RC5 - Network Render Crash

[Guillermo Leal]

all this is in Max 2015 with corona RC1, RC2 and RC5

the scene i'm working works fine locally but if i try to render it over the network trough backburner it crashes, all i get is.

ERR Task error: Launcher: Timed out executing command:"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2016\maxadapter.adp.exe" "-o" "PingTask" "-l"
ERR Launcher: Timed out executing command:"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2016\maxadapter.adp.exe" "-o" "PingTask" "-l" "Info" "-j"

i tried with all the RC's i have 1,2 and 5 and they all do the same, but if i install the daily build 2015-10-22, it renders fine no errors at all.

[Guillermo Leal]

It might not be related to corona as RC5 works on another render node.  i will keep trying to find out what the problem is.

[Guillermo Leal]

while trying to find the problem i removed corona and reinstalled version 1.2.1 and to my surprise it worked!  of course it complained of the missing multi layered and round corners plugin but it didn't crash.

whats strange is why it works on one render node but not the other,  i also checked with vray and it renders fine.  have you guys seen this problem before?

[Nekrobul]

It looks like you have the same problem as me, what amount pf ram do you have on main machine and render nodes and do you use pagefile to increase memory limit?

[Ondra]

is there something in any 3dsmax log?

[Guillermo Leal]

Bingo! i think i found the issue.

the computers I'm testing this are

1: Dual Xeon X5650 @2.67, 24 threads, 64GB ram. win 7 : this one works fine.
2: Dual Xeon E5-2650 @2.3, 40 threads, 64GB ram, win7 : this one Crashes

while looking at the backburner log i saw that the trouble computer said:

ERR Task error: Launcher: Timed out executing....
ERR Timeout reading data from socket ......
ERR Error receiving new job: I/O error transferring 'Job Definition File' ....
WRN Manager is not responding ...
......

but there was not reason why it would not be able to connect to the server, i also noted that when corona was rendering on that system the computer is none responsive, not even to browse for files or open the task manager, so it occurred to me that maybe corona is using so much system resources that is leaving none left even for backburner to communicate with the manager, so i restarted the job but this time i opened the task manager, right click on 3dsmax.exe ->Set Priority->Low and it worked!!

next i tried the script trick and put it in the 3dsmax folder mentioned here http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/how_to_change_the_rendering_priority_of_3ds_max

that had no effect at all, it kept crashing.

so apparently corona is using too much cpu on that type of cpu.

Ondra, can you confirm this?

[PEgaz]

I'm not using RC5 yet, but I can say it was issue I found also in my history of trying to use BackBurner/Corona 1.2.

It was so common that jobs I put on night to render via BackBurner was not rendered/ or restarted few times in the night; that I gave up using BackBurner (and started to wake up in the night to switch renders manually, ehh :( )

It seems that Corona so much overwhelms my nodes that backburner can't communicate and keeps sowing errors.

Not to mention something that drives me mad - that there's no Corona VFB on nodes. So many times I put too much passes ... and I couldn't save render with all RenderElements and I had to wait until all passes are done (even if they didn't have to). Or I set my time estimation, that was not enough and I had to render it once again.
I know, I know ... that problem is irrelevant to the topic, I just couldn't resist mentioning it, sorry :)

[Guillermo Leal]

a temporary solution until Ondra fixes the problem, is to use a modified version of this script by NiK684 http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/affinity-priority-switch
and put it in the startup folder.

it seems to be rendering just fine.

[Ondra]

ok, so can you confirm that changing priorities works?

[Guillermo Leal]

yes its been rendering for 6 hours just fine.  i had to use the script to set the priority to low on that machine. 

if this is the way it will work i think you guys show put it on the help page as its a hard to find the crash. or something will be done in code?

[Ondra]

ok, corona will set 3dsmax to below normal priority when DR rendering again by default