Occasional runtime exception rendering with mentalray 2015

[ntourte]

Ahoy hoy! I'm using a trial version of Maya 2015 (we're trying to see if it's really worth more than 2k a seat to upgrade), and our pipeline uses the command line batch rendering. 

Sometimes, the rendering fails completely. And sometimes it doesn't. It's really peculiar. Here's a log snippet from a command line batch that failed: 

PHEN 0.2     27 MB warn : Color Mgt: Only support RGB & A
PHEN 0.6    112 MB fatal  051109: runtime exception 0xc0000005: access violation
PHEN 0.6    112 MB fatal  051109: runtime exception 0xc0000005: access violation
PHEN 0.2    112 MB warn : Color Mgt: Only support RGB & A
PHEN 0.6    112 MB fatal  051109: runtime exception 0xc0000005: access violation
PHEN 0.6    112 MB fatal  051109: runtime exception 0xc0000005: access violation
// Maya exited with status 2

I see a quick failure rendering a frame from inside Maya as well; that output looks like this:

// Error: *Fatal* (mental ray) : mental ray encountered a fatal error. The system may have become unstable. Please save the scene and exit Maya. // 
// Error: (Mayatomr.Output) : failed during mental ray rendering: mental ray abort // 

Again, all of this is spotty (just SCREAMS race condition); I can keep trying to render via either method and get success eventually, but I really need it to work 100% of the time :D. 

Any thoughts? Need anymore information?

Thanks!

Nick

[RAndroseGlover]

Just a guess, but maybe it has to do with MentalRay and reflections off your Phen materials? I'm getting the same error on my 3ds Max scene with a motorcycle I just placed in there.

My guess is that if mr is calculating a reflection/refraction/photon/importon/caustic (something?) off of a not 100% compatible material then it pops the error. Since not every rendering sees the same reflections, rays, etc. then you don't always get it, but I would suspect that if this is the case, it would pop up more so than not.

This is purely my barely educated quess, so please don't take it as gospel. Best of luck, let us know if you get it resolved.