Devin Johnston Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 I've sent some jobs to backburner using the slice pass option, they will render fine but when it comes to the part where backburner is supposed to merge all the slices together I'm getting an error. Both jobs have an error message that says "Error loading strip _STP00000_0000". The problem is there is not a strip with this name and the job can't continue. How do I fix this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt McDonald Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 Are all the machines done with their strip when the assemble job goes through? Backburner is supposed to wait until they are. Are you selecting "use all servers" or are you picking servers from the list? ??? Maybe a problem with having more strips than servers but I would think that a server would just start work on the next strip and Backburner should wait for it ??? If the machine that is working on the first strip is not properly mapped to the output location it wouldn't save the file but might tell Backburner that it is done with no errors. Kinda just guessing. Sometimes it can be helpful to open the strips up in Photoshop to see exactly what rendered. I know nothing about V-Ray but I would have guessed that it wouldn't work with the render slices becuase it's a bucket renderer vs. the scanline. I'd take a look at those other strips. I hope there are a few tidbits of diagnostic help in amongst a bevy of guesses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 14, 2007 Author Share Posted July 14, 2007 All the strips are finished rendering, they have all rendered correctley and the only thing left for back burner to do is merge them all together. This operation isn't a Vray operation it's strictley backburner, the wierd thing is on each job it's looking for the same file, almost like it's a default file that is missing but I know from past experience that it shoulden't be doing this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 14, 2007 Author Share Posted July 14, 2007 Ok something is really wrong, I've tried a several different ways of using the slice pass feature of backburner and they have all failed to merge the slices at the end. I used a standard scan line scene to do the tests, I've had this scene for years and it has worked perfectly using the slice pass in the past and nothing about the file has changed. I haven't used slice pass in Max 9 until now, I've installed SP2 so everything is up to date. This is weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moshenko Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 What is the exact output name of your strips, and how does that compare to the names that are actually saved? I've seen problems where too many zero's get appended to the file name and the slice pass cannot find the correct files. Check the properties of the slice pass and see what names it is looking for. If the names don't match, change the names of the saved slices accordingly and restart the slice pass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 14, 2007 Author Share Posted July 14, 2007 That's what's so weird, no matter how many jobs I send and no matter what I name them all the "second pass" job that is supposed to stitch the slices together looks for is a file called "strip _STP00000_0000". The actual strips them selves that are rendered out have names like "_STP00000_concorse0000", so it's like the second pass is using some kind of default name but I have no idea where it's getting it from. Sure I could rename all the strips or piece them together manually but that kind of defeats the point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moshenko Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 Have you tried this? - stop Backburner Manger; - rename "backburner.xml" (to "backburner_old.xml, for example; - restart Backburner Manager so a new .xml file is created; - try your strip scene again. Also, if you haven't done it yet, I recommend you set up a quick test scene of a few spheres or something so that you're not waiting for ages to find out if your strip render does or doesn't work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 I was getting the same problem a while back when i tried using vray with strip rendering through backburner. I found that it didn't like long complex file names with underscores and such, and I only got it to work when saving the image out to a jpg, and other format would error out. Kind of a bummer, I abandoned trying to get it to work and just gave up on it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 15, 2007 Author Share Posted July 15, 2007 What about just doing a standard Max scanline scene, did you try that Brian? I did and I got the same result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 no.... I was only playing around with vray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 15, 2007 Author Share Posted July 15, 2007 So I guess this is a bug in Max not Vray, funny that no one else seems to have this problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt McDonald Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 What are the extensions on the strips? So you render Strip00000_0000_concourse.tga or something like that. Does backburner indicate an extension for the missing strip? This is a real guess but if the machines are setup to only show files of a certain type under (tools-folder options-view) rather than all file types and the odd strip does not have a normal extension (like tga for example) it might be hidden and unavailable for backburner. I'll be in the office tomorrow and can send a job to our stack and see how it slices it up. Maybe it will shed some light on the odd file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 I've only ever had the problem with filenames that were long and complicated. Once the filename got shortened, it worked fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 16, 2007 Author Share Posted July 16, 2007 My file names are Lobby and concourse, there also Tiffs so it's nothing that I would consider unusual. