Mental Ray - Render Troubleshooting

[DarkNemos]

I am getting some errors that i have not encountered before. Can anyone help me to understand what they mean?

SCEN 0.3 warn 072006: cannot invert a transformation matrix
SCEN 0.3 warn 072126: switching ambient occlusion off, since trace is off
RC 0.3 warn 082126: switching ambient occlusion off, since trace is off

I can still render images but i get this errors in the mentalray message window. Max2011

[Ernestator]

Hi,

it's given as a mapped network path - but so are other textures in the scene, which seem to render OK.

I'll take a look at the asset manager.

Cheers

Steve

Hi Steve, we seem to have the same problem with hdr reflections not showing up when using dbr. Did you figure it out? MR says the hdr image format is not supported and will pass as raw data, and then it gives an error about "verbatim texture cannot be local or writable". Right...

[reinhart82]

Hi. Anyone experiencing slower render time in max 2011 mental ray? I have a scene in which render 11sec in max2008 but takes 48sec in max2011. I also did a couple of test using a clean file and just emitting thousands of teapot and find that 2011 always render slower compare to 2008. Anyone has any idea? By the way i'm using daylight system with mr Sun and IES sky. Thanks.

[Sojus]

Hi there,
max 2009 simply crashes everytime i push the render button, when there is a matte/shadow material in the scene and transparent shadow maps are enabled.
I found several post to this, but no solution yet.
Can´t belive that. Any solution or workaround tip is greatly appreciated!

Jens

[strangerman]

Hi there,
max 2009 simply crashes everytime i push the render button, when there is a matte/shadow material in the scene and transparent shadow maps are enabled.
I found several post to this, but no solution yet.
Can´t belive that. Any solution or workaround tip is greatly appreciated!

Jens
There's no solution ATM, sorry. Maybe MasterZap knows something about this.

[Somchith_3D]

Hello everybody,

I'm using an arch and design material with glow lume in the self-illumination slot. I also have the glare shader in the camera effects output slot to achieve a "glowing" look. This is applied to several objects in my scene.

It all looks fine but I also want to have another arch and design material that just has a self-illumination activated, without the glare shader effecting this material. This will be applied to another object in the scene. Is there a way to have independent control of which material gets affected by the glare shader?

I tried to have it assigned to a different material ID but that didn't seem to work, I also don't want to do two renders, turning on and off the glare shader and compositing if possible.

[reinhart82]

Hi. Anyone experiencing slower render time in max 2011 mental ray? I have a scene in which render 11sec in max2008 but takes 48sec in max2011. I also did a couple of test using a clean file and just emitting thousands of teapot and find that 2011 always render slower compare to 2008. Anyone has any idea? By the way i'm using daylight system with mr Sun and IES sky. Thanks.

Looks like there's some strange bug going on here. I'm getting slows renders because under the processing options, the "Use mental ray Map Manager" is turned off.Once it's on, I can hit the same render speed as my max 2008.Funny thing is in max 2008 whether that option is turn off/on doesnt affect my render time.

Another strange thing is that a whole bunch off us using windows xp is having this slowdown issue in max 2011 when "use mental ray map manager" is not turned on but one of my friend using vista has no issue whether it's turned off/on.....

Well suggestion is to leave it turned on if your using bitmaps in max 2011 mental ray.

[JeffPatton]

Funny thing is in max 2008 whether that option is turn off/on doesnt affect my render time.If I remember correctly there was a known bug with the MAP manger enable/disable option not working in older versions of 3ds Max. 2008 may be one of those versions that was affected by this issue, I don't remember off the top of my head. However, I do know it was addressed/fixed/patched in newer versions.

[Snake Eyess]

I am getting some errors that i have not encountered before. Can anyone help me to understand what they mean?

SCEN 0.3 warn 072006: cannot invert a transformation matrix
SCEN 0.3 warn 072126: switching ambient occlusion off, since trace is off
RC 0.3 warn 082126: switching ambient occlusion off, since trace is off

I can still render images but i get this errors in the mentalray message window. Max2011

Im getting that exact same warning and nothing is rendering....WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!!??!?!
and how can i fix it?
its for a animation

[JeffPatton]

Maybe this will help: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=13780301&linkID=12544120

[Snake Eyess]

so basically i cant scale anything to zero??
how would i fix this problem?

