Itoo Software Forum

Forest Pack => Forest Pro (*) => Topic started by: Anthony Lester on August 31, 2010, 04:20:09 PM

Title: Distributed Rendering (mental Ray)
Post by: Anthony Lester on August 31, 2010, 04:20:09 PM
I have a strange situation,

I have installed the FP (via network folder shares and copying Shader Libraries) on all of our workstations and our render nodes and they all work as they should through BackBurner, however when I try to use distributed rendering some render Ok and some render with black rectangles instead of the mapped trees.

Strangely it appears that the machines that do work for DR are those that have never had FP installed on them previuosly, those that have even when uninstalled seem to create this anomoly.

Another stange thing is that this error only seems to occur when rendering objects from the library, using custom objects isn't a problem.

Has anyone had the same issue or got any helpful hints?

Thanks in advance

Anthony Lester

   
Title: Re: Distributed Rendering (mental Ray)
Post by: Anthony Lester on August 31, 2010, 04:43:04 PM
I have just been doing a couple more tests and it I think that there may be a bug with the ForestPro material.

I used the same scene that I had issues with previously, that used only objects from the FP library. I extracted the standard materials from the Forest Material3 shells and re-applied those to the objects. the DR and backburner now work perfectly.

Could someone else verfiy or at least replicate?

If this is an issue does anyone know a work-around, having to change the materials every time could prove to be very irritating.

Regards   
Title: Re: Distributed Rendering (mental Ray)
Post by: iToo on August 31, 2010, 07:12:46 PM
Probably there is some conflict between the mental ray shaders, because Forest Material make use of them.

How have you installed the Forest Mental Ray shader (Fshader3.dll, FShader3.mi) ?

Please, make a zip with all files of the folder <max>\mentalray  (or <max>\mentalimages in Max 2011) from a failing node, and send it to our support email. Tell me also what Max version are you using.

Title: Re: Distributed Rendering (mental Ray)
Post by: Anthony Lester on September 01, 2010, 10:05:32 AM
The Forest Mental ray Shaders have been copied from machines that work to the ther relevant folders. I will email them to you; one from a machine that works and one from a machine that doesn't.

We are usin Max 2011 Design.
Title: Re: Distributed Rendering (mental Ray)
Post by: iToo on October 11, 2010, 05:48:35 PM

Although this case has been solved by e-mail, i post here the fix as information for other users:

- Copy the <3dsmax_installdir>\dbghelp.dll file to the <3dsmax_installdir>\mentalimages\satellite directory.

This seems to be a problem exclusive of Max 2011 running in versions before to Vista (Windows XP, Server 2003). Autodesk is already informed, and we hope it be fixed in next Max versions.