BB job with strips defined fail if render elements are defined but not activated

Corona Corona for 3ds Max Issues
1

When submitting a job to Backburner (BB) and activated strip rendering (“Split Scan Lines” ticked in the submission interface), the second pass (assembling the strips) fails if render elements are defined but switched off. The second pass job tries to stitch strips from render elements which are not created.

Repro:

  1. Use any test scene (with valid output path for network rendering)
  2. Define any render element, e.g. CESSENTIAL_Direct and have “Elements Active” ticked.
  3. Submit to BB with “Split Scan Lines” ticked
  4. Strips get rendered and…
  5. …stiched by the second pass, very well.

Then:

  1. Untick “Elements Active”
  2. Submit to BB on any nodes with “Split Scan Lines” ticked again
  3. Strips get rendered and…
  4. …the beauty strips get stitched
  5. Additionally the second pass tries to find and stitch the CESSENTIAL_Direct strips which are not present
  6. Job fails with error loading corresponding strips

May be a consequence of the fix where bake elements (RTT) were not saving until “Elements Active” was ticked. Have not rolled back to test.

Good Luck

Max 2016 | BB Manager 2016.0.0.2150 | BB Server 2018.0.0.3005 | Corona v4 DBs

2

Thanks for the report and detailed repro steps! We will try reproducing it, and will see if there is a way to fix it.

3

Reproduced. But… does this really require our attention? What is wrong about the 2nd part of the job failing? The beauty is stitched correctly, as intended. Only the render element stitching is failing, which doesn’t seem to do any harm anyway, since those elements are not supposed to be considered anyway. Could it be a 3ds Max issue?

Update: guess what happens with V-Ray

4

Oops, looks like you are right. Thought I tested this also without Corona and it worked as it should, sorry!

Well, your jobs fail at least 3 times (default setting) blocking the nodes and your directory does not get cleaned up - leaving a mess behind.

Good Luck

5

Ok, I am moving this to resolved, since it’s an edge case, and I am not really sure what would be the expected behavior, but obviously we can give it a second chance if more reports that this is problematic appear.

6

Very simple: the stitch job must not contain disabled REs which are not created during rendering and any REs at all when REs are turned off in render setup. If you manually remove those (non existing) REs in the corresponding BB XML file on the manager (restart of the BB manager required), the job finishes as intended.

Good Luck