Topics

1

[Max] I need help! / License Server HELL

« on: 2024-05-08, 07:00:59 »

Hi all,

We're having an arse of a time with the license server.  This has been going on for months now but has become much more regular (I have to log on to the office systems every few hours to stop, then start the license server (LS).

Soooooo, as I say above, we keep losing the LS and when we have this we need to stop/start it again.  This is a right pain when rendering animations.

I'm in touch with Chaos and the guy is helpful but it feel we're getting nowhere of it's 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

What we were originally told is to:

• go here: C:\Users\SYSTEM NAME\AppData\Roaming\Chaos\VRLService
• stop the LS on each system
• delete the ssl folder
• start the LS
• sign in

This just temporarily solved the problem, just as the stopping/starting LS process does.

We've now been told to centralise the LS - we currently have the LS's (v6.0.1) installed on each system (incl render nodes).

So we've been asked to install LS v5.5.5 on a dedicated system.

Here's what the last email said:

You need a machine that would play the role of the centralized license server. That machine needs to be always on, in the same LAN as the rest, and to have License Server 5.5.5 installed on it (if previously there was a newer version on it- both the newer LS version and Chaos Unified Login need to be uninstalled).

The machine should also have a fixed internal IP address.

Once LS 5.5.5 is installed, you sign in with the license-holding account on that centralized machine.

Then you go to every machine, shut down the 3d platform and all chaos components (if any are open)

Then go to "C:\Program Files\Corona\Corona Renderer for 3ds Max\XXXX\Utils" (where instead of XXXX you have the version of the 3D platform) and run the setvrlservice.exe .
There, for a primary license server, fill in the IP address of the centralized machine, click ok, and then reboot the machine.

Do that on all machines.

It makes sense to have a centralised LS (we have 15 systems) but it also seems like a step back - the fact that we need to use an old version of the LS in order to get something we pay for to work.

We tried to do  this yesterday - The system we're doing it on had Max & Corona on but was uninstalled last year.

I installed LS 5.5.5 but it didn't give me the log on page - when I go to local host seemed to be signed in (but said no license active) - I can't find a way to sign out.

The system isn't in the LS page on the My Chaos site.

-----

What we did notice yesterday was that we has duplicate systems on the My Chaos LS page (I had 3) - we removed the duplicates but this hasn't helped.  I still checked the systems at 2am & half the office had lost their LS - I reconnected them but 3 hours later they had gone again.

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

Any help with this would be great because we've had enough.

Thanks

2

[Max] General Discussion / Installing Corona on home system

« on: 2024-04-03, 17:00:59 »

Hi all.

I'm asking the Autodesk forum a similar question but in regards to Max.

I've basically asked Autodesk; if I don't have Max open on my office system but it's network rendering, does that mean I'm allowed to open and use Max at home?

I don't want to get stung by Autodesk

----

Same question applies to Corona - we have 11 licenses of Corona Premium  & 1x 5 Render Nodes.

If I'm network rendering in the office & I can use Max at home..... can I also use Corona

It's probably important to know that all systems will be rendering in the office.

----

As with Autodesk - I don't want to be stung by Chaos.

Thanks

3

[Max] I need help! / Corona License Not Found

« on: 2024-03-25, 17:54:22 »

Hi,

I've sent a ticket to Chaos with the same message as below.

Does anyone here have any ideas?

I can see there have been license issues today

https://status.chaos.com/

Thanks
--------------------------------------

All of a sudden we've lost our Corona licenses in the office.

This happened last week too but seemed to sort itself out.

We can't do anything, render, material editor is slow or frozen etc.

I've attached 2x screenshots.

This is affecting all 11x systems.

Do you know why this is happening and how it can be stopped in the future?

We can't do anything at the moment until Corona works again.

Thanks

4

[Max] General Discussion / A system in the office isn't saving animation scenes correctly

« on: 2024-03-19, 10:50:14 »

Hi all,

We have a system in the office that, when saving animation scenes, doesn't seem to be saving them correctly.

Our render manager (Renderpal) brings up this error:

Chunk error: The renderer returned an error-code (0x3)

To fix the issue with the scene, all I need to do is load it up on my system, and save as a new scene.

It then renders fine.

Any ideas what might be the cause?

My colleague doesn't have any issues loading or saving scenes & Max is working fine.

We're using Max 2024.1 & Corona 10 (hotfix 1)

Thanks

5

[Max] I need help! / Animation not rendering on some systems

« on: 2024-03-15, 08:45:31 »

Hi all,

I'm posting a bit of my life story here for context.

------

I'm having a bit of a nightmare with a job. 

As far as I understand it's gone pretty smoothly - high res statics went to the client, every 25th tests were done for the animation.

Then, when trying to render it with our render manager it wouldn't render.

I then took over to fix the issue - Currently I wish I hadn't offered.

Sooooooo, I recreated the shots (all I really did was load the save and resave the scene) and they were rendering fine

However, they were taking too long to parse the scene.

Yesterday I spent most of the day optimising the scene

It then wouldn't render again

After a lot of testing (I was up until about 1am) I realised that it was one of the proxy trees

I turned them into a mesh, put a cube below it & attached it to the tree (this is what we've done in the past to fix dodgy objects (it seems to work))  - I then re-proxied and replaced.

