Distributed Rendering via backburner breaking render elements

[Dippndots]

I am having this really odd problem where my render channels are all broken (see examples attached) when I send a distributed render via backburner. My beauty channel is fine though. Also, while rendering, the channels all look ok in the Corona VFB.

If I distributed render locally, the channels are fine though. Any idea what is causing this? It is a pretty big pain.

[Dippndots]

Sorry I only just noticed the DR Bugs child board, can a mod move this topic there?

[maru]

Are you saving to png? Have you tried other formats? (tif?)

I think this was related to some specific settings of png and it would also happen in other renderers (not sure though, will check it later).

[Dippndots]

Yeah I am rendering to png, I will try as tif or something else. I just noticed the person that setup the png made it 48-bit, so I'll try 24-bit(what it should've been in the first place)

Rendering locally doesn't fix the problem actually, I was wrong about that.

[maru]

Does this also happen if you are not using DR/BB? I was unable to reproduce this with no DR/BB, in both Corona and MR.
Can you show what exactly are your PNG saving settings?

[Dippndots]

As in does it happen if it just renders locally with no DR? I haven't tried that yet. I tried locally DR with 24-bit png and it did the same thing again. I have sent a .tga DR to backburner, its in the queue and should get started in the next hour or so.

I've attached the settings last used

[maru]

Dippndots, can you show your BB log?
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-find-and-analyze-your-backburner-error-logs.html

[Dippndots]

Here is the log from BB server when it was saving 48-bit png.

My .tif test should start soon as well.

[maru]

So when you are getting the wrong output - is it 24- or 48-bit? First you mentioned 48, then showed screenshot of 24, now you are saying 48 again. How can we make a report out of it? :D Or maybe it happens always, regardless of the chosen options?

There are some errors in the log... Aren't you getting any error messages in Corona?

[Dippndots]

Sorry for the confusion. It is happening regardless of PNG settings.

The TGA output version is trying to render via BB and DR right now, but a number of my nodes are saying "File dump signal write failed: 1" :( Is this a separate issue or are they linked?

[Dippndots]

The tga render worked. Would be good to figure out why .pngs aren't working though, as the tga's take up a lot more space :/

[maru]

You can try using some other format with lossless compression such as tif or exr.

[Dippndots]

Yeah we'll probably settle on tifs. Thanks Maru

[Ondra]

It might be similar to the problem that caused denoising go black when doing DR which we fixed. Hopefully that is it, but if it still happens in 1.4 RCs please let us know

[Dippndots]

Hey Ondra, sorry, I didnt get a chance to test this with the RCs. Unfortunately this problem still exists in 1.4.

Not sure how I didnt notice this before, but I can't save to png's at all. If I render locally, un-distributed, it still outputs all the elements as broken...This happens in both max 2014/2016.

Nevermind, I found https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,4802.msg75658.html#msg75658

Deleting and adding the elements back fixed the problem. Not sure why it only happens with pngs, but I can only assume it had to do with the element path pointing somewhere else than the file save location. After deleting them and re-adding them, the path points to the same place as the render output.