I am having problems with using rendercows to render. I am rendering a single image thats a little over 6000 x 4800 pixels to disk as a tif file. The rendercows and Vue are all updated to the latest version, whatever that buggy beta is, 6.10 build 291050 I think. My main V6I machine is an 8 core Mac Pro with 4GB RAM and the second machine I was going to use to help render is a Mac G4 Dual 1.42Ghz with 2GB RAM running the latest OS updates. The rendercows start up fine and look like they are rendering. The G4 mac rendercow always crashes part way through. The Mac Pro flies through the scene in minutes which cant be right and says it finished in the batch window but never does finish it. Rendering the image on the Mac Pro alone using the stand alone renderer takes about 45 hours to render at that size so there is no way the rendercows could reduce that time to about 10 minutes. So something weird is going on. I am banging my head on the wall trying to figure out all of the bizarre things going on with V6I lately. I havent written to e-on about this problem yet because I have them trying to figure out a more serious one. For some reason I cannot open 4 or 5 files that I had worked on before. Nothing had changed but all I get is an error message saying Vue cant open the files. Even if I try the .bak files after reanaming them to .vue extension. I lost a lot of work on that scene now. Any ideas on any of these two problems? I have to get this stuff rendered ASAP too, I just got signed by an art licensing company and they need my art at least at 16"x20" at 300dpi sizes and I am running into all of this trouble. I would consider using a renderfarm like ranch computing but I dont think I can afford that at the moment. I am going to post this at some other forums for help as well so forgive me if you see this again elsewhere. I am desperate!

Someone reported that e-on confirmed that there is a RenderCow problem on Mac in version 291050. Network rendering is broken. I guess you are facing this.

Thanks for the update wabe. I couldn't get the rendercow problem to work on the previous update either though. The G4 wouldn't crash but the MacPro still rendered way to fast and I'd end up with nothing rendered. Weird problems going on.

Well, I have a very similar network it seems. But here it worked. Even when the G4 didn't participated much because the Mac Pro was too fast.

Your render finished? Did you notice a significant difference in render times using the rendercows? I was just wondering if my G4 would help that much or not. I wonder why mine is different than yours. Maybe I have something conflicting.

I don't think so. RenderCows for a long time was difficult on Mac. And for most it always was broken. I was only lucky in a way.

I posted this at Cornucopia but thought I would here as well. Hey Wabe, Thanks for the reply and I did see your other post over at Rendo which I will copy my reply here over there for others as well. What you said makes sense and I did get a response back from John at e-on saying the same thing. "If the non loading files are related to a single scene, maybe something got corrupted at some point. If the corrupted scene was then saved several times, bak files get corrupted too as they correspond to the version just before the latest save operation." Also, I wrote about the rendercow problems and maybe relating to my other problem of files going bad. On updating one of the rendercows Vue said that the updater was corrupted even though one of the other cows updated fine. So I am thinking I had a bad install of V6I on the Mac Pro and it corrupted everything, my scenes and rendercows. Because after I applied the last update to V6I I also had renders that I was rendering in Vue alone hang or freeze. Just too much weird stuff going on at once. So I reinstalled V6I and updated to before the last update since the latest one screwed with my render times somewhat. I'll just wait for another update from e-on before I even try the rendercows. As to that, here is also what John at e-on wrote in case any one is interested: "Hi Randy, We have indeed fixed a major slow down issue regarding polygonal objects due to a recent multithreading crash fix. We are currently rebuilding a new update so this should be sorted out shortly. There was also a recent fix on rendercows autoupdate I think, so upcoming update should sort things out as well." Sounds like good news to me! Thanks again wabe for responding and giving me some things to look into. Best wishes, Randy

RenderCows are indeed a mess on the Mac platform right now. I've had it confirmed via Support that in the latest build, it just doesn't work, full-stop.

I've gone back down to the previous build - 290396 - and my DEM animation renders using the Cows (3 Macs, 2 PCs). Generally, it all grinds to a halt (not crashes) about 400 frames in, and all the Cows become stuck. I've set it going again, and it's all stopped at 167 frames. Luckily it does recover all of the rendered frames, and I'm piecing it together manually.

E-On really need to sort this out once and for all, because for those of us that use V6I for professional work are going to have to search for something else. I really do have a love / hate relationship with Vue...

sighs

"ey need my art at least at 16"x20" at 300dpi sizes and I am running into all of this trouble. " Yes I too have mac and can't render big enough (I need those same sizes). Well try using thre previous vue beta, and standalone renderer but select png instead of tiff etc, and see what happens. maybe your file will work (mine didn't but I haven't tried again recently) My plan, if the software isn't fixed in time, is to render maybe at 600 dpi if it will do that, then use photoshop to interpolate to increase apparent resolution. But maybe things will be fixed soon anyway. Love esther

Thanks for all of the help and tips everyone. I think I have invented more new profanities lately trying to get some stuff rendered than ever before :-) Maybe when the new update comes out it will fix a lot of these problems.

you mean like these?? sugar? gosh? drat? darn it? you rotters?

estherau I am shocked, those are waaaaay to harsh for me to say! LOL I think I would make a sailor blush with as much as I have been screaming at my monitor. Bet the neighbors loved hearing me at 4am in the morning yelling at Vue. At least "Vue" doesnt sound like someones name so they dont think I am abusing my wife or a kid or something like that. I hope e-on doesnt change the name to something like "Bob". Bob 6 Infinite Version 6.05 Build 2903848384.1 At least I am getting some stuff rendered large but its the simpiliar scenes I am doing now. I dont know whats going to happen when I try my more complicated Vue scenes. I'll have to invent my own language by then! At least you guys here in the forums and tech support at e-on has made this a lot better for me!

i use that 291050 current version for importing then i copy my old vue version (whole vue folder) back to my applications folder as that last version renders way much quicker (less cussin' and neighbour upsetting that way) love esther