C4DtoA, .ass, and Team Render Node Failure

[the-dude123]

Hi,

I'm trying to Render some .ass files (created in Maya and Speedtree, then exported to .ass, and imported into C4D and Rendered with Arnold over Team Render. I'm having an issue with the textures not being rendered by my other computer (using Team Render Client). See below for example image (the 4 grey squares).

Both computers are running same version of Cinema 4D and same version of Arnold.

These are the ERRORS that show up in the console:

C4DtoA | 00:01:07 1910MB ERROR| [c4dtoa] Failed to send data 1034471 to Team Render Server: 1002

C4DtoA | 00:01:08 1910MB ERROR| [c4dtoa] Failed to send data 1037606 to Team Render Server:

1002

I figured part of it out:

I used the "ASSETS" tab in the Arnold Procedural and linked to the .tx texture files. However, there are WAY too many individual files to link to (not to mention only 10 fields to populate).

Any way to put all of my textures in one file and link to that file? Every time I try, the Asset fields only excepts single files (.tx, .png, etc)...not a folder (it throws an error when linked to a folder path).

Any ideas?

[Stephen.Blair]

The ass files probably have absolute paths for the texture file names.

If you export with relative paths, then you can use the Texture Search Path

[peter.horvath6V6K3]

I'm not sure simply the texture search path will help in this case.

Team Render transfers the assets of a scene to each client: files which are marked as assets. The procedural is a black box, therefore the plugin does not know anything about textures referenced within the procedural (in the ASS file) and they are not transferred to the clients by default. That's why we have the Assets tab to be able to manually define these files.

The Assets tab does not handle folders currently, as you discovered, which has to be fixed.

Until than a nasty workaround could be to define image nodes in an Arnold Material without connecting them to the beauty. (You can load textures from a folder in the ramp_rgb shader). Let me know if that works.

[Stephen.Blair]

@Peter Horvath If all the textures are on a network share, and the ass files have relative paths, could you use the Texture Search Path then?

[peter.horvath6V6K3]

Right, that should work.

[the-dude123]

@Stephen Blair

How do I export with relative paths? Is that a setting on the .ass exporter in Maya? I only see a checkbox with "Full Paths"

@Peter Horvath

I'll test that out later tonight and see how it goes

Thanks

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

• Render Settings > System tab
• Search Paths section
• Clear the Absolute Texture Paths check box
• Put some of the absolute path in the Texture Search Path
• Export the ass files

For example, if your textures are all in C:\projects\test\textures

Then put C:\projects or C:\projects\test or C:\projects\test\textures in the Texture Search Path

[the-dude123]

Well, it's working!

I used the "Shared Folder" method with the relative paths created in Maya and then the "Texture Search Path" in Cinema 4D.

Only strange thing is that two different folder paths are required to render the scene correctly (see image below).

I'm on a Mac and it looks like OSX has different file paths when sharing a file (or I'm doing something wrong in the file sharing). I'm referring to the "Volumes" vs "Users" paths.