[JeffPatton]

I would assume that if something is scaled to zero it's invisible and if that's the case then why wouldn't you just delete it from the scene instead of scaling it to zero?

In all the years I've used mental ray I've never ran across this error code, so I'm afraid I can't offer any first hand advice. The link I provided above is the only thing I could find on it. If you're on subscription then you could try the new help feature on it and/or contact your reseller to see if they can get an official answer to this issue.

[Snake Eyess]

Thank you Master Patton

I found the the object in question. its a building that scales up from flat for the animation I am doing. a college modeled it and likes grouping things. so I un-grouped it and made it into one poly object and somewhere down the line the transforms went all out weird...

ok, that problem solved, but now I need to somehow get the renders down from 13 mins a frame :(

would anyone be willing to take a look at the scene and help me out?

[hassandiab83]

hello everybody,
i'm trying to render a simple, scene with mental ray the includes thinking particles R4 and nothing else, no lights, no FG, nothing, just for test.
the problem is mental ray take so long to render this scene, but scanline render it in seconds so is their any problem with combining mental ray with TP R4 or what??
Please i need help.

[JohnnyRandom]

Scratch that I found the reason.

[hassandiab83]

Scratch that I found the reason.
really!!??
did u find it, could u tell us please maybe there is a solution

[JohnnyRandom]

Sorry I was asking about a completely different issue.

Although out of curiosity are you using object motion blur?

[oatz]

Hi guys - I assigned a generic Arch and Design material and put a cellular map in the bump. The only problem is that I edited the color map to be a plateau-like curve, but this has absolutely zero impact in the rendering. It renders identical with the Enable Color Map checked or unchecked. Do i need to wrap the cellular map in another map of some kind?

[jigu]

hello everybody,
i'm trying to render a simple, scene with mental ray the includes thinking particles R4 and nothing else, no lights, no FG, nothing, just for test.
the problem is mental ray take so long to render this scene, but scanline render it in seconds so is their any problem with combining mental ray with TP R4 or what??
Please i need help.

Hi,

If you are using motionblur with particles, it will long to take rendering in mentalray. To solve this, you need to cache the motion of particles and render again with motionblur. It will be fast as regular.

[SandeepMaithani]

Hi all
I'm rendering a car against a white background and using a switcher with white bg and a msr with transmat in the bg slot. pls see the img attached. Everything works fine but i get some harsh white reflection on the car body which i'm trying to get rid of.
I'm using three free point lights with visible to render on and a skylight with a highly blurred hdr. Could anybody pls figure out from where these white reflection is coming? If it is the white bg then it should not be there as i'm using hdr for reflections!
I've tried rendering to 16 and 32 bit output but the problem remains. Appreciate a quick help.
Thanks

sandy

[TheAtheist]

Posted this in the Studio Lighting thread but thought it may get a better response from in here:

Since I've started using Pmetric lighting I'm having trouble getting a white background due to the exposure controls. With standard lights I was using the background/environment switcher along with a matte/shadow/reflection map on a floor plane and this allowed me to control the scene colour much better. Now when I use it the background comes through as black even though the colour is set to white! I'm pretty sure this is due to my exposure settings but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

The settings I'm using to get the subject illuminated nicely are:

Shutter Speed: 1/4.5
f-stop: f/5.6
ISO: 800

I also have Gamma/LUT enabled set to 2.2.

Anybody have any advice on where I might be going wrong?

[JeffPatton]

sandy_maith: Looks like the matte/shadow plane reflection to me. Did you try: select the shadow plane object and in the object properties make it invisible to reflections or using a raytype switcher?

[JeffPatton]

TheAtheist, try the info here: http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/lighting---rendering/the-unexplained-question-how-to-render-on-a-white-background-with-reflections-and-shadows/

[SandeepMaithani]

Thanks Jeff..it worked
simple is the way to go i guess..
sandy

[TheAtheist]

TheAtheist, try the info here: http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/lighting---rendering/the-unexplained-question-how-to-render-on-a-white-background-with-reflections-and-shadows/

Thanks Jeff, that's a helpful link. Only downside is it makes my studio sweep show as flat white so doesn't help with my current scene. Good to know for future projects though.

