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Cooperative Render crashes (1.5.0.2)

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:22 pm
by bejack
I try to render a scene with about 900.000 triangles. 2 simple BSDF materials and 2 emitting planes are in there. I can render this on 4 network machines up to a size 4000x2250 pixels. When i try to set the size to 6000x3375 or even bigger MXServer crashes on all machines before starting the voxelization process. Is this a memory problem?

Machines:

MacPro 8Core, 9gb ram
PowerMac Dual2.7ghz, 4.5gb ram
2x MacBookPro DualCore 2.16ghz, 2gb ram

bjoern


Image

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 11:56 am
by Daniel Hruby
I am trying to render a scene with 24 polygons and I can't get the server to stay on. I can open MXCL and see the server is ready, but as soon as I add a very simple MXS to test, it crashes the Server everytime. I do have appleshare active on both machines. I got 1.5.0.1 to do a simple coop like this, but I could not get my more complicated scens to work. So here I try again to make sure a simple test will work and I am having troubles. Any tips out there?

Incidentlyt, I am pointing to a texture fulder on my Local drive. This worked before.....

D

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 1:32 pm
by nachob
Could you say the exact paths you are using for everything, that could probably give us a clue of where the error could be.

Thanks a lot

nachob

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 9:30 pm
by Daniel Hruby
Nacho

Thanks for helping me. Here are some settings.....


http://web.mac.com/danielhruby/iWeb/Co- ... Issue.html


WHat do I do if I have textures scattered about my hard drive? I have:

Maxwell Materials database
Arroway Database
My own texture collection
Project specific texture folders

I use textures from all of these sources to make MXMs. I relize this would be a problem when defining the bitmap path.

HOWEVER I tried to do a simple cube and used Mihai's Archwall shader as my only shader and I have the bitmap path set to the materials database where that texture lives. It still crashes.

I tried this same test with 1.5.01 and got the cube to render then, but now I must have something wrong.

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 1:08 am
by nachob
I can see two problems in your folder and output settings, probably not your fault if you clicked on the forlder icon besite the text field in paths, but they are no correct.

1-The image output is not a network path, did you selected it with the folder icon?
2-The bitmaps default path is not correct neither, after the computer name "MacPro.local/" and before the "Applications/" there should be the name of the primary hard disk, something like "Macintosh HD/" or the name you have. 

When you select a folder or file with the folder icon and launches a selection dialog, maxwell rewrites the path in a network way, usually it does it correctly but as there are many possibilities sometimes it can be badly converted, and it is probably what happened in the bitmap path. Change it by hand and it should work.

It is also very desirable using a "pack and go" from studio to save al the files and bitmaps in the same folder.

Hope it helps.

nachob

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 1:30 am
by Daniel Hruby
I will try it out with this info.


Can you confirm that the bitmaps path MUST be at the top of ALL textures used in a MXS file? IOW< if I have a texture located out of the file path, it will cause MXCL Server to crash?

Will an alias be recognized in a search path to locate bitmaps? I could solve my problem by placing an alis for each floder that I have bitmaps in so they are always in the path.

Otherwise the solution is to place ALL Textures used in one path?

On a related note, When I download an MXM< can I just drop the enclosing folder of bitmaps into the TEXTURES folder in the materials database? Curren;lty I can only get things to owrk if all the textures reside in the TEXTURES folder. The obvious problem is that some people use terrible naming conventions like "Normal map.jpg" and I can risk overwriting a map for another texture. So can we now pull the MXM from the downloaded folder, and drop the folder of textures into the texture folder keeping them grouped and not conflicting with similarly named maps???

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:05 am
by nachob
Can you confirm that the bitmaps path MUST be at the top of ALL textures used in a MXS file? IOW< if I have a texture located out of the file path, it will cause MXCL Server to crash?
It should not crash. It should just stop rendering with a message of texture not found, if it crash because of this, it's a bug and it should be solved.
Will an alias be recognized in a search path to locate bitmaps? I could solve my problem by placing an alis for each floder that I have bitmaps in so they are always in the path.
I cannot confirm it, it should work in a local environment, but not sure if the network protocol allow it. I should check it tomorrow.
Otherwise the solution is to place ALL Textures used in one path?
That will always work. As I mentioned in a previous post, "pack and go" from studio will do this work for you, placing everything in a folder and saving all references to the new location.

nachob

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:48 am
by Daniel Hruby
Nacho,

Results:

http://web.mac.com/danielhruby/iWeb/Co- ... Issue.html

I tried Pack And go and server crashes after recieving the MXS. I tried renaming the path to include MacPro.Local/Macintosh HD/Applications... and it had no effect. Crash.

Again, I am trying to render a plain cube using ONLY a native Maxwell shader and pointing to the Textures folder. It crashes at the completion of file transfer.

Anyone elese with this trouble?

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:31 am
by claus
Daniel Hruby wrote: It crashes at the completion of file transfer.

Anyone elese with this trouble?
Yes, every time. Have not been successful yet.

Best regards

Claus

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:32 am
by nachob
Hi daniel,

I told you that bitmap path was not correct, the others except the output (that was a local path) were correct. That path is an absolute path of your connection to the computer, I mean if you do a "Connect to Server..." from finder and you put the path: afp://<computer name>, you have connection to user directly e.g afp://<computer name>/<user name>/...rest of path, but if you connect to something inside you Application folder it should be something like afp://<computer name>/<disk name>/Applications/maxwell/textures.

As I told you in most of the cases selecting the folder with the icon should be correct in term of path handling.

nachob

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 9:47 pm
by Q2
nachob

What you are suggesting doesn't work either. I did exactly what you suggested but still I have no luck coop rendering anything on my macs.

Any more ideas?

Q! Berlin

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:53 pm
by nachob
Try with a pack & go and store the files in any subfolder of your user folder.

nachob

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:55 pm
by Q2
Hi nachob

Tried that all ready. Crashes the server also. BUMMER!

Ciao Carsten

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 4:05 pm
by Daniel Hruby
Same here.

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 4:43 pm
by Q2
Tried also to replace the kerberos framework with the version from OS 10.4.8 . That didn't do the trick either.

Well, now I just have to hope for nachob and his crew.....

:?

Q! Berlin