Distributed rendering problem

[joecharon]

Hello,

i have serious problem with distributed rendering when using batch rendering.
Yesterday i have solved problem with missing forest object in buckets rendered
by render nodes. Seems it was caused by "Hide Custom Object before rendering" issue.
First image shows my scene before unchecking this option. After unchecking and
restarting render nodes the scene was rendered fine.
BUT. I wanted to render two views of the scene with Batch render in higher resolution.
They were rendered over night. The first image was rendered fine but the second image
was rendered wrong. Strange thing is that some forest object were rendered fine.
Seems to me like render nodes are not able to adapt to new camera view as fast as needed.
When i came to my office in the morning i have just push render button, no changes to
scene or render nodes and the second image was rendered fine as you can see on the last image.
I use latest Forest Pro 3.6.2 with Max Design 2012 on Win7 64.
3.6.2. version is installed on all my of render nodes.
There are no proxy objects used as Forest custom objects. All objects are meshes.

Jozef

[iToo]

Both problems have the same cause. Max implements a serie of notifications which are triggered by events in the scene (as modifying the current view or before rendering). It seems that the slaves running on distributed render mode ignore some of these notifications, creating these issues.

Please, tell me if you use Mental Ray or VRay. We will try to isolate the problem and implement a workaround.

Meanwhile, i suggest not to use the "Hide Custom Object..." feature with Distributed Rendering, and to disable the camera clipping when using batch render.

[joecharon]

Thanks Carlos. I use V-Ray 2.0

Jozef

[iToo]

A quick update about this issue: we have tried several workarounds, but unfortunately none of them work. Unfortunately it is not possible to use "Camera->Auto assign to active view" together VRay DR from batch mode. It seems that VRay, working on this mode, ignores some Max notifications that we need.

[joecharon]

Thanks Carlos. Does it work reliably with Backburner?

Jozef

[iToo]

Yes, we have not detected any problem with Backburner.

[simmsimaging]

I have been running into this problem now too. I turned off the auto-assign active camera function for all Forest objects (4-5 in this scene) and it is still happening.  Anything else that can be done?

It's occurring repeatedly, but not in the same spots and not always with the same nodes.

running Vray 2.0 - nightly build from Dec 24th.

b

[iToo]

I have been running into this problem now too. I turned off the auto-assign active camera function for all Forest objects (4-5 in this scene) and it is
still happening.  Anything else that can be done?

Please, tell me details about your render, to be sure it is the same problem:

Do you use Backburner or Batch Render ?
Are you rendering still images from several cameras or from a single view ?

[simmsimaging]

Sorry Carlos - I should have read it more carefully. I am not using batch or Backburner in this case. It's just a still render using Vray distributed rendering, from a single camera.

I've had this cropping up numerous times over hte last few days but it seemed to self-correct enough that I could keep moving forward, but now I'm getting closer to needing to render finals so I can't afford to gamble as much on the render succeeding.

/b

[iToo]

We will investigate this issue. I though it was happenning only with Batch rendering, not with standard renders as well.

It seems the DR nodes don't update correctly the camera change before rendering, but they do at end. So a possible workaround would be to launch the render, stop it inmediately and render again (this is a theory, i have not tried it). Not efficient, but probably it's worth the effort for the final renders, at least while we find a fix.

[simmsimaging]

Thanks for looking into it. I don't think that solution works though: I have tried repeating a render and it did not solve it, just made the problem buckets move. Perhaps it works sometimes though, as for sure the scene has rendered fine at times. I am not sure at all what triggers it, or stops it.

/b

[iToo]

I am not using batch or Backburner in this case. It's just a still render using Vray distributed rendering, from a single camera.

I'm trying to reproduce the problem here. What is your rendering procedure ? Do you assign the camera manually to Forest in the main workstation and then launch the render ?

[simmsimaging]

The camera was assigned automatically at first. I did not touch that function until I ran into the problem and looked on the forum. There is actually only one camera in the scene though - so perhaps this is an unrelated problem with a similar result?

I think it definitely gets worse as the RAM requirements go up - it's worse when rendering higher res and with a lot of higher res geometry or VrayProxies in use.

[iToo]

Yes, i think this is a different issue. The camera should not be a problem if it doesn't change and auto-view is off.

Perhaps VRay is not loading the proxies correctly. What is your exact VRay version ? I know ChaosGroup has released multiple releases in the last days to solve some problems.

[simmsimaging]

I am using 2.25.01

I don't think it's just proxies though: the problem was occurring with geometry as well. I just switched to using proxies because the max file was over 3GB and was taking forever to open/save

/b