3ds Max 2014 crashes after each frame in animation rendering

[TannerJohnso1]

So I've tried everything and scoured forums for an answer - even submitted the error report Max displays upon a crash.

My problem is this (and the same occurs if I use Backburner or not - i.e. single machine or dual machines):  When I submit an animation of 1 or more cameras through Batch Render, the computer will render the first frame, save as it is required to (typically tga or jpg), then crashes.  If it's through backburner (net render), then the frame will attempt a restart or move onto the next frame.  It will however overwrite initial frame file.  If I have a 1 minute rendering, it might only get through 4 frames before it completely locks up and about 30+ error reporting messages pop up.

Some stats about every file this happens on (same happens on IBL but currently set to FG):

-Using Max Design 2014 with mental ray

-Conserve Memory has been checked on and off

-Geometry cached turned off, on, and locked

-FG only with relatively low settings:

     -Divide camera path to 16
     -Initial FG Density: 0.1

     -Rays per FG Point: 70

     -Interpolate: 30

     -Diffuse Bounces: 0 to 3 tried. Currently 2

-Unified Sampling Quality: 4, Min: 1.0, Max: 64 and 128

-Filter type set to Mitchell

-NO displacement, effects, atmospherics, force 2-sided, etc, or render elements.

-Output size set to 960x540 but intend to increase to 1280x720

The file size is typically under 100MB (current project at 70MB) with Forest Pack and RailClone elements.  Also, some things are Xref'd to keep filesize low.  The render farm machine and workstation have the exact same file paths for all assets to avoid missing textures and geometry.

-----------------------------------

Computer specs:

BOXX APEXX4
2x Xeon E5-2630 v3 @2.40GHz
32GB RAM
Quadro K4200 4GB Video Card
240GB SSD
1TB HDD

BOXX RenderPro
2x Xeon E5-2680 v3 @2.50GHz
32GB RAM
240GB SSD

Thank you for any help you may be able to provide!

Regards, Tanner.

[TannerJohnso1]

Edit: The Unified Sampling Quality is set to 0.35-0.75 usually. 1.0 for stills.  NOT 4.

[jon.bell]

Hello Tanner,

I understand that you're having an issue with 3ds max 2014 crashing after rendering each frame when you submit an animation with 1 or more cameras via Batch Render. This happens whether you submit on one machine or multiple machines via Backburner as well.

You indicated that your scene file size is around 100 megs, and you're using Itoo Software's Forest Pack and Rail Clone plug-ins, and are using XRefs for some components of your scene to keep the overall size lower.

I have a couple of questions:

• Have you tried collapsing every object in your scene (including XRefs), re-saving the scene and then trying the render again? This might make your overall scene size larger, but might eliminate data transfer issues with XRefs.
• Can you create a scene file that doesn't use the Forest Pack and Rail Clone plug-ins and render it successfully?

I'm trying to determine if this might be a memory/file IO issue, or perhaps an issue with the 3rd-party plug-ins.

Please let me know if these suggestions work for you, and if you have any further technical support questions.

Best regards,

Jon Bell,
Autodesk Support Team

[jan.huebner]

Hi TannerJohnso1!

Can you please tell me what the error messages say?

Are these error messages the same in local as well as net rendering?

Can you send a log file from your Backburner Manager from the time the errors occur?

Greetings,

Jan

[TannerJohnso1]

Hi Jan,

I can't tell you what the errors are because Max will not respond, close, and then just display the Max Error Reporting window with no actual log window opening.  I've attached the BBServer log for review.  All of the errors from 2015/11/06 - 2015/11/09 are the issues.  I have found (but not yet tested on the scene that is causing the exact issue) that a forest pack preset containing silhouette textures placed in the cutout map slot using the Forest Color shader may be the problem.

Thanks,

Tanner

[jan.huebner]

Hi Tanner,

Sorry for the late reply.

Have quite a lot on my plate right now...

You really have a couple of Errors here in your log.

The first is that you seem to use Vray in your Max Design 2014 scene, but probably the server which should render it does not have Vray installed. (All plugins the scene requires need to be available for the render server as well.)

Then you have bigger problem with Mental ray.

Unfortunately it is not clearly stated what it is.

Can you render the scene without a problem locally within the Max user interface?

To investigate further on this I would have to check the scene directly.

Could you send me this or another small sample scene with the same issues so I can take a look at it?

In general it is highly recommended to not mix any renderer specific objects, materials, lights, etc. in one scene.

Always make sure only things which are really from that renderer are in the scene even you may think you don't use them to render the image. (e.g. Vray materials in you Material editor when you send a mental ray rendering to Backburner)

Greetings,

Jan

[TannerJohnso1]

Hi Jan,

The first error is one that pops up a lot but I don't have Vray or use it.  There are several model collections - mainly from Evermotion and CG-Axis - I have that were created in scenes with Vray and although I purchased or downloaded the mentalray set, Vray dlls still make their way into the final product.  I'd have to go through every single file (literally hundreds) and remerge to a fresh scene to correct that issue.

Secondly, I have somewhat corrected the issue.  I've found (along with a colleague's assistance) that the issue belongs to Forest Pack.  Now it might be that I had a forest color shader nested within another forest color shader, or that the alpha map I had on a low poly tree was causing issues.  I had sent it to the colleague and he has no issue with rendering but it was because he didn't have the silhouette textures I was using and they didn't render.  Once I removed that object from the scene and the silhouette forest object, it seemed to render fine.  I'll have to comb through my custom forest pack presets (again, a couple hundred) to rectify any similar settings to those that caused the errors in the first place.

Regards,

Tanner