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Author Topic: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016  (Read 4299 times)

3d-labor

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Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« on: October 26, 2015, 09:06:39 AM »
Since I moved to Max 2016 the render process on the render machine crashes with the error "219 ...  pipe has been ended" when Forest Pack objects are in the scene. Local rendering is no problem. The crazy thing is - sometimes it works on the render node too, also with Forest Pack objects. I have installed Max 2016 and Forest Pack 4.4.1 on both machines and tried to have the same paths for the libraries. I use HQPlants and the presets which came with Forest Pack. Under MAX 2015 all was working fine. I noticed that the scale of the presets seems to be changed. Under MAX 2015 I got no messages during insertng a preset. Now I get the message, that "the Unit Scale of the XRef object does not match the System Unit scale". I work with meters as system unit, the preset seems to have centimeters. So I rescale it. I always working with "Xref scenes" where some Forest Pack elements (lawn etc.) are in the XrefScenes and others (Trees e.g.) are part of the "XRef mother scene". No I will uninstall and reinstall all the needed software on the render node to have a clean install there (had MAX 2015 in parallel). Please help me, as usual I have a big project to work on....
Workstation: i7-3930K @ 3,92GHz 16 GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro P4000, Win7/64 Prof.
Rendernode: AMD Threadripper 2950x@ 4,10 GHz 32 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, Win 10 Prof.
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Michal Karmazín

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2015, 10:24:51 AM »
Hi,

I would suggest you to to do a quick test using the Forest Tools utility to export all scattered geometry into instances. You can find it under Utilities - More ... - Forest Tools. For more information about it, check our on-line reference guide. This way you can check that the problem happens during Forest object conversion or not.

Anyway, it sounds like that probably it'll be a backburner related issue. Unfortunately that error is generic and doesn't give us a hint, where the problem could be. In many cases it might be related to "Consistency in versions is important on manager, render slave, and 3ds Max workstation. The same version of 3ds Max + Backburner should be installed, including Service Packs, Hotfixes, Extensions, and plugins."

Would you please specify which renderer (and its release) are you using?

I would suggest following steps, which might help:

Backup & remove any files under C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\Backburner\ServerJob
Backup & remove UI files under C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\Autodesk\...\ENU\en-US\UI

Regarding the XRef Object Merge: Units Mismatch warning window: Because of the importation process slightly changed, that message is triggered while working with the 3ds Max 2016 (even it's actually merging items/models and not linking them as XRefs). Anyway, upon our testing it behaves correctly (when using any geometry from scene with different Scene Unit Setup it´ll rescale the geometry accordingly).  I would suggest you always leave the default option Rescale the XRef Objects to the System Unit Scale marked.

We've already contacted Autodesk regarding it, but it doesn't seem there is a possibility to avoid that "confirmation" step.

Please let us know the result of "Forest Tools test" and if restoring UI / job queue helped or you are still facing troubles with it. Thanks in advance and have a nice day.

Kind regards,
« Last Edit: October 26, 2015, 10:37:28 AM by Michal Karmazín »

GJ3155

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #2 on: October 26, 2015, 10:57:20 AM »
Hi,
I have the same problem with 3dsmax2016/Backburner2016 and ItooForest 4.4.1. The workaround is to go back to Forest 4.3.7 and no render node will crash anymore. So I think it can't be a problem with Backburner, but something has changed in The forest-plugin...

Regards,
Frank

iToo

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #3 on: October 26, 2015, 11:03:09 AM »
Hi, what render engine do you use ?
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

3d-labor

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #4 on: October 26, 2015, 11:24:48 AM »
Dear Michal and all of you,
thank you very much for your quick help. As I mentioned I just now made a clean install on the render node. Until now it seems, that it has solved the problem. Also scenes from MAX2015 with Xrefs form MAX2015 were rendered on the render machine. But the behaviour of the Rendered frame window on the render machine is very strange. After poping up to the screen the processing bar is showing "Translating scene" under "Current task". And the following message "Rendering..." stops at the end of the bar. Now there is a pause, where the Title bar of the proccessing window shows "Not responding", as if the proccess is stopped. But after some minutes the "not resonding" message fades away. After some aditional minutes of black screen the "Rendered frame window" shows suddenly that the final gather proccess was obviously working in the background all the time, but not vissible on the "Rendered frame window". Half the work of "Final gather" is done at this moment. I assume, that this has nothing to do with Forest Pack. Sadly you cannot see the Final Gather Process all the time. I´m working with Mental Ray.
Workstation: i7-3930K @ 3,92GHz 16 GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro P4000, Win7/64 Prof.
Rendernode: AMD Threadripper 2950x@ 4,10 GHz 32 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, Win 10 Prof.
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iToo

