I'm using a Geometry COP node to grab a projected image from my scene on each frame, and then use that image as a texture map elsewhere in my scene. In the Map parameter of the material I used the following path:


It looks great in the viewport, animating correctly, but when I go to render I get nothing. If I remove the from the Map path I do get the expected render locally, but on the render farm (using Hqueue) the texture map image does not update (stuck on the image of the geometry as it was on the first frame sent to the render).

I read through this 2011 post on a similar issue, but the only solution then was to save all the COP images to disk and read them back in at render time, which I would like to avoid.

http://forums.odforce.net/topic/12545-cop-network-as-a-texture-on-an-object/ [forums.odforce.net]

Is there a way to force the COP to update (re-cook) each frame?

Not sure if it has been updated but circular style Rop-Cop-Rop hasn't worked before.

Thank you for your response Artye! I don't think I've got a ROP-COP-ROP loop here, if you mean rendering out an image and then using that image as a texture for another render of that same frame. I think I'm more like SOP-COP-SHOP-ROP: the SOP is inspected by the Geometry node in the COPNET, then COP output Null node is referenced by the Texture Map path in the SHOP material node. Then the scene is rendered.

I'm trying it now with pre-export of the COP images.

Yup, works fine with the pre-export.

How do you enable pre-export on a cop2 network at the SOP level?

Try shifting the “Fill Color” to a very small value. For example, in the “Alpha” field, type: $F% 2 * 0.00000000000001. Then this parameter will alternate each frame.