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt McDonald Posted July 16, 2007 Share Posted July 16, 2007 Do the task summary or job errors tabs of the first part of the job (the rendering) indicate anything at all? Do you have any render elements checked? I added a diffuse element (just for giggles) and it generated an error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parker1 Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 Ahhhhh....you too? We are now running MAX 9 SP2 and get the exact same error message on the assembly job for strip rendering. We have a 100+ machine farm and BB will keep reassigning the job all over the farm for sometimes hours, each time with that same "missing strip" error you mentioned. Usually it finally gets a machine that can do the job and its compiles...funny thing is, every machine is identical (insert U.F.O. noise here). I hate BB but I love it as well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 17, 2007 Author Share Posted July 17, 2007 We're obviously dealing with a software bug but does the machine that finally puts the strip together work every time or does it experience the error as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt McDonald Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 Have you updated Backburner? With Max 9 Sp2 we have Backburner 2007.0.1. On the Autodesk website you can download Backburner 2007 Service Pack 2. This is separate from the Max 9 service packs. The site only indicates what was fixed from (presumably) SP1 to SP2 but in the course of getting from 0.1 to SP1 they might have fixed your glitch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moshenko Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 I don't run Max9 on our network, but the word on the street is that bad things happen with the latest Backburner manager. One solution seems to be to use the previous Manager version (3.x.x) in conjunction with slaves running updated Server. There are also other success stories and methods here: http://discussion.autodesk.com/adskcsp/thread.jspa?threadID=515987 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griffin Posted July 19, 2007 Share Posted July 19, 2007 Do you have a nunmber at the end of the filename you are trying to save? We have had problems in the past with filenames such as "Lobby1.jpg" This seems to confuse the job stitching the strips together. I maybe way off base on this but I hope it helps... Griffin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted July 19, 2007 Author Share Posted July 19, 2007 No there were no numbers in the name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roest Posted July 22, 2007 Share Posted July 22, 2007 @ Work we have the same problem, really wondering what cause the error. till that time we have to stitch it ourself in PS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucetius Posted September 24, 2007 Share Posted September 24, 2007 Anyone come up with a solution to this? We have the same problem here. Max9 (64bit) sp2 on all machines. WinXP64. Backburner 2007 .224(sp2). Submit to the farm via Scripts, Batch render and standard via net-render(i.e. nothing works). Strips render fine with correct file name. 2nd pass fails with the following error: Error loading strip _STP00000_0001 We've tried short names without numbers and multiple output paths with no success. Max 8 is working fine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted September 24, 2007 Author Share Posted September 24, 2007 There's no fix that I've been able to find, it's a nice little bug added to Backburner that absolutely shouldn’t be there. I'm sure they'll fix it in Max 10 but you can probably forget about a patch or update to fix it in Max 9. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucetius Posted October 10, 2007 Share Posted October 10, 2007 Devin, We worked with Autodesk Tech Support and were able to come up with a fix that worked for us. It required a clean install on all of our rendering slaves. The steps we followed were as follows: 1. I uninstalled all versions of Max, Plugins, Backburner, etc. (note, we have combustion installed but I left it alone) 2. I deleted all left over directories pertaining to the uninstalled programs. 3. I emptied the trash can (this really shouldn't have any effect but I did it anyways) 4. I restarted 5. I installed Max 8 (we use a network install to push it out) 6. I installed Max 8 sp3 7. I installed Max 9x64 (we use a network install to push it out) 8. I installed Max 9 sp2 9. I uninstalled Backburner (again) 10. I checked to make sure there were no residual folders/files 11. I installed Backburner 2007-sp2 12. I installed Vray Rc2-Max8, 1.5 final x64 for Max9 13. I installed our current production plugins for both Max 8 - Max9 I submitted to render from one of our workstations. (note, I did not perform the above scenario on the workstation as of yet) Our dedicated render manager is running Win XP32. BB2007-sp2. This does not have a full version of max installed. I submitted 12 passes from a project to strip render. The strips/files were saved to a location on the network. The folder structure was fairly long and the file name was complex with characters, numbers and symbols. i.e. 5D0703_cam10-bldg_MID-AMB-.png This worked for us, I hope it helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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