mixed farm issues

[Phantom-Studio]

Hello !
I have some issues with some file paths on a mixed farm.
Our worksations are on win 7 , render nodes on fedora 22, and 1 render node mac book pro (OSX el capitan)
Everything works fine on Win 7 and fedora.

The issues are on mac os x only.
We use vray 3.1.
We use env var for all our file paths in maya : ${WORK_PATH}/MyProject/sourceimages/MyFiles.tx .
The env var are properly set on mac os x and when i print them in terminal (by typing env), they are present .
We render in two ways on the mac >> 1/distributed rendering 2/Deadline
The issues are the same whatever wich one we use.

So , when the rendering starts vray recognise the env var and replace correctly ${WORK_PATH} by /Volumes/WORK
it works for all proxys, and 4/5 of sourceimages files.
But for the last 1/5 files i have an error :
warning: bitmap file "${WORK_PATH}/MyProject/sourceimages/MyFiles.tx" failed to load (2): file does not exist

Of course , all the missing files exist, since all other render nodes don't have this issue.
I tried to run vraySlave from terminal and exporting VRAY_ASSET_PATH to the sourceimages path before launching vray >> does not solve the issue
I tried to export permently VRAY_ASSET_PATH by editing /etc/profile >> does not solve the issue neither.

And the issues are the same with deadline launching a vrayStandalone job

I m a bit stuck and i don't know what to test to make it work.
Any ideas ?

Thanks .

Mathieu.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

This can be caused by a bad network. Can you try to copy the files locally? V-Ray will try to open the file a few times before giving up, but if the network is terrible...
The environment variable is called VRAY_ASSETS_PATH, but it's doubtful to help you in such case, since it will not retry to find the file after the first fail. Another thing to try is to use the "Transfer missing assets" option.

[Phantom-Studio]

Hello Ivaylo,

it is not not a network issue for sure,
I was able to copy 8Go of assets i need from the server to the local machine in 2min , when 9 other render nodes were running (reading and writing data) on the same server.
The VRAY_ASSETS_PATH was not a solution neither, vray does not go to the defined folder for the missing files.

The strange part is Vray is able to replace the environement variable for some files , and not for others wich are in the same folder.

Do you think it could be from the network protocol ? Actually the Osx machine use samba to connect to the server , maybe i should use an other protocol ?

[Morbid Angel]

I'm not a mac expert but here are few suggestions:

- try with another renderer (maya software/mental ray) and see if this also happens.
- does the same error happen when you just load that scene on that mac in maya ui and render a frame? is it only mayabatch that produces this problem?

if it occurs with another render, this would suggest its a network issue of some kind. If it does not, then its most likely something on a vray side...

[Phantom-Studio]

it s seems it's a mac issue,
I am actually running vray on win 7 via parrallel and there is no issue at all.(on the same machine)
I presume there is a problem with mac and/or vray for mac to replace the environement variable by a path at render time.

I could not test with an other renderer in maya, there is not maya license for this machine, that why we render with vrayStandalone.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Deadline has a very handy feature when rendering on multiple OSes called Mapped Paths:
http://docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/pro...-platform.html

Would it be possible to configure it you your environment, run the same test and let us know if it helps or not?