IT WAS RENDERING - WHOOOOP

I left a system rendering the cache and went to bed.

This morning - 5 of the 9 systems are rendering the animation.

The others are giving this error - Does anyone know what the hell this means and what's going on?

15/03/2024 05:27:14: 15/03/2024 5:27:12 AM;  Error rendering frame 358: <string>:8: DeprecationWarning: the imp module is deprecated in favour of importlib and slated for removal in Python 3.12; see the module's documentation for alternative uses


Let me know if you need any more information but we're using Max 2024 - Corona 10 (hotfix 1) - We have no issues with animations normally so I don't see why the Max version & Corona

Thanks

6

[Max] General Discussion / Max randomly crashing when changing timeline frame

« on: 2024-03-12, 15:41:28 »

Hi all,

I didn't put this under bug section because I don't know if Corona is to blame for the issue - I'm also posting on the 3DS Max forum.

I've had Max crashes randomly for the last week.

It happens when changing to a different frame.  I've got some things animated but that's nothing unusual.

My colleague has also had similar crashes a few times.

This all started mid last week.

We do thankfully get the option to save a restore scene.

We haven't updated anything recently so nothing like that would have caused it.

Has anyone had this before?

Thanks

7

[Max] General Discussion / Cancelling distributed rendering on slaves

« on: 2023-10-31, 08:41:48 »

Hi all,

I have 11 systems rendering an image (10 slaves).

These can't render during the day as people need to use them.  I'm rendering 8192x8192 VR images (Top/Bottom).

I can't afford for these to mess up.

Is it safe for people to close these down without affecting the render.  Does it transfer the date it's rendered when shutting down?

If not, would it be a good idea to have a 'transfer and close' button on the slave DR Server?

Thanks

8

[Max] I need help! / Lights turning on and off

« on: 2023-10-28, 17:32:28 »

Hi all.  My lights are turning off. 

This is my 2nd attempt (I've turned off adaptive light solver)

Any more ideas what I can do to have them not flicker on and off?

Thanks

9

[Max] Bug Reporting / Corona Converter Warning

« on: 2023-10-10, 13:08:07 »

Hi all.

My colleague is getting this when opening the converter

It seems to be working but anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks

10

[Max] General Discussion / Depth of Field on VR Cameras

« on: 2023-10-04, 17:40:49 »

Hi all.

I tend to do DOF in post but am using Corona more and more.  I noticed last night that DOF is disabled on cameras set to Spherical 360 mode.

I'm sure there's a reason for this but it'd be good to know what.

Thanks

11

[Max] I need help! / Corona Rendering Black in Animation

« on: 2023-09-20, 12:39:33 »

Hi all.

We have an issue that I'm finding baffling.

We're rendering an animation and frame 575 is fine but 576 onward is rendering the diffuse, reflect & refract as black.  AO etc are fine.

Frame 576 is rendering fine when in perspective mode, it just seems to be when in the camera.

The camera is not going through an object or anything like that.

Isolating an object when looking through the camera works fine but when everything is turned on it renders black.

Does anyone know why this would be? 

Thanks

Here's a recording:

12

[Max] I need help! / [solved] Corona AO Quality Setting

« on: 2023-09-19, 14:03:53 »

Hi all,

We've recently come from C7 to C10 - so I'm not sure what version this changed.

We used to set the quality of Corona AO samples to 16-24

this has now been replaced with a Quality setting (I think the default is 2).

What's the comparison between this feature change?

For example, is the default value of 2 to equivalent to a samples setting of 8?

Thanks

13

[Max] I need help! / Exclude from motion blur

« on: 2023-09-10, 11:04:53 »

Hi all.

I have geometry motion blur turned on in my camera.  However I have a spherical star map (on a sphere)  linked to my animated sun which when shows up during the night time phase - the sphere rotates with the sun.

I'm doing an animated day cycle across 1000 frames and this means the stars are getting motion blur, which is correct but I want to either reduce the effect or turn it off.

Any ideas?

I can always render the background on a separate pass but I'd ideally like to keep it all in 1 render.

Thanks

14

[Max] General Discussion / Corona Premium - What happens if we lose internet

« on: 2023-09-08, 14:05:16 »

Hi all,

We're new to Corona 10 - previously on C7.

We now have Corona Premium (11 systems)

If the internet goes in the office does anything happen to Corona etc?

If for example, we're rendering over the weekend.... Or I'm doing a simulation with Phoenix etc etc etc

Thanks

15

[Max] I need help! / Converting Vray Materials & Missing Mtl

« on: 2023-09-07, 16:40:23 »

Hi all

We've just installed Max 24 & Corona 10. We're having 'Missing Mtl' issues on Vray objects.

Corona Converter also can't convert them. This is obviously because we don't have Vray installed.

We used to have a Vray license but don't anymore. 

When updating the office I didn't bother to install Vray.

Should I have? 

If so, do we need to sign into it or anything?  In the past I'd put our account details in.

Any tips?

Thanks