Missing maps and missing plugins, these things are very big issues. I also wonder if any same asset file name also is an issue (this is mostly likely a problem when rendering a master scene that consists of many different xref files, which is almost always). With hundreds of different models, and thousands of maps, there are surely some missing assets or plugins some place, which doesn’t really affect the rendering if skipped. Sini also doesn’t find all these.
The point is that these things gave a mild warning in backburner, but rendered, which is all about time efficiency. We simply don’t have an hour or two to spend in each project to relocate a simple missing map deep in the xref structure, and testing 5-10 submits to the farm just to be sure to find out in the max-log on the main farm host which missing plugins it is this time, because it doesn’t even find all problems at once, just the first one triggered and then critical exit, and voila, no render to post process and deliver to the customer that day.
It’s come to the point that we no longer use pulze in our studio, we use local rendering and/or Vantage instead, which is respectively more time conusing and less reliable, but at least it renders, and hence it makes us able to deliver our projects pretty much on time.
Additionaly, it would be a nice feature having better error reporting in the Pulze GUI, and not having to remote logon the farm and locate max-log and then finding the correct log line every time. Just. Too. Time consuming. I can’t think of any place in the world, despite different living costs and different overhead project budgets, where a company would like to loose money because they have to solve problems that shouldn’t be a problem.
Sorry to be critical in my writing, but you need to fix this quick or else you have lost a customer.
