Backburner and x-refs....

[Tommy L]

We have a problem where the xrefs in a max file:

 

Main max file has xrefs. Sent main file to render 2 animations. Work on xrefs whilst rendering = strange results. The xref being worked on was turned off in the Main file when sent to render. One machine out of about 15 rendered the xref. which is strange.

The other animation rendered second and the updated xref was rendered (ie, it rendered the work that was done whilst the job was waiting in backburner.

So, I looked in the manager job cache and the file is too small to contain the geometry, so Im assuming the manager accesses the xrefs every frame (or does it cache the xrefs somewhere else?)

Is Backburner accessing live xrefs at render time? I assumed it cached them when i sent the job?

 

Is the best solution just to rename xrefs everytime yuo work on them som you dont disturb the farm? That sounds a bit over the top, can I force backburner to cache xrefs?

 

Thanks in advasnce,

Tom.

[Claudio Branch]

Tom,

 

I had the same problem myself. I'm not 100% certain, but I do not believe that Backburner loads the entire x-ref file into cache.

 

I made changes to an x-ref file while it was rendering (several 60 hour weeks do funny things to human memory).

 

The beginning of my animation had frames from the original file and the end had frames from the revised file. The middle was a hodge-podge of both!

 

IMO, the best strategy is to just save off the x-ref that you want to play around with and use a naming convention that works for you.

 

Claudio

[Tommy L]

Still having this problem....

Does anyone know if theres a way to force backburner to cache X-refs?

[Tommy L]

Still have this problem, its driving me crazy, any moderaters know anything? Anyone? Anyone at all?

I mean seriously, I just need to make backburner cache the x-refs......

[BrianKitts]

How many xref's are we talking about? You could designate a file with something like an X prefix or suffix, and then keep a working file. So your folder may look something like this......

 

MainScene_01.max

 

PartialScene_xref.max

PartialScene_working01.max

PartialScene_working02.max

PartialScene_working03.max

PartialScene_working04.max

PartialScene_working05.max

 

then before you send anything to render you open the latest "working file" and save out an update to your linked "xref" file. That way while you are rendering you can work on updating the working files, and the animation will remain okay. I've done this on a few projects when i have a few xrefs of scenes in a file and i want to incrementally save the xrefs. Although I would always finish the entire scene before sending it to render so I've never run into your problem, but this would solve it.