[flycast]

I have two nodes in a farm that are both on Macs. Every time I render I get these irritating streaks/bands through the images:

http://s246.photobucket.com/albums/gg11 ... treaks.jpg



I understand that I can merge the files manually but where do I find them on the Mac?

[flycast]

And I must say...

I have searched on this forum and have found Tom stating that this is a random occurrence probably due to network traffic. It is happening to me 95% of the time.

Any ideas on getting rid of the streaks in the first place?

[sampson]

there should be a little terminal app in your maxwell folder called mximerge, it gives examples at the top of how to do it. Give it try.

...have never managed to find a method to get shot of the streaks - they do appear randomly and luckily for me not that often.

[flycast]

sampson:

That's great! The problem is I can't find the temporary mxi files that are created on when a render none renders in cooperative network. All I can find is "look in your temporary system folder". I can't find any temporary system folder on either Mac. I expect that they are hidden.

I know they are there - but where?

[lebbeus]

try looking under the "user" folder, or the root folder; in the future, you can set the path where you'd like to save the mxis (it's below the image path)

[flycast]

I did set the path where I wanted the mxi saved. After the cooperative render ran it saved the merged mxi in that folder. The problem is that the merged mxi has these streaks in it. I understand that each render node saves it's own mxi in a temporary folder on it's hard drive and if you have the streaks than you can take those temp mxi files and merge them.

I am looking for the location of the temp mxi from each render node so that I can merge them manually.

[Bubbaloo]

You can do a search for *.mxi, I don't know what the saved mxi is called. Maybe default.mxi or cooperative.mxi?

[flycast]

Yes, I did. I also changed the OS setting to show hidden files. I cannot find any temporary mxi files anywhere, just the final merged version.

[Bubbaloo]

I think there is an option in mxst to delete temporary files after render. Maybe you have that checked?

[flycast]

There is an option "Delete temporary files when closing" and that was not checked. There is also a path option for mxs files that was blank. I am looking for mxi files. There is no path option for mxi files.

[lebbeus]

Are you using 1.7.1?

here is a screenshot of the windows version (sorry, I don't have my mac on me right now--but it's the same)

[flycast]

Yes, thank you. I have been putting a path spec there. That is the name of the final mxi file. When you do a network render you can also add a file name spec for the mxi file, again it is the name for the final merger file name. I am looking for the temporary mxi file per the manual:

"If the network fails or crashes at some point and the merging of MXI files is not completed, you could try to manually merge the cooperative .MXI files created during the render process. . . Locate each cooperative .MXI file in the temp directory of the operating system of each render node"

Possibly because my network render actually finished the temporary file is gone?

[Bubbaloo]

Does anyone know where the temp mxi file is located on a Mac when coop rendering?

[lebbeus]

well, with the time that's been wasted trying to find this another render probably could have been run…

my guess from the image in the first post is that even if you find the temp mxis, you'll end up with a similar result (banding)…

[flycast]

Feels that way but...
About 95% of my renders that are automatically merged get these bands. I have been merging manually but it's a pain.

I think that the temp mxi file is deleted when the render successfully completes.

We have VoIP phones so I am trying to isolate the network nodes behind a switch to see if that helps, otherwise I'll keep putting up with this incredibly glitchy software (most temperamental software I have every used) for it's excellent renders - the most realistic polished metal renders I have ever seen.