The unique light thing has not fixed my 2nd scene… I get the same miss matched bucket look as the op does in DR mode or just mismatched frames in BB.
weird thing is its still only my main pc, all my slaves rendering the same and what i think is correct.
I’m having the same issue and I’m also using 32-bit and 64-bit mix for DR. This is Vray 1.5 SP5.
Is it fine if you render 32- or 64-bit only?
Best regards,
Vlado
Yes it is - it is only a effect when using DR with the 32bit or the 64bit one. I hope you’ll have a solution bec. have brought 2 new machines last 2 weeks for a big renderjob to use with DR … and now it is buggy …
*si
We are looking into it, but in the meantime, why not stick to just one mode (32- or 64-bit)?
Best regards,
Vlado
Wert, are you running a mix of 32 / 64? I think Simon’s problem is in the 32/64 issue, but my hutch is that your problem is a separate issue. When I came across the ies light issue before, it was a while ago, but I’m almost certain we were running purely 64 bit on all machines (workstations and slaves).
I think it will require vlado and his wizardry to solve the problem, but in the meantime, you should be able to at least avoid the problem.
So Wert is your 1st scene is totally fixed, and rendering 100% of the time flawlessly, as soon as you made your lights unique? And your 2nd scene is lit with ies lights aswell, with similar conditions? If that is true and you are convinced your problem in scene 1 was in fact the instanced ies lights (and not just a strange coincidence) I would do the following:
1. Delete all lights from scene 2 and merge a single working light from scene 1. If that works, it seems something was corrupt or buggy with those particular lights. (I suspect this will work)
2. If that doesn’t work, I would try the reverse. Merge only the your geometry from scene 2 into scene 1, and use those scene 1 lights. If that works, then there was something buggy with your file.
Either way, it should be telling…hopefully… 
all machines windows 7 64 bit here.
I deleted all IES lights and I’m just using vray lights now and its working fine. Problem is with IES for me.
But yes my first scene with only 4 ies lights is now working with IES, however my second scene had something like 80 lights and now i’ve deleted them all and i’ve started again. (light wise)
I dont use IES lights often because they seem slow, and now i think i have a good reason not to use them again!
How can i do that (never done this)? - is there a possibility to run max and vray in 32bit mode on the 64bit machine?
they must be seriously old computers to be 32bit still… i think we’ve been 64 bit here for 5 or more years now. are you sure their cpu’s dont support 64bit?
the computer is 2 weeks old and does support 64bit - but i have some programs running here that only support 32bit … 
*si
Yes, of course. Just install the 32-bit versions of 3ds Max and V-Ray.
Best regards,
Vlado
You can’t use 32 bit machines and 64bit machines together, simply put, the processors have different architectures, so the processors come up with different results. Our company had the same problem years ago, you can only use a bunch of 32bits or 64bits, the latter is obviously better to use.
(YES i know you can install 32bit 0S on a 64Bit machine, I’m talking about a 32 bit machine trying to render an image sent by a 64bit machine (unless you set the backburner to send via 32bit). It won’t work correctly. So Use a 64bit machines. Simples.
you do realize a 64 bit computer and os can run 32 bit software?
i also think about that!
is there a possibility to run max32bit on a pc with win7 64bit respectivly max64bit on a win7 32bit …
you can , as vlado said, install both max 32bit and/or max 64bit on a win7 64bit system. you can´t install max 64bit on a win32bit system!