[JeffPatton]

Only downside is it makes my studio sweep show as flat white so doesn't help with my current scene. I have no clue what that means but ok.

[SandeepMaithani]

Well i was just wondering which one of these works best..using a light probe in bg ref slot or just an hdr set to spherical env! Are there any differences . I found later one to be more in control but would like to know if there's any other side to it.
sandy

[TheAtheist]

I have no clue what that means but ok.
I have an extruded curved spline behind my object which gives a nice soft studio look to the lighting when I apply a matte material to it, but when I tried using the method you linked to its as though the extruded curve is no longer in the scene, just shows as flat white. If I get chance I'll post some example jpegs, I can't show what I'm working on as it's client work so I'll have to put something else in the scene.

It may just be that I need to start the scene from scratch so I can set all relevant parameters to suit that technique.

[SandeepMaithani]

Now i have another set of issues..i'm getting this white spill which i dont want on my car material..secondly, i get color bleed on the msr plane which again i dont want..theoretically i understand that color override raytype switcher can take care of this but what i dont seem to understand is how to use it in this situation. i used it on msr cam map slot..what i thought is that msr plane should use the info from the env switcher..but it didnt work..
for the car paint..i created another mental ray mat with color override raytype switcher on the surface slot and car paint on the eye ray slot so that i get only the car paint..on the ref slot i used the hdr which i'm using on the skylight ..well..i tried many setups and seems i'm totally confused now..
how can i use raytype switcher in this situation!
thanks
Sandy

[vitolamanna]

do proxies not support displacement?
when i render my proxies they wont render with displace..diffuse works..

am i doing something wrong?


vito

[SandeepMaithani]

Hi All
figured out almost everything i asked and here are the results..the only issue i'm not able to control is the reflection of light on the carpaint..i want it to be straight but it looks broken and inconsistent..i've tried adjusting the position of my light in all possible ways i could..tweaked the carpaint as well but couldnt get it better than this..any ideas how to get it right?
thanks
sandy

[TheAtheist]

Hi All
figured out almost everything i asked and here are the results..the only issue i'm not able to control is the reflection of light on the carpaint..i want it to be straight but it looks broken and inconsistent..i've tried adjusting the position of my light in all possible ways i could..tweaked the carpaint as well but couldnt get it better than this..any ideas how to get it right?
thanks
sandy

Looks to be down to the surface contours of the cars bodywork rather than the material or lighting. Maybe try finding a similar image of the same car in real life and compare how the light catches the surface of the bodywork on that.

[SandeepMaithani]

TheAtheist:Thanks for looking into this. I got it fixed somehow..it was a weird reflection from the base plane...
Now heres a new problem i've come up with.before putting this up let me tell you tht i've looked into all the suggestions given here and the area forums regarding controlling flicker and it is after all this i'm not able to get rid of this..i've also foound that this flicker issue is always there with intersecting geometry and hair and fur if u render it with fg..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEF-eZy-L-Y without flicker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPszjdeSY6o flicker

These are two animations i rendered with the same technique...one has whole lot of displacement and moving characters but no flicker whatsoever..
another one is a simple camera movement but with hair and fur in it and a lot of flicker on the grass and the building.
I've attached my settings for the grass one here..i'm using a daylight system with hair n fur modifier for the grass..
I'd really appreciate if someone can look into this flicker issue and advice accordingly..

thanks

sandy

[SandeepMaithani]

I've reached a stage where i don't know what else to try...other than rendering in separate passes and comping it later..
i'm following this to render the whole thing out..it works for interiors but not with this situation..

http://www.i3dtutorials.com/watch/xsi_vault/Free_Rendering_vI.flv?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=600&width=800

any takers?

thanks
sandy

[TheAtheist]

I've reached a stage where i don't know what else to try...other than rendering in separate passes and comping it later..
i'm following this to render the whole thing out..it works for interiors but not with this situation..

http://www.i3dtutorials.com/watch/xsi_vault/Free_Rendering_vI.flv?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=600&width=800

any takers?

thanks
sandy

Re: flicker youtube clip, what resolution are you rendering at? The flicker seems to be effecting detail as it gets further away from the camera so it may just be a pixel interpolation issue (but I'm only guessing). I've never really worked with hair & fur modifiers so can't comment on whether or not that may be causing the problem.

