So I am still new to using the Arnold renderer, and I've been learning as I go along here, so I am sorry if this is an obvious fix.
I am rendering and animating this robot using a Standard Surface Arnold Material for the logos and decals using TIF texture files with alpha channels plugged into the Opacity slot. Rendering the scene inside my local machine with Arnold looks fine and I get the opacity to render correctly. Since render times would take too long to meet the deadline, I set up a render farm and using Backburner, but when rendering from the farm, my decal cards using that same material turn blue and opaque. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong here or what setting I need to change? The mesh that this material is applied to has the Arnold Properties opacity option unchecked (I have tried it with the setting on and off with no difference in the result).
Images provided to show what I mean.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Get an Arnold log from a local render, and an Arnold log from the Backburner render, and compare them.
My guess is a texture issue.
I would do a much simpler test, with a plane that has one of those textures and opacity maps.
@stephenBlair I don't see an Arnold log come up when the Backburner render initiates. I do get a log from the local machine which shows no errors pertaining to the material used on the plane. (The name of the material in question is named "Decals")
Image of the Arnold log from the local machine:
The only Arnold message is "render terminating early"
Increase the log verbosity in the Render Settings, and make sure the Render Message Window is showing all message types.
For backburner, can't you set the 3dsmax verbosity level? eg -v 5
Then the 3dsmax will print the Arnold log.
I upped the verbosity in the Render Settings to Debug and still received no errors from the Arnold renderer (The only reason it showed up in the screenshot posted above is that I stopped it before it could finish). As for the backburner side, The only interfaces that pop up are the render progress menu and render preview window. I never get a log to come up on that side unfortunately.
Can you open a command prompt and do a command line render on the render node?
I don't use or support backburner myself, but customers send Arnold logs from Backburner, so it is possible.
Thanks for the link on how to access the backburner log! I was able to access the log and it appears that when the process begins, it sends out a warning that the map files I used for the textures are missing. I'm guessing that because the file location is on the local machine and not on the client machines, Arnold cannot find the file and therefore does not render the material. Do you know of any way to get around this?
I figured it out! My previous guess was correct in that because the file was on my local machine, the other client machines couldn't find and render it. I had to put those texture files on the network drive and re-link them into the material for them to be found by the client machines. Thank you Stephen for pointing me in the right direction!