Render nodes won't render groups in forests (reference mode)

[ritoo]

Groups in reference mode are totally broken. I constantly experiencing the very same DR problem. The very same groups get rendered (by render nodes) just fine without forests. I had a lengthy mail ping-pong with Itoo representative a half year before but it was fruitless. I thought a new version of vray and fp would solve it  but nope..
The 'workaround' is to explode and form a new group , but its like a lotto sometimes it works sometimes doesn't

[iToo]

This is a strange issue, because for Forest there is not difference between rendering locally or in a render node. The plugin always loads and processes items in the same way.
In fact, we don't know when V-Ray is using DR. For the plugin this is a transparent process.

Probably you already did it, but... have you checked if render nodes have same Forest version ?

[ritoo]

Yes,  the same version. BTW assets are stored locally  or on server,  "transfer missing assets" and 'use cached assets" options are ON. Again, when assets are not members  of the group(s) - they cause no problem neither in forests nor as stand alone

[iToo]

Ok. Then i suspect must be something related with the assets handling of V-Ray.
We'll contact with ChaosGroup to get more information about this feature.

Do you use V-Ray CPU or GPU ?

[ritoo]

cpu buckets

[iToo]

We made some tests, but could not reproduce this issue.
A couple of questions, to be sure we are reproducing same conditions:

- The object you are scattering is a group composed by a proxy + lights ?
- If proxy is replaced by a mesh, does it work correctly ?
- What is the path of the proxy ? a local file, or a network file using UNC path ?

[ritoo]

>>We made some tests, but could not reproduce this issue.
Yes those random glitches are too hard to catch, very irritating.
>>The object you are scattering is a group composed by a proxy + lights ?
Initially I experienced this bug with a proxy+light in a group and stopped using it, then I got this bug with a proxies only in groups as well.
>> If proxy is replaced by a mesh, does it work correctly ?
Hard to tell, I strongly prefer proxies
>>What is the path of the proxy ? a local file, or a network file using UNC path ?
Usually local drives with "transfer  missing" ON. I experimented by moving problematic assets to a server drive (all nodes see it as L:\blah\blah\blah, no double UNC slashes and it didn't help.

[iToo]

We tried several combinations (local proxy + transfer assets, UNC paths, etc.), but could not reproduce it. All tests were done in Max 2023, V-Ray 6 and latest Forest.

The only possibility that occurs to me is that V-Ray sometimes cannot load the proxy, resulting in a group of zero size, and Forest ignores it.
I'm sorry, but if this is the case, there is not much we can do about it.