Hi,
just opened a file on my AMD pc, interior rendering so I decided maybe a good time to try DR. I ran the spawner on the server pc, all seems good as the buckets from the server appear on the AMD render window, but the buckets that the server renders out are all grey and appear to be missing thier texture maps, I added the path of the textures to the ‘external files’ in the Configure paths dialogue prior to hitting render so I am not sure as to what is causing it. one of the pc’s runs 1.47.02 and the other 1.47.03, could that cause it?
I’ve noticed that unless the exact network path is specified in the map setting for each material, DR will render without the maps. Map paths that Max automatically “finds” will not usually work.
If you are using Max 8, go to asset tracking, select all maps that say “found” or Missing under status, right click, select set path… and set the path accordingly. All map assests should say “network path” under status
If you have already done this, try restarting max.
Also check your local computer under ‘my computer’ to see if the mapped network texture directory status shows up as a ‘disconnected network drive.’ If so, you can try this syntax in command line to prevent network inactivity dropping:
Thanks for the replies, its definately connected alright as i am networking accross these pc on other work,
heres my setup,
AMD is an xp3000 PC that is running max7 and I have opend the file on it. The file and all maps are located on this pc.
Other pc is a dual xeon, spawner is running on it and this pc can see the maps folder of the amd pc
The map path is visible in the configure paths list on both pc’s
Yes, because you have supplied a network path, right? Or do you mean somthing else?
I am talking about when you download a model, and the paths are set to look for maps in a different place. Max will usually find the file automatically, but not repath it in the material editor. That is what I mean by a “found” path. It’s these found paths that I always have a problem with.
I should qaulify this by saying that it usually only happens when I’m using a lot of nodes (10 nodes or 32 buckets), and not all of the nodes fail to render the maps, and then its radom. 6 of the nodes are exactly the same, as are the other 14 that we have. We use 1.47.03
When u select your bitmaps from ur main pc u shouldn´t do it by browsing your pc locally, u should browse it via the network…I mean, your bitmap should be \\hostpc\\max7\maps\bitmap.jpg instead of c:\3dsmax7\maps\bitmap.jpg.
czoog this is actually what i meant. that i dont do this. if your network is setup properly there is absolutely no need to this. As for textures not automatically found i know what you mean. sometimes a downloaded model would have textures on a Q:\ drive when you dont have that hehe. however i never let a model out of my sight and into my library without 1st checking every aspect of it and converting every material to vray materials.
For network rendering make sure all your map paths are specified using UNC (universal naming convention) meaning that they are not pointing to a specific drive letter. They should point to the map files as panthon described. If your slave machines are not logged in and running the server app as a service, they won’t be able to find drive letters, and will render without the maps.
I found it easiest to move all my material maps to the network, and now I always specify maps using their UNC to avoid any problems from the start.
Thanks for the replies, its definately connected alright as i am networking accross these pc on other work
I can too. Although on WinXP networks (non-server regulated) your drives will automatically disconnect after a certain amount of inactivity. You can reconnect if you click on your share. The way to check this is when youre experiencing an intermittent problem, go to the problem computer and check the status under ‘My Computer.’ It may show up as disconnected.
Anyhow - it sounds as if you have a different problem. On my network, I’ve made my ‘textures’ directory on my main computer (hosting the files) as a mapped drive letter ‘Z’ (I realize it’s redundant to some extent.) I map the same to this location on all the other computers with the same drive letter. Then go into configure paths and point it at letter ‘Z’.
The only time I ever use the UNC (Universal Naming Convention - ie. \\compname\textures\…) is if I have a shared IRmap or lightcache map.
Perhaps I’m doing it all wrong, but this seems to work just fine.
isnt this what ive been harping about all this time? using mapped drives? works fine for me. my work drive is where i store my project files and my 3d library (f:\) so i canbasically find everything, irradiance maps, texture files etc etc all. http://www.elfpro3d.com has instructions for my setup in my tutorial section
I’m using Max8, just thought I’d throw that in there.
When I render on my machine maps are there, when I render with DR, some maps are there, and some are not. Any time I use one of the other machines the maps are missing in those buckets.
All computers are in the same workgroup with similar ip addresses, subnet masks, and running through the same network switch. All computers have the shared drive mapped as the same letter and all my maps in the scene are using unc paths.
I tried rendering with only 1 additional server instead of the 10 maximum…still the maps are missing.
Any help? I’m lost as what else to try.
Here’s the kicker…Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.
I stick with UNC… that way I don’t have to worry about whether a machine has a network drive mapping assigned or not. Makes it that much faster to get a new machine setup and running in the farm.
And I don’t like using mapped network drives because of A) the disconnect thing, and B) not every machine that is rendering should have network drives because they’re being used as workstations in another department.
One less interface-leve system setting is one less thing I have to configure.
Whats the disconnection time. im using the mapped network drive and ive had things rendering for about a week without it ever disconnecting. Standard install of windows and standard setup of the mapped network drive. took about 1 minute or less to do the mapped drive so im not sure why it seems to difficult to do it when setting up a render farm.
As jujubee mentioned, mapped drives can sometimes “disconnect”, and without running a 3rd party utility to manually reconnect them, you have restart windows to fix it.
The disconnect can be caused by a number of different things, firewalls, servers shutting down, network interruptions, timeouts, etc. On bigger networks (like mine) its just too much hassle and time consuming to even mess with.
Yeah - mentioned before - enter this into your command prompt on each computer:
net config server /autodisconnect:-1
see if that helps. i havent had any issues except when a computer is manually restarted then i just double-click the mapped drive again and all is good.
try to use maps NOT located under your 3dmax folder.
I had your same problem, and the only way to guarantee all DRs slaves would properly read the maps has been:
1. ALL maps files should have a network path (\\server\path\filename.ext) OR (NetworkDriveLetter:/path/filename.ext)
2. NOWHERE in those paths there should be the MAX7 folder (MAX8 in your case).
What happened to me is that my MAX7 folder got somehow locked to network access, even for read only access.
So I copied all matlib files and max textures folder tree under my other general 3D library, and everything works fine.
well as i said ive never seen this network disconnection and the render slaves only have a standard install of windows (modifyed with this.. 3DLuVr.com " then i simply install max and thats all. i dont need firewalls on the farm since its not attached to the internet.
