The good news and the bad news

GOOD NEWS :)

All my PCs set up to render in the base room and the new room rendered, woo hoo!

BAD NEWS :(

None of the PCs in DM3 will render. I managed to get one PC rendering but all the rest come up with the above error message and then cause Maya to crash.

As long as i can render on some PCs I'm happy!

Rendering

After i re cached the spring for a third time (2nd time using ncache instead of geometry cache) and reloaded the cache into my scene it would allow me to render :)

I managed to set up four PCs to render over the weekend, which is almost all of the shots but the shot_cam_1, and then its just the other four cameras, all of which don't have a number larger to render than about 500, one even has a total of 149 frames to render so Monday morning i will come in and set up some new renders, return before uni closes and set up the remaining renders for overnight, so by Tuesday morning i will have all of my full set of completed renders - if nothing goes wrong that is!

Thank you to Phil, Alan and Tom for helping with the situation!

Link to the playblast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ijierHKvrQ

For some reason the clip didnt upload but this is the link to it.... ^

Im never EVER using ncloth again.

out of sync ncloth - reason UNKNOWN

I managed to fin and link up the new cache that i did overnight but for some reason it has cached everything about 20frames behind what it should have been, meaning that Jack moves upwards and the spring doesn't but as Jack starts to move downwards the spring then moves upwards. Its so frustrating because when i click to batch render in mental ray with the new, but out of sync cache it renders, but i cant render a floating head :(

I don't understand why it would have cached this way as i started at frame '1' which is correct but there may have been an error last night and so i am currently re-caching it again. The fact that the new cache renders sorts out my problem although i need the cache to work correctly at the same time.

Obviously caching my scene takes a hell of a long time, and the new cache i started just before 2pm is only at frame 3000 and Alan finishes at 4pm so hopefully my new cache will have reached 5400 by then so we to try and sort all of this out :(

I'm so fed up.

The play blast below is showing my problems. It is my ''renderable''cached ncloth spring, but out of sync..... in case my fed up moaning above doesn't make much sense.

Ncache

After setting up two PCs to ncache and not geometry cache the spring ncloth, for some reason this morning when looking at them both they have cached but at the wrong speed. The spring still squashes and stretches but out of time with when it should. I have no idea why this is but i will ask Alan as soon as he become available.

I did however set up two other PCs to render, one of which managed to get from frame 184 to 889 from 6.30pm yesterday to today and is still rendering now, so that's a bonus however i need sections from it right up until 5604.

I also set up another pc to render the end frames of my scene which took an hour and forty minutes to start the render (19:40 rendering started) and then finished at 01:32 this morning. That was for only 500 frames. So theoretically it can render 500 frames in five hours meaning that to render the 6000 frames i need collectively from the separate camera set ups, it should take approximately 60 hours - meaning that if i get this silly ncache to work properly and render on five PCs over the weekend and into Monday, by Tuesday morning it will have all rendered. OF course a few of the pcs will only need to render a few frames and so they would probably be finished before monday, and assuming that i can use the pcs in DM1 i could also render using more pcs further cutting down my render time and ensuring that i have it done by monday.

IF the ncache works.

Ncloth

Ncloth is the problem. Alan removed the ncloth from my scene and the render worked, which is terrifying. A jack in the box with no spring??! :(

Im re caching it all tonight and hopefully by tomorrow using the new cache and an usmoothed spring it will render. If not, i have absolutely no idea what to do next.

PC 1 render has begun!!

Feels like christmas all over again :)


....but the others wont start to render, so im back down to one pc rendering again. Alan finishes at 5pm ill have to ask.