Cineversity

This is the message I am currently getting on 2 of my 3 render nodes.  I search of the internet took me to a couple of forum threads which came to the conclusion that this is an XRef issue.  Only problem is, I am not using any XRefs.

This particular scene is actually a re-render after a lighting and positioning adjustment.  Neither it, nor it’s dozens of predecessors have had any issues until this one just now today.  The only client not coming back with that error is the one on my main workstation, which is also acting as Net Server.

I have, of course done the “Save Project with Assets” command directly into the proper folder, as I have done with all previous projects.

I realize this is more a question for support, and I will contact them, but I thought I’d at least see if anyone here has some insight to share, and of course, if a couse is discovered, I will post it here so it can be used as reference for anyone else in this situation.

Thanks
- Will

Right, so a chat with the good Mr Runyon over at support yielded no new leads, and as test, I launched another client on a machine that was momentarily available, and it had the same issue.  I did try deleting the client prefs on one of the nodes with no change in behavior.

I can only pray that this one file is a problem child and that there is not a bigger issue unfolding.

Of note, earlier in the day when I had a few projects in the cue, I noticed other projects were rendering fine on the other machines after they failed to render this one problematic one.  This gives me hope that this is isolated.

I’ll keep you posted

- Will

Right, though there doesn’t seem to be much interest, in the spirit of keeping anyone following the thread up to date, here is the latest:

Server and Clients were all updated to the latest (13.061) on Friday.  Everything has been working well on the farm until last night. When I went home, I had a queue of 10 jobs. I come in this morning, expecting them to all be done, but find there is still one chugging away. I had a look at the clients to see how many I had (many of the machines on the farm go offline as their users show up to start the day’s work), and discovered that while I have 6 clients at the moment, only 1 of them - again my workstation which also acts as server - were rendering any of the frames from the project.

I figured the same BS freerender bug must be in play again, so I ‘remoted’ in to one of the nodes to have a look at its console, but saw no error message, just that it had stopped rendering around midnight.

I quit and restarted the Client, and while it connected to the server instantly, it was not assigned any frames from the current job. So, I stopped the job, and restarted it. All of the Clients jumped on board and received frames, but within seconds had all ‘stopped rendering’ again.

Now, the way I am working is, I will suss out a scene and then render a few different passes of it. One or two with a Sketch and Toon style applied, and a couple of raytraces with different elements visible (object buffers won’t work here as need to have what is behind objects that are not visible). So, I’ll do a “Save Project With Assets” directly into the user->admin folder for the Net Server, ensuring that all textures are in their right place. Once complete, I’ll evoke the same command again, naming the project differently according to the changes I am set to make (which normally just means turning off S&T, setting a different output range, or hiding an object or three), and then doing just a regular save when said changes are complete. These changes never involve new textures.

So, the scene in question 05_13_D_All is having an issue that 05_13_D_Toms did not, even though the sole difference between them are visible objects. There are no errors being reported by the Server or the Clients, they just refuse to render this one scene.

It is as if the freerender bug still exists, but Maxon has ‘updated’ the software to no longer display that message. I doubt that’s the case, but the behavior, aside from that one message is exactly the same. Considering I have 130 scenes to do, this issue is more than just a little frustrating.