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Team Render R18 R19 renders only .tmp files!
Posted: 16 January 2019 08:22 AM   [ Ignore ]  
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Hello there, I’m having massive problems with Team Render, currently using R19, but also had the same problems in R18.
Sometimes it renders the image sequences to .PNG, another time it would only give some of us .tmp files with cryptic naming.
Like this: 36EABB8D-2012-427E-B2BC-0CAC93391979.tmp

I use the “Standard” renderer, but could also see the issue happening with Physical.

Our Cinema4d version is R19.068 Studio. We are running on a g-bit LAN, wired (not wireless!) and static IP addresses. We have 4 identical artist workstations and 15 render clients in our render farm.
All machines are running Windows 7 64bit Professional. Workstations have 64GB Ram, Clients 16GB RAM or 8GB RAM. (It makes no difference, if just a few render cubes are used, or switched on one after another, or if just the 16GB RAM machines are involved, or just the 8GB RAM ones.)

So, the general setup for Team Rendering has been setup according to the Maxon guidelines and triple-checked with Ricks TR trouble shooting here on cineversity.
I’ve disables all plugins to test if any third party is causing it, but run into the same issue.
So, bonjour has been always disabled from the start. I’ve used “announce machines to network” as soon as it became available, to see if the problem persisted and it did persist, so I’ve disabled it again.
I’m now using a custom, local machine list file on the TR clients including the static IPs and import the machine list of the TR clients for the workstations from a file.

I’ve also managed to put the “c4d_net_debug.txt” file in my local installation directory to get the TR clients console output printed to my machines console.

I’ve tested it with a fresh scene including just a grey cube. Bam, .tmp files.

There is no error message in the client consoles, nor in the workstation console that would give a hint.

All machines pick up the render jobs, frame ranges are assigned like you would expect and then the frames are rendered and sent to the output directory in the network, but these file names are broken, making it impossible to read those as a sequence.
I’ve managed to bulk rename some of my 32.000 files to .b3d, but then I had no luck to batch convert those to .PNG.
I could only open one by one with the C4D image viewer and resave as .PNG.

It is also creating .tmp files if rendered to .TIF, .TGA, instead of .PNG for example.
It also does occurs, if send from different workstations.
It does also occur, no matter if the project is in the network, and is rendered to the network, or if everything is locally stored (the desktop, or just C:\project\XYZ).

It happenes from time to time, independent from the scene file size. We would have it with 2MB files, as well as with 250MB files.
We have it happening with textures, or without textures and also with and with no plugins.
It also happened, no matter if the workstation that sends the job is part of the rendering, or is not part of it.
Difficult scenes with long render times and easy to render scenes with fast render times are affected, too.
Also, rendering to Picture Viewer, or in Render Queue both would give us .tmp files.

It seems as if, once a hidden unknown background process that assembles firstly the .b3d from the .tmp, and then the target format e.g. .PNG has been crashed, only restarting Cinema helps to get rid of the initial creation of .tmp files. But, after a while we’re back to only .tmp, sometimes with a few .b3ds inbetween.
Because of that, We’ve also checked the network speed many times with ping and looked into a file permission issue with our administrator.

BTW, I have been through every single blog- and forum- post out there, that just mentions the .tmp, or .b3d file problem with TR (17/18/19/20). So, others seem to have a similar issue, but no solution.

So, it is not the file path with “.”, or general usage of special characters in filename or path, like it is described on the cgsociety forums, it is also not a quicktime codec or HDRI on the sky object, it is not a missing font, or plugin.


The only, badly working workaround was to enable the watermark-feature in the render settings to print the frame number inside the image and then extract this with OCR software, and batch rename the cryptic filename after the frame number extracted.
But, this method would fail often for some numbers (e.g. 0 and O, 1 and I) and it was impossible to get pass-names along and scene-names extracted for thousands of files.


Maybe you guys have any ideas, where to look for a solution. Please help!

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Posted: 16 January 2019 12:50 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]  
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Hi m&m,

Based on all the data you have shared here, this should be clearly discussed with the support
https://www.maxon.net/en/support/how-can-we-help/

I’ m not supposed to do any support work here, for several reasons.

(To disable Bonjour, I wouldn’t advise this generally…)

But please share your report with the support-team.

