Xref not rendering over Backburner

[PastaJackal]

Hi all,

We're having a small issue with some scenes in our office where xrefs are completely failing to render when sent over backburner. Most scenes work just fine, but we have a couple that are repeat offenders.

Anyone had this issue or can offer a fix?

Currently using:
3ds Max 2019
Backburner 2019
Corona 5 stable build

[Frood]

Paths to the xref file(s) are correctly set? Press Shift-T and check them in asset tracking. Remember that when running BB server as service, it has no access to mapped drives, you have to use UNC paths.


Good Luck

[PastaJackal]

Thanks for the response Frood!

Checked all of the above, and was fine. The issue seems to be kind of rare but we came across it again just last night. This time it was an animation and oddly some computers rendered the scene with xref's and others without (all computers had servers running to grab separate frames from the same BB job). Checked all have the same version of software etc and other than that, I'm at a loss as to why this might be occurring.

In regards to the UNC paths, just to see I've got this right, the drives are mapped but contain paths such as Z:\1.0 Projects\etc. Considering we've been using Xref's for a few years under the same structure, I wouldn't have thought this to be an issue

Thanks!

[Frood]

In regards to the UNC paths, just to see I've got this right, the drives are mapped but contain paths such as Z:\1.0 Projects\etc. Considering we've been using Xref's for a few years under the same structure, I wouldn't have thought this to be an issue

Depends on how you run BB server. If you run it as service (serversvc.exe), the server cannot access mapped drives (at least not anymore in modern Windows versions). So maybe some nodes run the BB standard server (server.exe) within a user context where those drives are already mapped, and others run it as service? I would never use something else but UNC (even when linking to local resources on the very same node you are working on). So that "Z:" could be for sure the cause ( if "Z:" is a mapped drive pointing to something like "\\servername\project_data").


Good Luck

[GeorgeK]

Depends on how you run BB server. If you run it as service (serversvc.exe), the server cannot access mapped drives (at least not anymore in modern Windows versions). So maybe some nodes run the BB standard server (server.exe) within a user context where those drives are already mapped, and others run it as service? I would never use something else but UNC (even when linking to local resources on the very same node you are working on). So that "Z:" could be for sure the cause ( if "Z:" is a mapped drive pointing to something like "\\servername\project_data").

Agreed non-UNC paths create many issues for 3ds max, been experiencing problems with this in the past.

In regards to the UNC paths, just to see I've got this right, the drives are mapped but contain paths such as Z:\1.0 Projects\etc. Considering we've been using Xref's for a few years under the same structure, I wouldn't have thought this to be an issue

Can you please try frood's suggestion and come back to us with results?

[PastaJackal]

Frood, you're a life saver. That worked perfectly! At first I assumed I'd need to change paths for all assets but simply changing the paths of the Xref's was enough. Thank you so much!!

[Frood]

Good to hear it's working. As for asset paths inside the xrefs: same applies to them.

If assets of xref scenes have been found as you mentioned, they are either in the same directory as the scene file or the node(s) you tested have their search paths full of alternate locations to search for assets (Customize -> Configure user paths -> External Files - that list should be kept empty at any time to ensure proper scene/path setup). But maybe you are referring to xref objects with local materials or xref-override materials - in this case it works of course.


Good Luck

[sprayer]

For me xref-override materials always reset after reloading master scene, and not always work in current scene. I suppose it 3ds max bug