XGen interactive render farm random clumping

[rafal]

Hi, I have problem with clumping on deforming mesh. Everything is ok in batch render but on render farm It looks like it generates random clumps for every machine. Maya 2018.1 and vray 3.60.02. Any ideas?

Thanks

[sean.heasley]

Hi @rafal

Thanks for attaching the scene file!

Unfortunately I don't have access to Vray so I can't see if I can reproduce your issue. That said, have you tried batch rendering with a different renderer to see if the issue still occurs?

Please let me know if anything changes!

[rafal]

Hi, actually I've managed to replicate this behaviour with Arnold on single machine. I've attached scene file and batch file emulating frame spiting on render farm, this are commands that renderpal generates on render nodes. It should work after project path update.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @rafal

This is pretty unusual. Out of curiosity I tried rendering a sequence of pngs with Arnold and was able to play back the render fine with none of the weird clumping you were seeing.

Have you checked your render farm/batch settings to make sure there isn't anything that may be causing this issue?

[rafal]

It happens only if you split frames to single jobs with one frame to render on each one.

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2018\bin\Render.exe" -r file -s 1 -e 1 -proj "D:/ClumpTest" -rl "defaultRenderLayer" "D:/ClumpTest/scenes/ClumpTest.mb"
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2018\bin\Render.exe" -r file -s 2 -e 2 -proj "D:/ClumpTest" -rl "defaultRenderLayer" "D:/ClumpTest/scenes/ClumpTest.mb"
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2018\bin\Render.exe" -r file -s 3 -e 3 -proj "D:/ClumpTest" -rl "defaultRenderLayer" "D:/ClumpTest/scenes/ClumpTest.mb"
end go on....... till end frame

if you set this cmd line to do 10 or whatever frames in one go it renders fine but its useless for render farm

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2018\bin\Render.exe" -r file -s 1 -e 10 -proj "D:/ClumpTest" -rl "defaultRenderLayer" "D:/ClumpTest/scenes/ClumpTest.mb"

I've checked it on different workstations without using render farm and on all of them there is same problem

[sean.heasley]

Hi @rafal

Unfortunately I don't have a render farm so I can't reproduce the issue.

That said, have you tried exporting the groom as a cache?

Let me know if anything changes!

[sean.heasley]

Also just to add to my previous post,

@Michael_Todd did some testing and found that it renders fine with the command and if you render the sequence one frame at a time it works as well.

Therefore we believe the issue may be with your render farm or possibly one of the machines not being set up properly.

[Michael_Todd]

We do have a problem replicating the circumstances of your issue, though, as we don't have a render farm to test this in exactly the same way, but even then, it might not be set up the same way as yours...

batch and sequence rendering both work as expected and an issue like this has not been reported by others so this leads me to wonder if there is a possibility that some machines on the farm are setup in a different way than others, though I'm not sure how that would happen. 

Cheers

[rafal]

That's totally puzzling. I've checked it on few others workstations in the office and it gives same problem. I didn't use render farm it was rendered locally on local drives. Maybe its about maya version 2018.1? I will check it outside the office but I have no clue what could possibly be wrong with our workstations that gives this kind of problem.

And cache indeed solves this issue, this is the way I managed render fur for the project, but its a pain to cache this amount of hairs.

But anyway, as I said I will try to check it on different location.

Thanks

[mspeer]

Hi!

@rafal , @Michael_Todd and @sean.heasley

I can confirm this with Maya 2018 update 1. ( I rendered the first 3 frames only. )

Also if i save the scene at frame 2 and open it again it's different than saving the scene at frame 1 and going to frame 2 (should be easier to reproduce and troubleshoot).

[Michael_Todd]

i cannot replicate either of those results.

[Michael_Todd]

In your preferences, do you have Animation evaluation set to DG or Parallel?

cheers

Michael

[mspeer]

Hi!

Evaluation mode does not make a difference (for saving or loading) i also tested saving as .ma (same problem). Importing a scene leads to the same problem depending on the current frame at which you import the scene. Also resetting preferences did not change anything. Currently i have no idea what else i could test.

Scene files attached.

[teemu]

Hi there. We're having EXACT same issue. We're using a 3rd party render farm. Earlier we had issues with clump node and added the cut-modifier to fix render crashing (invalid number of points-error). After we got that working, this issue raised it's head. 

Same thing : Deformed mesh. Renders fine on batch, but NOT on a 3rd party render farm. Also seems that saving on a different frame than 0 (bind pose), there are problems of xgen finding it's right seed/setting/direction for clumping? - so wild guess is that it must be something to do with the fact that Xgen is batching each frame separately....



(Maya 2017.4 - tried also rendering with 2018 on the farm, same result).

We're delivering in 1 week and need to get this sorted asap - any idea? Any dirty workaround even would be amazing!

Rafal - did you find a solution to this by any chance?

[rafal]

Hi, Caching fur seems to solve this issue but it takes time :(.

Good luck

[slimboJoe]

Could it be the result of a HIGH VALENCE VERTEX problem, where Xgen is evaluating the geometry differently if the frame progression is not sequential?

[Anonymous]

We are having the same problem.  Is there any resolution?

[mspeer]

Hi!

@slimboJoe. Nice idea, but that's not the problem.

It happens with a simple Torus too.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Michael_Todd,

I have exactly the same issue. did you find a solution?

[licenses]

Same problem here. Clumps change every frame  Maya 2018.4.