My best wishes

For anyone following along this thread, make sure to watch this tutorial:
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/cinema_4d_team_render_part_10

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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Posted: 16 January 2019 08:22 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]  
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Hello Dr. Sassi,

I appreciate your support. From all what I have been able to read over the last three years here at cineversity, you’re fast, responsive and make all our lives easier.

I have discussed this issue in detail with MAXON support, I sent files and information. I’ve also discussed the topic with support at CAD-Network, the guys who built our workstations and renderfarm hardware. I’ve been in contact with Thinkbox Software support for a couple of weeks, just to build an alternative by using standalone commandline rendering with deadline. And I’m in continuous discussion with all members of our studio for over 14 month abou this.

The first time I contacted Maxon support in July 2018 with this issue, when using R18, they told me that there is no support for any third party plugins in general. I’ve been told to disable and not use any of them in production. I was shocked, because our pipeline heavily relies on plugins such as x-particles and realflow-c4d for our fx work. [case closed for Maxon]

I’ve also been told this time, that Maxon is not affiliated with Cineversity in any way and that there is absolutely no support for any of the CV Toolbox Plugins and Scripts. I was told to “NOT use them!” (no need to say, that running a production without these essential cineversity tools is impossible, (CV-frame-Range)

The MSA (Maxon Service Agreement) excludes some sort of support, but at least there should be something, right?

I then rolled back to R17 in September of 2018 and tested the TR and contacted Maxon support again. They have not been able to reproduce the issue. [case closed for Maxon - second time]

In January 2019: Maxon Support told me that they would not do any support for R19 anymore, because R20 has been already released (in September 2018). They would not look further into it, unless I would install R20 and test my scene. [case closed for Maxon - third time]
For several reasons, we just cannot upgrade the studio pipeline right now!

We also all know, R20 got a major rework and several PlugIns just dont work. These need to be reworked by the creators, and this took some time. Not to mention CD Tools, which I have been able to see in action for the first time, because Insydium was so kind to make “the bridge”. Thanks!!!

So, where else can I get support?

Maybe you could get me in touch with someone wink, who is usually solving advanced issues with larger c4d pipelines.


Thanks Dr. Sassi.

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Posted: 16 January 2019 08:43 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]  
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Hi, m&m,

Thanks a lot for your nice feedback, even you have anything else pulling on you.
I certainly know how that feels.

Plug-ins for R20 do not work if they were coded in C.O.F.F.E.E.
Please have a look here for further information and options to check projects.
https://labs.maxon.net/?p=3235

I had hoped that the temp file problem would prompt a quick answer.

I have no mixed network here, so I’m the last person to give advice on such render-farms.
All that I can do is, to suggest “standard” exclusion procedures. In other words, start with the absolute basic configuration, and check if that happens. Then add more parts of your pipeline into it, and check again. Sounds familiar, I guess so. However, I would take two laptops and get a cross-network cable between the two, One set up as normal Cinema 4D workplace and one that just holds the “slave”. All in absolute basic mode.
If the problem doesn’t show up, add more of your pipeline specific parts to it. (Are you rolling your eyes at me, I understand…, honestly.)

Rick mentions the text report file, any luck with those?


You have asked to find someone, how about this:
Just to be clear, I do not get any money from this: Would you mind to ask for a 1on1 training hour about this specific theme, (honestly, I don’t even know if that is available), but who knows.
This URL is so hard to find, I hope it is offered at all anymore.
http://1on1.maxon3d.com/

Sorry, that I have no better answer for you. Yes, the combination might create the problem, and this combination has no support, kind of a catch 22.

But I hope the step by step shows at least a smaller area where the problem shows up. Which might help to find other ways.

All the best

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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Posted: 16 January 2019 09:36 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]  
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P.S.:

Two things: (Just brainstorming)

If you set the render out-put to “.b3d” is this working? You mentioned the tmp files are there, so either it hasn’t started or it has crashed or was interrupted along the way.

Is the Watermark-rendering stable? If so, could you use an “invisible watermark”, see attachment. (Any other watermark options are set to: off).
Perhaps a combination of both.

File Attachments
watermak_work-a-round.tif.zip  (File Size: 9KB - Downloads: 37)
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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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