[SandeepMaithani]

TheAtheist...i think you are right....flicker is not near the camera ..it definitely is increasing as it goes farther away from the it....do you have any solution for pixel interpolation thing?
I'm searching for it though..
I'm rendering at 490*270
Thanks
sandy

[TheAtheist]

TheAtheist...i think you are right....flicker is not near the camera ..it definitely is increasing as it goes farther away from the it....do you have any solution for pixel interpolation thing?
I'm searching for it though..
I'm rendering at 490*270
Thanks
sandy

The only thing I can think of would be to try increasing your resolution, the more pixels you render the more detail you will see in the distance. Alternatively you could try adding a little motion blur as this may smooth out the flickering.

[SandeepMaithani]

that is exactly what i've done and its rendering now....just hope i dont see this issue again..

[SandeepMaithani]

rendered at 1280*720 ...almost got rid of it...rendering again at 2K now..Thanks TheAtheist for pointing me in the right direction..

[SandeepMaithani]

i have a little confusion as to what seetings should you change while generating a fg map?
Shall i increase settings like fg point density and no of rays etc to get a better fg map..
AA settings, shadow precision etc are not supposed to be changed as they dont play a role in fg map creation. Am i on the right track on this?
Just wanted to crfoss check as i'm about to render an animation with 1200 frames and if i could save some time with you guys help, would be awesome.
thanks

sandy

[century21]

I hope this is the right place to put this, apologies if it is not.

So I've just recently started using the daylight systems in 3dsmax 2010, but now when I go to render out my AO pass, the mental ray AO material just appears as a solid black material in the render. I've tried disabling and removing the daylight system, to no avail, my AO material is still black, even after removing and/or disabling the lighting system and any environment effects it has.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[JasperCG]

Several things to make sure of:

turn off / or delete all the lights
turn off exposure control
make background white
apply AO shader to all items (can use material override to do this)
You also can turn off final gather and GI

Hope that helps

[JeffPatton]

when I go to render out my AO pass, the mental ray AO material just appears as a solid black material in the render. Also, go to the first page of this thread and see post #2, item #10.

[MikeBracken]

Just to clarify...you dont have to turn off your lights. The AO shader will disregard them. But, as mentioned before, DO turn off exposure and GI/FG. And the white background will help in compositing.


Regards,
Mike

[century21]

Thanks, I wasn't sure what specific elements were causing the problem.

[oatz]

I've read the white paper about setting up liquid in a glass with the different IORs. Does anyone have a sample scene of such a setup? I can't duplicate the effect on my own.

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/mental_ray_white_paper.pdf#page=23

[JeffPatton]

Here you go:
http://jeffpatton.net/downloads/Glass_n_Liquid.jpg

Scene: http://jeffpatton.net/downloads/Glass_n_Liquid.rar
NOTE: You'll need to assign your own HDR environment map if you need to render this particular scene.

[oatz]

Here you go:
http://jeffpatton.net/downloads/Glass_n_Liquid.jpg

Scene: http://jeffpatton.net/downloads/Glass_n_Liquid.rar
NOTE: You'll need to assign your own HDR environment map if you need to render this particular scene.
Thanks Jeff - you are a scholar and a gentleman.

[theMonkeysUncle]

Hi all,

I've read through this entire thread and haven't seen anything that looks like this very strange problem.

I seem to get random noise artifacts when rendering with Mental Ray and Mr Sky system. In this example, you can see the square noise shape on the left, and part of the shadow is completely missing just above that in the image.
http://files.adigitalcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/test3.jpg

I've tried changing the ground material to a Standard map (as opposed to Arch and Design), as well as changing the view angle, but both made no difference. I did find that increasing the height of the block on the left caused the missing shadow on the right to reappear though...
http://files.adigitalcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/test1.jpg

Incedentally, I've had this problem before with another large scene, but in this case, large square sections of mesh were entirely disappearing.
http://files.adigitalcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/d3-140x105.jpg (http://files.adigitalcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/d3.jpg)

This case, strangely enough, was simply solved by lowering the angle of the camera:
http://files.adigitalcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/d4-140x105.jpg (http://files.adigitalcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/d4.jpg)

I've had no such success by simply fiddling with the camera angle in my current scene though... the problem appears at all viewing angles.

