Common Error Messages and Fixes

This error is thrown by the render engine used by your 3dsmax scene file. We’ve seen it most often with the V-Ray engine, but also with Mental Ray as well. What happens is that an unhandled exception in the render engine causes the main Max process to crash. The fix, in most cases, is to reset your render settings to defaults and then manually re-enter the settings you need. Save your scene file after doing that and re-submit it. That will often fix these problems.

Messages like this are fairly common across all render apps and engines. It indicates you still have absolute paths defined to help the render app locate external files. Absolute paths to external files are not supported in any form. You must locate all external files in the scene file directory or a subdirectory of that directory. All links/paths inside your scene file pointing to those assets must use relative pathing. Failure to prepare your scene file according to the directions for your specific render app in our support portal will often produce errors like this.

Messages like this are fairly common across all render apps and engines. It indicates you still have absolute paths defined to help the render app locate external files. Absolute paths to external files are not supported in any form. You must locate all external files in the scene file directory or a subdirectory of that directory. All links/paths inside your scene file pointing to those assets must use relative pathing. Failure to prepare your scene file according to the directions for your specific render app in our support portal will often produce errors like this.

This error thrown by Modo is somewhat misleading. It’s not the scene file itself that can’t be opened, it’s an external file referred to by the scene file. Please prepare your scene file according to the directives in our support portal for your render application, and this error will not likely happen.

This error message is generated when you’ve submitted a scene file that uses a plug-in that we don’t have installed on our farm. Please search the support portal using the bar above to see the current list of software deployed on our farm. Plugins and render engines are grouped into the base render application they are installed in, so searching by render application is usually easiest. If your scene does not require the plug-in named in your error log, remove all references to it in your scene file and try re-submitting it.

This is typically caused by a plug-in being referenced by your scene file that we do not have installed on our farm. Please search the support portal using the bar above to see the current list of software deployed on our farm and, if possible, remove references to plug-ins in your scene file that we do not support. This error is not always the actual cause of the frame render error, so make sure you check the entire log for information.

This is almost always caused by an external file being referenced by your scene file that was not referred to by relative pathing. This is the most common symptom of your scene file and assets not being prepared according to the directives in our Cinema 4D Job Submission Overview page.

This error is caused because you have render elements enabled, but do not have a base filename and format for those elements defined. The render engine can’t determine what format to store the render element passes in if you don’t define a format. The output file names for the render elements must also contain some sort of base file name like “elements” so the eventual output name doesn’t start with a dot or other confusing character.

This error can occur and displays in the end of the trimmed log file sent to you via email. This means the application exited with an exit code of 0x3. Typically, this means the render application tried to allocate more memory than was available to it. Our nodes have up to 96GB of memory, so if the render application tries to allocate more than 94GB of memory, the node will run out of memory and the application will crash. In these situations, there is rarely more information about problems in the application log. The application crashed before it could announce what was wrong. Proper tuning of your scene file will eliminate this problem.

In the event of log lines like this, our render farm management software caught your scene file causing the render application to allocate more memory than is available on the system. At present, our nodes have up to 96GB of physical memory each, of which roughly 94GB is available to use in the render application. You will need to simplify your scene file to reduce memory consumption while rendering. Please refer to your specific render application and render engine on how to do that.

Redshift doesn’t accurately report this problem back to the render app in which it’s running. This is particularly true if running in C4D, as Redshift uses the “Out of Memory” flag to report a variety of problems back to C4D to cause it to interrupt the rendering process. The actual problem is logged only in the Redshift log, and it does not make it to the C4D log. Please contact support with your job number soon after seeing this, and we will try to gather the Redshift log file to send to you.