3ds Max Design 2010

[sosborne76]

Hi,

We have 3ds max deisgn 2010 on our render farm which is Qube 5.5. We modified the job.conf file in 3ds max job type folder to take into account the different registry and folder paths that 3ds max design has. But the 3ds max jobs fail anyway. A job log can not be written so there is little useful information. Here is a portion of the stdout of the job...

11/3/2009 13:49:06 PM;  Error rendering frame 0: An unexpected exception has occurred in the network renderer and it is terminating.
11/3/2009 13:49:06 PM;  Send End of Job command to Max
11/3/2009 13:49:07 PM;  Job Completed with Error(s) - see above
11/3/2009 13:49:07 PM;  Total elapsed time 345687:57:07
11/3/2009 13:49:07 PM;  Max is down
11/3/2009 13:49:07 PM;  Error occured while rendering job.
==== [ignore errors TO HERE] =====================================

WARNING: cannot open max's logfile 'C:\WINNT\TEMP\qube-3dsmax-2752.5.LOG'-- No such file or directoryINFO: child exited with value 3
 value 3

Any idea what the problem may be from this info?

Should 3dsmax design work ok with Qube as long as the job.conf has been modified?

Thanks,

Simon

[Scot Brew]

We will have one of our developers look into this. 

As an alternative, you may want to try submitting a "3dsMax BatchRender" through the QubeGUI to see if it comes up with a similar result.  That  "3dsMax BatchRender" uses a direct commandline call to 3dsmaxcmd.exe instead of a perl script.  As a result, you can run the exact same command directly from the Worker outside of Qube to isolate the issue to 3dsmax.  The 5.5 QubeGUI even has a right-click option on the job to allow you to easily do so (after logging into the Worker directly).

[shinya]

Hi Simon,

As Scot suggests, running the "batch" render could be your solution.

If you must use the 3dsmax jobtype, please paste the stdout logging info from
the job, directly above the information that you've already posted.  I'm curious
as to know what exactly the jobtype is doing to launch the 3dsmax design app.
You can either post it here, or email it to us at support <at> pipelinefx.com.  If
you email it, please mention this forum thread in the email, and provide a brief
but concise Subject and description in the body.

Also, please read the 3dsmax jobtype's README.txt file which has relevant
information, such as "known issues". 

[sosborne76]

We are submitting the job from the QubeGUI and not from the 3ds Max Design 2010 plug in. Inital attempts at submitting jobs failed because they were unable to find the 3dsmaxcmd.exe. So I modified the 3dsmax job.conf file on the worker we were testing to point it to the correct paths e.g:

installdir_windows_registry_paths = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Autodesk/3dsmaxDesign/12.0/MAX-1:409/Installdir, ...

default_3dsmax_locations = "C:/Program Files/Autodesk/3ds Max Design 2010, ...

Our render wrangler tried submitting a batch render. Either he did it wrong (he wasn't familiar with 3dsmax batch renders) or it failed.

Also I looked in the readme.txt and we tried running a render locally on the worker as suggested but that didn't help.

I will e-mail you the complete stdout log for the failed job and batch render job.

[Scot Brew]

Identified Issue from Logs
We have looked over the logs you sent and they both share the same error.  Both 3dsmax from the 3dsmax jobtype and 3dsmax batch are both crashing when trying to run this file with the same error message.

11/3/2009 14:36:46 PM;  Error rendering frame 0: An unexpected exception has occurred in the network renderer and it is terminating.

This is internal to 3dsmax and is likely a result of the environment or the scenefile.

Troubleshooting Steps
Troubleshooting the 3dsmax batchrender is usually the most direct way to track down render issues as it provides a straightforward command to run on the Workers.  As a check to directly render this scene (just removing the Qube part), do the following:

1) Login to a Worker and as the user that the Worker ran this job as
2) Look at the "stdout" for the job and run the entire command after the "COMMAND:".  It will look something like the lines below for 3dsmax batchrender.  Run the exact command that was run from Qube:

copy "<file.max>" "<file.max.#.max>" && "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2010\3dsmaxcmd.exe" -start:40 -end:40 -nthFrame:1 -showRFW:0 -v:5 "<file.max.#.max>" &&  del "<file.max.#.max>"

3) Compare this with the results seen in the batch_stdout.txt.  If it similarly fails, you have a test case that can be used outside of Qube to track down what is going on, or something to send to Autodesk for an identified bug.

[sosborne76]

We successfuly ran the command line for a given frame on a worker using the renderman user that runs the jobs. It worked fine.

After that we ran a successful batch using that single host. But after that all batches we submitted failed for some reason (they all use the same .max file). At first we thought it could be something to do with not specifying a specific file name for output name (we put a directory but not the file name) like we did on the successful job but that didn't play out. Also we wondered if could be to do with temporary .max files or .jpg files left over from failed/successful jobs but that didn't seem to make a difference either.

To be honest we can't see a reason for one to succeed and the rest fail. We are trying to submit it using the same parameters.

The error messages we are getting in stderr are of the form:

ERROR: exit status: 3

I have been looking round for some docs on error codes and can't seem to find any (I am assuming this is a max error code).

I have emailed the stdout's for both the successful job and one of the failed to support.

Thanks for your continued help.

[Scot Brew]

We'll look for the supplied stdout and stderr and follow up with you directly on the issue you are seeing.

[Ari]

If I may chime in - we need to set the qubeproxy user to have administrative priveleges - otherwise it was unable to write the log file ( and thus fails ).

[sosborne76]

Thanks its sorted... In the end it was due to the qubeproxy user needing admin priviledges. I thought it was already in an admin group, but it was an organisational one rather than domain admins. And its strange that it hasn't been an issue until now.

So thats 3dsmax batch working. Will have to have a crack at the standard 3dsmax job at some point.