EricMBloggie

***This post is only for rendering nerds only***

We just upgraded computers and software at work.  We’re now running these beastly 8 core, 8GB RAM machines with Max Design 2009.  I ran into some problems during the switch from Max 9 though.

The other night, I was stuck at work, trying to get these files ready to render.  At around midnight, a funny (terrible) thing happened.  Everytime I sent the file out to Backburner, it would crash.  I went into troubleshooting mode: Saving As, stripping the file down to nothing (sexy), and building it back up from there.  It turned out that ANY camera– VRayPhysicalCamera, a Max default Camera– would crash the file on Backburner.  Oddly, it rendered fine with a single computer.

I searched the Google Machine to find that a couple other people had posted about this as well.  But there was little help to be found.  I discovered the answer after my night of sleep, dreams of 3D teapots lingering in my head.  I had spent three hours trying to fix the problem in vain.  Autodesk has issued a Service Pack (SP1).  Install it, and the problem goes away.  Simple!

I hope this post finds some late-night Googlers racing towards their own deadlines.  Good luck.

I spoke with a dude from FedEx about the shipping account we just set up for Sweaty Robot LLC. After our conversation, he sent an email so we’d have his contact information in case we started shipping more stuff. They’ll give you discounts if you ship a lot. Anyways, here’s the email, with a funny typo:

Thanks for taking my call today, I appreciate you suing FedEx instead of the competition. If you have a question or you notice your need to ship going up, fell free to call me, I am in the office from 7:30 till 4 everyday.

They’re so gracious for a company that’s being sued. Tom Hanks from ‘Castaway’ would have given this guy a promotion.