3dsmax mental ray issues

Render Manager Issues
#1

Some of our files we need to render with pulze render manager, contain legacy assets from mental ray, an old renderer not included in 3DSmax anymore.

When we open ‘old’ files, we regularly get an error:

Missing dll: mentalray_plugins.dlo - Arch & Design
Reinstall the missing dll-s and/or try this guide:
"Missing Dlls" warning appears when opening 3ds Max

There aren’t any ways we can find around this, it’s not possible to install mentalray anymore and using scripts to remove missing dll’s doesn’t work for 3dsmax.

Has any one ever had the same issue, are there any solutions (that don’t require reinstall of max, because that has been done already many times)? Or is there a way around this, so we can still render with the missing dll?

#2

Have you tried the Scene Converter in Max? It’s in the Render menu.

If you look in the drop down on the left hand side there’s an option to remove invalid legacy elements.

Make sure you save you scene before in case it does something unexpected.

#3

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the suggestion, although I already tried the scene converter multiple times. This one doesn’t seem to get removed.
I have eventually found the objects that gave the issue (some old forest pack objects) after (painstakingly) merging into a new 3dsmax file part by part.

It still doesn’t render though, we now have issues where 3dsmax crashes on other pc’s when rendering with pulze. When rendering directly on those machines, it renders fine. In the max crashlog we see multiple ‘read-write’ errors with .mat-files (fabrics.mat, paper.mat). We can see these in the asset tracker, but can’t find a way to delete those either. Additional headaches (but maybe off-topic here)…

We are a pretty experienced team, but keep on having these kinds of issues with pulze sadly. When it works though, it’s fantastic.

#4

Hi @adriaan

Sorry to hear that you are struggling to render an older scene with Render Manager. I’ve got to so say running 3ds Max in network rendering mode can be a b*tch and it is very sensitive when it comes to assets. This is something that we can’t control, but we try to make all the necessary steps before the submission and before actually starting a job to avoid issues.

Regarding the .mat files, Do they show up in the left part of the material editor?

#5

Hi @peter.sarhidai ,

Thanks for the follow-up, the .mat-files show up in the asset tracker, not in the material editor.

#6

Could you pack and send over this scene so I could run some tests?

#7

Hi Peter,

I swear I don’t seek help on forums often (or quickly), but I did just find the solution for my problem.
It’s not entirely related to Pulze I guess, but there were several materials that had a ‘.mat’-file where there should have been a ‘.jpg’-file (in the bitmap nodes).

So, sorry for bothering! But it’s fixed now, I can render with pulze at last!

kind regards

#8

@adriaan no problem at all! We are always happy to help even in cases when it is not directly related to our products, it is always good to learn about these issues!