Vray DR - nParticle/nCache missing buckets

[9k_JHT]

Hey folks,

I'm experiencing some odd behavior with VrayDR when rendering a nParticle simulation which I have cached and saved to a UNC location accessible by the render slaves.

My scene only has the nparticle system in it (as spheres) and my output animation frames have missing buckets. Is there anything else I should be checking outside of having my cache in a shared location, having my nparticle system cached out?

When rendering a still frame, the farm works fine with the render. Only during animation do I get missing buckets on what I would expect is all of my render slaves. Please let me know if you have any ideas.

Vray 3.1/Maya 2016/Win7 Pro 64bit

[vlado]

Are you using DR to render an animation?

Best regards,
Vlado

[9k_JHT]

Yes I am Vlado. Is this not something that shouldn't be done?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The particle data is exported in the vrscene itself, the slaves don't need to access the cache. Do you use render manager?

[9k_JHT]

I am not using any render manager ( Backburner or Deadline). I'm just using straight Vray DR and setting Maya to render an animation.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

No idea then. There is a known issue with missing cached particles in animation, but it's only with Maya 2013 and only in batch. Can you reproduce the issue with a simple scene? You can also send your scene to the support for investigation.

[9k_JHT]

Sounds like a plan Vlado. Thanks for taking the time to look into the post. Would you like me to reproduce the issue with a simple scene and throw it up on this thread (step by step what I'm doing) or would you like me to just enter in a ticket with support?

Also.. We are using Symantic Anti-Virus on our network. I don't know if this has been known to cause issues in the past with Vray/Maya?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

If you can reproduce it with a simple scene, it's best to attach it here. If you can't, the support must try to reproduce it with the actual scene.

[9k_JHT]

If you can reproduce it with a simple scene, it's best to attach it here. If you can't, the support must try to reproduce it with the actual scene.

Vlado - So long story short, when I was creating the cache for the particles I evaluated Every .1, and saved every 10 to help with some stepping I was having with my particle system. When recreating the scene to recreate the problem I discovered that by evaluating every 1.0 and saving every 1.0 the issue is gone.

Apparently a cache that's evaluated ever .1 and saved every 10 (so still 1 cache file per frame) isn't something Vray DR likes? Does that ring any bells at all?

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Thanks for the details, will check this!

[9k_JHT]

Thanks for the details, will check this!

Sorry for wasting your time Vlado. I thought it was due to the substeps since after changing it to 1 eval per frame it worked (for 6 consecutive frames).

I rendered out the full 80 frames of my scene and the same problem came up again. I'll continue to attempt to reproduce the issue in a clean scene and write up a full report of Choasgroup support...

Right now there are so many variables (name of the game). For all I know it could be the symantic antivirus on our network messing with it. Or perhaps the slaves don't have enough RAM to calculate the massive amount of particles (using nParticles and Vray to get a krakatoa effect).

I'd like to also thank you for taking the time to directly be involved in the troubleshooting process. Much respect for you guys at Choasgroup and for you to be in the trenches attempting to troubleshoot individual problems people may be running into means a lot to me. One more reason to be a Vray user.