Forest Pack and DR not working

[DarcTheo]

Having a problem with Forest Pack and DR not working together. The images keep rendering with and without grass. If i let my workstation render solo the grass is fine, if i switch DR on it seems sometimes the DR updates with a grassless image causing a ghosting on all of my grass. There are two forest pack objects, one is a laubwerk tree scatter and one is the grass. the trees have zero ghosting as far as i can tell but the grass is being weird.

I'm behind schedule now as the images havent rendered properly over night =/ does anyone have any idea why the grass would do this but not the trees? I dont have any errors from the machines rendering.

[alexyork]

It will probably be that the objects being used in the FP are not accessible to the nodes i.e. you're using xref mode and they're not accessible.

[DarcTheo]

It will probably be that the objects being used in the FP are not accessible to the nodes i.e. you're using xref mode and they're not accessible.

it was a default grass preset from forest pack just tweaked slightly. Normally the models dont cause any issues because its just the default ones. should it not throw back any errors if this happens?

[alexyork]

It will probably be that the objects being used in the FP are not accessible to the nodes i.e. you're using xref mode and they're not accessible.

it was a default grass preset from forest pack just tweaked slightly. Normally the models dont cause any issues because its just the default ones. should it not throw back any errors if this happens?

I think even when you use a preset, you can still choose if the objects are loaded into the scene or xreffed. Make sure it's the former or the latter with a centralised location all nodes can access. And all the usual stuff like same versions of everything on nodes etc.

[DarcTheo]

all paths were resolved in the asset tracker and the models were merged in the scene. tried to re render and its working now but nothing has changed =/

[DarcTheo]

same problem again today. ghosting grass due to DR, backburner was used to queue the jobs but all of the grass is ghosted. the other forest pack scatters are fine. bushes, trees. its just the grass failing again.

[LKEdesign]

This is clearly one of your nodes that can't find the source files referenced in your scene.
Unfortunately iToo has made it hard to maintain the links, as it often forces the default paths in your setup. You need to set it up buth in your project ini-files, your user paths in Max and in the registry  - and even then it tend to f... it up.

If you have run an update of iToo software, you are back to square one again. I have complained to iToo about this matter, and they replied that they are currently working on a new installer that should keep your setup once it's set.

THe best you can do at the moment is to cehck your links in your asset browser - and ensure that it points to a common drive that all your nodes can see.

[DarcTheo]

This is clearly one of your nodes that can't find the source files referenced in your scene.
Unfortunately iToo has made it hard to maintain the links, as it often forces the default paths in your setup. You need to set it up buth in your project ini-files, your user paths in Max and in the registry  - and even then it tend to f... it up.

If you have run an update of iToo software, you are back to square one again. I have complained to iToo about this matter, and they replied that they are currently working on a new installer that should keep your setup once it's set.

THe best you can do at the moment is to cehck your links in your asset browser - and ensure that it points to a common drive that all your nodes can see.

not sure if i know how to go about setting all that up.
I've run through the asset tracker and everything is using a network path like normal for textures and proxies. the exception is laubwerk, which always seems to locate to the install location on C drive. These render fine though. I think forest pack also uses install location for default distribution maps. These have never caused problems before and the meshes are definitely in the scene and not being proxied. materials also on the network drive.

[maru]

One (slightly painful) idea would be to use the File > Save as > Archive option in 3ds Max to save the scene together with all the assets. Then you can put this folder with your scene and all assets on your network drive and try opening it from there and rendering. Not sure if the Archive option picks up Forest Pack / other plugin objects though.

How many nodes are you using? Collecting and inspecting DR logs could be useful: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000002065

Also, it seems that there is a small group of users with Forest Pack problems - I would suggest the following settings to make sure that those problems don't appear:
1. In Forest object settings, make sure that Camera > Limit to visibility is OFF
2. In devel/experimental rollout (https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000021288) uncheck "multithreaded parsing" (this might actually help if there are crashes or freezes at the beginning of rendering, so I am not sure if it might help, but maybe it's worth a try)

[DarcTheo]

thanks i'll give these a try. there were 3 nodes running at the time. 5 of 6 renders came out with ghosted grass, 1 actually worked, which was probably the most intensive one as well.