I'm using 3ds Max 2011 on Windows 7 with an AMD Phenom II x6. If anyone has any idea what is going on here, I would really appreciate the help!

[Byteman3D]

Hi,

When faces are coplanar or almost coplanar due to some unit (or scene scale) issues you can see some artifacts like this. I'm not sure if this is the case for your current scene, but your old scene seems so.

Assume you have a box with zero height. Then the bottom and top surfaces of the box are coplanar and on such cases menral ray creates unwanted textures or shadows on the faces.
This may happen if two surfaces are close enough and the scene is very large compared to the distance between them.

Bias parameters on shadow settings may help reduce unwanted shadows sometimes, by simply moving the shadow away from the shadow casting surface.

CHECK THE MATERIALS:
As a recommendation for your current scene, consider assigning the same material to all the objects on your scene. (preferably, one that mental ray recognizes- like arch&design mat.) Let's see if it's a material problem.

I have to admit that mental ray does create such artifacts for no reason at all.

CHECK TO SEE IF THERE'S SOMETHING HIDING BEHIND:
Try to eliminate possible factors by simply selecting your ground object and the problematic proxy building objects, then pressing Alt+Q. This hides all objects other than the selected. We may sometimes duplicate objects unintentionally. Then try re-rendering.

IF IT STILL EXISTS:
Assign a stl-check modifier to see if there are any errors like open faces or double faces on the mesh. Ground object may not be solid (one with thickness) so it will also be reported as errors.
Consider adding it some thickness by shell modifier. Also try the cap holes modifier. It may not help correct a bad mesh but at least, may cap holes and your problems may suddenly dissappear. You may then find out there is a problem with the mesh.

A DUMB BUT POWERFUL RECOMMENDATION:
Change the renderer to scanline, and then back to mental ray. Believe me, it helps, by resetting some parameters and may solve many of your problems, even improving rendering times.

Let's see if any of these work.

[Spacelord]

I'd say its bad geometry, probably inverted faces, make sure your materials have double sided turn on. I've found even with double sided turned on if some of the polys are inverted you will have to flip them, unify doesn't always work.

cheers

[Skyraider3D]

Lately I have had increasing difficulty with dark areas (shadows and dark objects) on my renders, where there simply isn't enough detail. Things start getting grainy and banding occurs. In VRay you override this by using 2.2 gamma in the colour mapping. But how do you address this in Mental Ray? Lowering the Spatial Contrast works on the image as a whole and makes the render much slower. It looks like the image is calculated linearly then modified to 2.2 gamma, i.e. not calculated in gamma 2.2 from the outset. Is this the case?

NB. I use gamma 2.2 with both in- and output bitmap gamma at 2.2, daylight system and mr Photographic exposure.

(Also, my renders show up a bit darker in Photoshop, but that may be a separate problem...)

[Sir Kirya]

Good day, great masters of mental ray!

In my experiments with mental ray I've found a strange bug with mrProxy. Here is the illustration:
http://arte-code.com/temp/mr.proxy.error.jpg
I've made a single "block" of that shrub fence, approx. 2 meters in height and length and 0.5 meter width. It was made with the help of PFlow scattered leaves over a simple box. Then I've converted that PFlow in a editable poly, added a box to it and created the mrProxy. One mrProxy contains about 30K faces. Then I've made an array of mrProxy instances to make that big shrub fence. All instances have exactly the same material. But as you can see, mrProxies that near to the camera have normal material color, but as the distance from camera increasing, they're starting to fade into black. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance, Nick.

P.S.> The grass made with single mrProxy renders just fine (as you can see above). I am using 3ds max 2010

[Byteman3D]

Silly but I remember such a thing happens. It's been a long time since I last used Mr proxy, but I definitely remember the fact that a re assigning of the material to the proxies is necessary.

This was one of the specifications of mental ray that makes me call it "Dumble ray". :)

[Sir Kirya]

Silly but I remember such a thing happen. It's been a long time since I last used Mr proxy, but I definitely remember the fact that a re assigning of the material to the proxies is necessary.

This was one of the specifications of mental ray that makes me call it "Dumble ray". :)

Thanks a lot! My problem is gone ^_^

[mrstardust]

Hi,

on my first interior i got the infamous NaN (Not a number) error in the render message window.
Sometimes the result was still ok, sometimes i got some small black artifacts.
I think i could track it down to some glossy materials (glossiness <0.5), but i´m not sure.
It also seems pretty difficult to find any conclusive information about that error.
Anybody got some useful ideas/links?

