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.