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Resuming a render fails

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 8:58 am
by feynman
A new render node with 3.0.1.0 installed. An old render node with 3.0.1.0 installed. They were set to render over night. The renderings (Multilight) were interrupted after a few hours by an automatic Windows 7 update that restarted the PC : (

When trying to resume the renderings, I see in the that everything is going through the usual motions - until just after these console messages appear...

Voxelisation done.
Start Rendering
Start writing MXI file…
End writing MXI file…
MXI successfully renamed.


...then Maxwell Render crashes - the "maxwell.exe stopped working" modal window appears. How can I resume these renderings? Resuming always worked for ok me.

The Windows firewall is disabled on the license-serving laptop and on all render nodes. The render nodes show that the license is checked out ok. I can resume renderings from December 2014 and prior, but not renderings from this March. I can use the Multilight feature on the renderings and save images on the nodes in question. Physical changes in the network: a new WLAN router in January and a new additional render node.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 4:55 pm
by feynman
Anyone any ideas? It is as if something is "baked" into the files that prevents them from being resumable.

I need to resume a whole bunch of renderings done over the weekend and can't render them anew from the start with more hours, each already having taken nine hours : (

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 5:54 pm
by nachob
the only possibility you have now is trying with the 3.0.1.3 beta version that you can download from http://www.maxwellrender.com/betas/plugin/22, that version should be totally compatible with the 3.0.1.0 but with some bug fixes that could be hurting you.

I have no more clues from the information you give us.

nachob

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 6:40 pm
by feynman
Thanks; I wanted to avoid upgrading in the middle of jobs. What other information could be useful to debug the resuming failures? Anything in a log somewhere? In the files to be resumed themselves?

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 6:49 pm
by nachob
3.0.1.3 should be a just bug-fix version of 3.0.1.0, no new features, no incompatibilities, no different output, just bug-fixes. Just try it in a computer to check if the mxi resumes with it, if it does the evaluate changing, if it doesn't you don't lose much.

if it doesn't work, the only solution to know why it doesn't resume is taking a look ourselves here. But then me need the scene with all dependencies and the mxi. And then we could find the issue but maybe without having a solution for it.

The other option is just restarting the render again and merge the result with your previous mxi, just keeping the same settings should work.

nachob

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:55 pm
by feynman
Time is running out so I will rather try re-rendering and then merging to obtain a higher SL. If I render two renderings to SL 14, how high will it go once merged - maybe SL 16?

Once I have time I upgrade; but I still like to make the file available (Dropbox link) so you can have a look at while no rendering can be resumed.

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 12:37 am
by Fernando Tella
Maybe, depending on how Windows restarted the PC, the mxi files could've got corrupted.

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 1:06 am
by feynman
Also happens on PCs that were not interrupted by Windows update : (

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:34 am
by feynman
When I need to go down the other route - render again and then merge the two to obtain a higher SL - is there a certain naming convention to be respected for the 2nd rendering so it allows for manual merging after? It can't have the same name as the first; otherwise it would overwrite that, no? When the 1st rendering came to SL 14 and the 2nd rendering comes to SL 9 - what total SL can I expect to obtain?

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:34 am
by nachob
In order to merge mxi they must have the same resolution, number of channels, and so. but the name is not important. I would keep the new mxi in different folders and merge later. I don't know the exact SL you will get, but you can think in terms of time: 1 mxi rendered 2 hours + 1 mxi rendered 1 hour = 1 mxi rendered 3 hours.

nachob

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:36 am
by feynman
Cheers, I'll do that now.

Re: Resuming a render fails

Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 12:02 am
by feynman
Merging SL 16.59 (9 h) and SL 16.60 (9 h) yields a final SL of 18.30 and a bit less noise. Merging SL 17.24 (9 h) and SL 15.80 (5 h) yields SL 18.33. I wonder how a single 18 h render would have looked (if I could resume).