C4D Team Render?

ktagliar@pratt.edu
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C4D Team Render?

Post by ktagliar@pratt.edu » Mon Sep 08, 2014 10:33 pm

Here to find out any solution for rendering via C4D's Team Render (R15) feature with RF meshes.

Have made sure conductivity plug-in is installed/loaded in all client folders. Have also tried to load mesh BINS on a shared network drive with same result. No mesh geometry!

Any help out there? Thanks.

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tsn
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by tsn » Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:44 am

We're still investigating why Team Render fails. It seems as if the paths are not resolved correctly.
Thomas Schlick | Next Limit Technologies

ktagliar@pratt.edu
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by ktagliar@pratt.edu » Tue Sep 09, 2014 1:13 pm

Thank you very much. Our network environment are all Macs on same sub-network. The shared volume is a DROBO-FS which is mounted on each station. We've linked the RF mesh in C4D directly to the BINS on the shared network drive. After confirming the RF plugins are installed on each Team Render Client we're not receiving any errors - simply no mesh in scene.

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tsn
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by tsn » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:24 pm

You're welcome. Also thanks for the additional information. We'll take a look this issue ASAP, but I want to ask for a little patience, since some of us will be at IBC during the coming days.
Thomas Schlick | Next Limit Technologies

ktagliar@pratt.edu
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by ktagliar@pratt.edu » Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:15 pm

Thanks for taking the time.

Some bits I received from Maxon support:
Unfortunately we can't be of much help here. We do not support 3rd party plugins, or even own a copy of Realflow in our lab. So you may want to contact RealFlow's tech team on best practices when rendering over a render farm environment.

But from my understanding, when using Realflow be sure to have your RF .bin meshes or cache files upload to your Source directory where your .c4d project file lives. And just like the textures make sure the bin files are a relative path Relative path means, NOT having absolute paths such as "C:\users\documents\maxon\BIN\job001.bin"

ktagliar@pratt.edu
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by ktagliar@pratt.edu » Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:16 pm

We've attempted to follow Maxon's advice and set the mesh BIN path to:

/mesh.bin
/tex/mesh.bin
mesh.bin
tex/mesh.bin


None of which work when attempting to Team Render unfortunately. No errors in Team Render clients just no mesh showing up in renders.

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LuisMiguel
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by LuisMiguel » Mon Sep 15, 2014 8:11 am

Hi,

As far as I know, it is working and meshes can be rendered without any problem. So, a couple of questions.

What OS system do you have?.

Depending on the system the paths it should be, as Maxon said, "\\network path\your folder" or "//network path/your folder".

You can also try to attempt to connect by the any other computer to the network path. If it is working, it should be working in the RealFlow plugin.

luisM.

ktagliar@pratt.edu
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by ktagliar@pratt.edu » Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:19 pm

Hi Luis, thanks for your reply and taking time to look into this.

All systems are MAC OS 10.9.4. All can access the shared network drive without issue (DroboFS). We've attempted to place the whole project folder on the network drive and open/launch the team render from one machine without success. The RF plugin is installed on all Render Clients and there are no errors. Simply no mesh renders. We've also tried an assortment of configurations of file path, however not the including "//" or "\\" at the start. So let us try this and get back to you. If you have any other suggestions in the meantime based on the info supplied above please let us know.

Thanks, Kc

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tsn
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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by tsn » Wed Sep 17, 2014 2:43 pm

Ok… I did some in-depth analysis of the Team Render workflow and paths are obviously resolved correctly. This became clear when I tried to render objects from SD files. The problem here is that only the objects' geometry data is loaded, but without any motion information. That's why all objects are located in the scene's origin at 0/0/0 in the rendered image. Since particles have no real geometry, they also fail to render. Considering that geometry is loaded it's a bit strange that the mesh's geometry is not rendered at all.

Our developer will take a deeper look into the code and we hope to have this sorted out soon.

Thanks for pointing us to this issue and sorry for the inconvenience,
Thomas
Thomas Schlick | Next Limit Technologies

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Re: C4D Team Render?

Post by ktagliar@pratt.edu » Wed Sep 17, 2014 4:11 pm

Thanks Thomas, yeah we've attempted many different variations on file path configurations. Considering that we have all systems on same sub-net able to see the shared network drive (Drobo-FS) and no errors to speak of it's a mystery. I'm really surprised that no one else came across this issue with RF/C4D TeamRender since it's so popular.

Happy to try any suggestions you have config wise once you have a solution. Just let me know.

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