[ArminAnim]

here is my solutions for "Photon Artifacts" or "Color Spots"

To the post (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7118053#post7118053)

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7118053#post7118053

[Massemannen]

Hi all...

I´m currently participating in the project from hell, with so much going wrong it´s almost absurd.
The client is great and the project is interesting but I / we have extreme problems getting the same rendering results from the same files! For the last 2 days and night I have been trying to figure out what is wrong but come up empty. So I´m kinda desperate for any kind of input.
Scenario:
I have this scene, render out a picture with MR, send both max file and rendered pic to client who opens the max file and render it and the outcome is not the same, the reflections are all wrong and my image is so much brighter(overexposed kinda)!! We have the same units set-up , Gamma disabled, HDRI Option settings, 2012 SP2 ...
Can anyone THINK of something that can cause this, because I´m all out of options right now!?
Thanks /M

[Byteman3D]

You put your finger on my wound... (A Turkish idiom meaning: I have often exact similar problems here, none of which have easily spotted reasons.) A list of my crazy reasons is below:


1. First of : Try archiving the files -if don't do so- by MAx's archive command to keep all the bitmap and resource files with the max file. There are times you may have file not found errors although you archived, God knows where those files are- probably in material editor's some unused slot.

Of course very probably you did this. Secondly:


1. HDR and GIF files sometimes can not be recognized by mental ray on some other machine. If using distributed bucket rendering it's almost always happening. Whether or not you have the exact same directory structure on both machines. It does render once and not in the next. Often reflections are affected this way. This is obviously due to a wrong bitmap location definition or some other reason that doesn'T let mr reach the file on the other machine.

2. Final gather maps cause a lot of confusion since you may have created the map on some other resoultion or from some other frame range and just forget. Double check the status of fgmaps.

3. I often have this literally silly issue using environment maps: Although I turn it off from the environment panel, It turns on by itself. I have spent several hours trying to understand whatever is going on. Some parameters also reset themselves by changing the renderer. That causes confusion.

Also this seems obvious to me that mental ray introduced a new type of pathology: Normally parameters that do not have effects on the selected object are disabled. On mental ray you may be trying to adjust the environment from some map slot that actually doesn't affect the scene. There are many parameters on mental ray that doesn't work, at least have no effect on your special case but it is there and selectable.

The skylight -use environment from skylight option parameters are definitely confusing. Be careful on them. you have problems having difference in reflections, that may actually be because of that.

There are many parameters on mental ray materials that don't which otherwise would work. I mean for example visibility. Not related with your specific subject, but you think it will work because it normally works, but on -let's say- carpaint material : it doesn't work. There are issues like this, where you might think you have placed a map on an object which actually is not rendered with that specific kind of material or map composition.

Hope I could have been of any help

[wsknin]

Hey, Massemannen, I agree with Byteman3D: It could be that you re-use a Final Gather Map or a Caustics and Global Illumination Photon Map or both, and don't have the same maps stored as the client.

Or it is one of the other things Byteman3D suggests. But this should be the one that is the easiest to check, just look in Render Setup under the Indirect Illumination tab.

Hope you get this sorted out, I know the feeling... :-(

/wsknin





Hi all...

I´m currently participating in the project from hell, with so much going wrong it´s almost absurd.
The client is great and the project is interesting but I / we have extreme problems getting the same rendering results from the same files! For the last 2 days and night I have been trying to figure out what is wrong but come up empty. So I´m kinda desperate for any kind of input.
Scenario:
I have this scene, render out a picture with MR, send both max file and rendered pic to client who opens the max file and render it and the outcome is not the same, the reflections are all wrong and my image is so much brighter(overexposed kinda)!! We have the same units set-up , Gamma disabled, HDRI Option settings, 2012 SP2 ...
Can anyone THINK of something that can cause this, because I´m all out of options right now!?
Thanks /M

[JasperCG]

I would add in addition to the above to you and pass back and forth a Project Folder. Make sure all your maps (even default ones) are within that folder system. Your FG maps should be in there as well.

Good luck.

