there any errors in the V-Ray output? Sometimes this may happen if there is invalid geometry in the scene (NaNs and such like), but it's hard to tell just from the description.

In any case, if you can provide us a scene with the problem proxy, it will be very helpful.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morbid Angel]

this could be due to network. Can you try copying your proxy to something like c:\temp\ and then doing transfer missing assets, and see if this makes any difference? This could be also a different issue strictly related to dr. However if you are rendering a sequence of frames perhaps its better not to DR let each machine render 1 frame sequentially.

[sebbiej]

I cant see any errors that would cause any problems with these proxies... There's a few warnings that come up relating to Renderman (as I had installed the non-commercial version, and cant seem to get rid of it, it loves to place nodes in my scenes!), and I get then these as the only errors coming up in the log:

Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 13: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "RenderMan_for_Maya", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 14: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "maxwell", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 15: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "cartoonShader40", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 16: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "TurtleForMaya70", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.

I'm guessing it's then what Morbid Angel said, some issue to do with our DR set up. At the moment this is the only way we can render in a stable (ish) way, I've tried to set up Backburner to render, so we can do it frame by frame on separate slaves, but didn't really manage to get it going so that it was 100% stable and using all of the power here. (I've got the job of setting up the Render farm here with no previous experience!), and we're on a very tight timescale so haven't got time to mess around really...

It's worked on quite a lot of our scenes just fine, but it started doing this recently. Bit puzzling!

And sorry I can't send files due to the project being private.

[Morbid Angel]

I cant see any errors that would cause any problems with these proxies... There's a few warnings that come up relating to Renderman (as I had installed the non-commercial version, and cant seem to get rid of it, it loves to place nodes in my scenes!), and I get then these as the only errors coming up in the log:

Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 13: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "RenderMan_for_Maya", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 14: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "maxwell", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 15: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "cartoonShader40", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.
Error: file: //2014/Client/Job/Maya/scenes/File.ma line 16: RuntimeError: file <maya console> line 1: Plug-in, "TurtleForMaya70", was not found on MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH.

I'm guessing it's then what Morbid Angel said, some issue to do with our DR set up. At the moment this is the only way we can render in a stable (ish) way, I've tried to set up Backburner to render, so we can do it frame by frame on separate slaves, but didn't really manage to get it going so that it was 100% stable and using all of the power here. (I've got the job of setting up the Render farm here with no previous experience!), and we're on a very tight timescale so haven't got time to mess around really...

It's worked on quite a lot of our scenes just fine, but it started doing this recently. Bit puzzling!

And sorry I can't send files due to the project being private.

I'm not sure it would print any error with regard to failing to load proxy, if its a per bucket issue during DR, the way the proxy is being read from the network could just drop parts of it if the network is maxed out.

What happens if you copy everything to local disks?

Also just to be sure you are running same vray version on all machines and proxy has been generated with same vray version as its being rendered with?

[sebbiej]

So it could just be if the network is being maxed out then.. hmm! We should be upgrading to a 10gig network soon, so hopefully that'll help.

I tried copying the proxy to a C:\Temp location on each render slave, but it was still producing errors when batch rendering.

And yeah the proxy was created with the same version of Vray as it is being rendered with (Vray 3).

[t.petrov]

Can you contact our support at support@chaosgroup.com
I think they'll be able to help you a bit better to solve this problem.