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #5 on: October 26, 2015, 12:02:38 PM »
It seems all problems are related with Mental Ray, as discussed here.
We fixed several Mental Ray bugs in FP 4.4.1, but obviously something is now working well yet. Not sure if because our fault or Max 2016 has some effect here.

We'll check all code again. If we don't find the problem, we would release a separate shader using the implementation of FP 4.3.7 (in some cases it seems to work better). We'll see..
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

GJ3155

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #6 on: October 26, 2015, 12:19:10 PM »
I use 3dsmax2016 with mental ray.  4.3.7 works fine...

3d-labor

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #7 on: October 26, 2015, 12:27:42 PM »
Ok, boys and girls, you convinced me, I had another scene from a recent project where the render process stopped. I will also go back to 4.3.7.. Thank you all.
Workstation: i7-3930K @ 3,92GHz 16 GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro P4000, Win7/64 Prof.
Rendernode: AMD Threadripper 2950x@ 4,10 GHz 32 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, Win 10 Prof.
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3d-labor

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #8 on: October 26, 2015, 10:28:52 PM »
What should I say. After hours of installation and uninstallation work I now returned to MAX 2015 with ForestPack 4.3.4.
Thank you all for the help!
First I did was return to FP 4.3.7. which seemed to work better for me in some scenes. But  a rendering crashes in a simple test scene with a box and some trees on it. So I tried the hints wtih the removal of the ...\Serverjob and ...\UI folders. With no effect. I tried to convert the Forest Pack objects to instances with the Forest Tool which worked fine, no problems.
In the end I rolled back the thing to MAX 2015. I had to reinstall backburner from the USB-Stick once more because the installation of MAX 15 removed some files from the backburner folder (???). After that all is working fine. No more pausing of the render process on the render machine, I can see the final gather process from the beginning in the render frame window, no crashes anymore. I have the impression, that MAX 2015 works more fluently than MAX 2016 on my workstation (i7-870, 2,93GHz, 16 GB RAM, Solid State Systemdisk). I hope I can work on m project now, I will give MAX 2016 a try if the next ForestPack release comes. Thank you all again!
Workstation: i7-3930K @ 3,92GHz 16 GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro P4000, Win7/64 Prof.
Rendernode: AMD Threadripper 2950x@ 4,10 GHz 32 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, Win 10 Prof.
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3d-labor

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Re: Urgent help needed - netork rendering crashes since MAX 2016
« Reply #9 on: April 08, 2016, 03:52:14 PM »
Additional message regarding this topic: SOLVED
Because I wanted to get the advantages of MAX2016 I invested some further hours of investigation. At first I controlled all the versions of the participating software. Then I installed Service Pack 3 of MAX 2016 and the Backburner 2016 (AutoDESK said, it would be an "updated standalone install version of the Backburner 2016 software" while the version number in the system panel-->software remains the same). And I installed the beta version of FPP 5.0.4b. As a additional security I copied all the models of my HQ and XFrog libraries to the same path of the render machine (never had problems with this under MAX 2015, but who knows...). So far, the problem remains, only the error number changed to 109. But on the local machine network rendering was possible (which I didn´t try before). Then I read two tips of the Autodesk Forum: First delete the complete path of the backburner configuration under C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\backburner on both machines and delete the UI configuration of the render machine under path C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2014 - 64bit\ENU\en-US\UI . All of these data will be restored after restarting the server service and MAX on the render machine. I´m not completelly sure which of my steps the decisive one was, but after that I was able to render over network again with MAX2016, also the older MAX2015 files with lots of ForestPack objects in it. :)
Workstation: i7-3930K @ 3,92GHz 16 GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro P4000, Win7/64 Prof.
Rendernode: AMD Threadripper 2950x@ 4,10 GHz 32 GB RAM, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, Win 10 Prof.
Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium 2019, VRay Next, Cup of coffee...