I am rendering using 3dsmax and Arnold. This project is basically a large construction project over a wide area. I used google earth for the initial overview textures with simple boxes for buildings.
When I render through the backburner farm, some images randomly render as black, while others render properly. I have not seen a pattern with this other than its usually the first 2-4 frames of a render sequence. (this is only an initial draft so some of the render jobs are @4 (7.5fps) or @2 (15fps) quality only.
When I render the said image in my local PC, it renders correctly with no errors. It is only when I render on the farm that there are errors. Even if I restart the jobs (maybe it was a network issue), the black frames is consistent, its usually some of the first few frames.
My initial suspicious is the large google earth texture. its an 800mb 25000 x 14000 large image, since I have some scenes that dive in for a close up view.
Could it be a texture loading issue? If so, is there a way to resolve this?
What I did was add 10 frames before the intended range, so 100-300, i sent it as 90-300, so the black frames were around the 90-100 range, but this is wasting render time and frames.
Also, I have a 2nd pass rendering only a path as PNG, and the large texture landscape is hidden, this renders also some random initial black frames.