[Massemannen]

Thanks guys (gals) for your input and suggestions!! This is really a mystery... FG is always recalculated so no saved FG that can make trix though. I will hopefully get back with some kind of solution, but please keep sharing suggestions and ideas!!

/M

[Byteman3D]

To pinpoint the problem, I often hide things and leave only the wrongly colored object and do test renders to see whatever is the trouble.
Narrowing down the number of objects and still having the issue will eventually bring you to the cause.

If it's ok for you and if the project permits, just send the file somewhere and your rendered image with the same settings. I can check the scene and tell you whatever happens over here.

Really it can be anything, even a video map which plays back fine on your system but rendering black on the client system just because there is no suitable codec.

[JN01]

Massemannen: Are you and your client using the same version of the 3D and/or rendering software? I've had several interesting experiences making changes to old 3ds max files which used to render beautifully, but became horribly too bright and the lighting color was awful. Finally it was pointed out that it was originally done in a earlier version of max than I was using, and the lighting system in the program had changed a lot in the new version.I then tried in the old version and it was OK.

[Dashkevicz]

Sometimes your muli-subobject materials end up with non-consecutive ID's, for example 3 sub materials using IDs 1, 2 and 5. If an object in your scene uses ID 3 or 4, mental ray will crash with a Null DB tag error.

The crash occurs when a ray touches a face with the ID that is missing in the material, as best as I can guess (this includes FG rays).

I'm sure this is not the cause of all such errors, but it is a pretty simple fix once you know what to look for!

[Aboubakr]

hi every one!

i have a big problem with mental ray, whenever i add an arch&design material in any slot , 3ds max crash.

this problem start when i made a scene with some particles and camera tracking , when i render it mental ray give me this error message :

DB 0.0 fatal error 041052

i tried to find a fix for that in google, found some few, tested, no luck ! :(

i'm using 3ds max 2011 sp1 on win7 x64, I7 2600 3.40ghz, DDR3 12go

please i really need to fix that as soon as possible :(

and thx in advance

[Byteman3D]

I've never experienced a crash with this so I'm not sure if this will help but, arch design templates file has corrupted several times on my system and it eventually doesn't work . It's size also appears to be smaller than normal. You can download the file from the below link- just replace.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/9t2f7f

Some other files may be corrupt, too.

Another recommendation:
Switch to scanline render and back to mental ray. It solves many issues.

Is it the same on any scene or specific to this scene? If specific to this scene just merge your files into a clean scene and try that way.

[Aboubakr]

I've never experienced a crash with this so I'm not sure if this will help but, arch design templates file has corrupted several times on my system and it eventually doesn't work . It's size also appears to be smaller than normal. You can download the file from the below link- just replace.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/9t2f7f

Some other files may be corrupt, too.

Another recommendation:
Switch to scanline render and back to mental ray. It solves many issues.

Is it the same on any scene or specific to this scene? If specific to this scene just merge your files into a clean scene and try that way.

thx man for reply! i just test it and it didn't work :( , i found the same solution in cgarchitect.com i think! and no luck :(

no not just with this scene , with a fresh empty scene too, i start 3ds max choose mental ray as renderer , add A&D material in any slot , 3ds max crash.... freeze forever or if i have some luck the viewport go black :(

i did unistall 3ds max delet every thing reinstall 3ds max add all hotfix (fresh download) and the problem come back... :(

formatting my computer is another solution but i have too man data that i can't move them cuz i have no second partition or HDD .... so this will i'll keep it the last

thx again Byteman3D for your help, i'm trying to find other solution in google

[SandeepMaithani]

Hi
Something strange i noticed and couldnt figure out why?
my fgm files are always 834 bytes whn i cache fg. I think the only way to determine if data is properly written to your fg files is to check the fgm file size...right?
I've yet to test it as it is generating fg file right now..its a long sequence...any ideas?

Moreover..are there any tips to avoid AA flicker other than sampling and spatial contrast settings? I've noticed rendering scenes with a lot of trees or capturing small details is very difficult to achieve with a good rendering time. Any suggestions?

its an interesting read but issue remain unresolved
http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/autodesk-3ds-max--3ds-max-design-2010/animation-sampling-flickering-with-mentalray--not-the-finalgather-flicks-/

I'm using max design 2012.

thnks
sandy