ASS randomly rendering pink

[poheaven85]

Hi all, I have a scene with 130 + ASS files which loads fine and renders okay-ish. The problem is whenever i open the file, the first time i render it I have a few ASS files rendering pink. I've read that it has to do with MtoA shader location but when I repath the file, it goes away and renders fine.

As you can guess, this is a problem since I need to render a sequence on the farm on different render nodes and this random pink cannot happen. Is there a way I can force Arnold to reload the ASS files pre-render? I've tried to extract the scripts for that but I couldn't fine any code blocks that changes the path of AiStandIn node.

Thanks in advance!

[Stephen.Blair]

Pink (magenta) means a missing shader.
What does "repath the file" mean? If you're using absolute paths for aiStandIns, you should instead export relative paths for aiStandIn nodes, and using the Procedural Search Path.

[poheaven85]

I am using relative paths but I don't have to put in search paths because all my files are in the sourceimages folder which is the default where arnold initially looks for. So when I move the project to a new machine, it automatically picks up without an issue. When I said "re-path the file" I mean in the aiStandIn node, I delete the file path (/jobs/test/example.ass) and re-write the same file path again (/jobs/test/example.ass) and the pink goes away. It imports fine. That's why I was looking into force the reload on all the ASS files. Is there a code I can write up to enforce this before the render?

[poheaven85]

So I also tested the procedural search path and it in fact works! Hurray!

Maya arnold reads or loads the whole scene faster and it doesn't have any pink assets anymore. I guess I need to write different paths when I transfer this project to another machine but I'm okay with that. Thank you!