Hello-

I am doing a surface position deep raster render. I am having a problem. The problem is that all of a sudden the deep raster render will just stop, giving me a red flag error on the mantra. The error message states:

“Could not write out to the script or pipe. Failed to complete render”

But if I reset the frame range to start after the bad render, the render will continue again, until about 20 frames later it stops again, giving me the same error. And this will repeat.

Any help would be appreciated.

-jon

What file format are you rendering to, and are you intending to write out an additional raster layer to the single RGBA image(such as R/G/B/A/Pz), or to a separate file?

Cheers,

J.C.

J.C.-

Thanks for the reply. I think I have been going about this all wrong. Can you tell me if this approach will work, even though it is a one pass render?

In VOPS, i created a vex surface shader. Inside, I just added a global variable vop, then piped its surface position into the output vop's Cf. Then I applied this new vex shader to the object that is being rendered.

Then I nixed the deep raster render, and rendered out the new surface position pass as a basic mantra render. The results looks very similar (if not the same) to the old (unsuccessful) deep raster render.

Did I just render out a correct surface position pass?

-jon

I don't think there is anything wrong with your first method.
I had problems with Apprentice renders bailing out every few frames. The solution is a little complex if you are new to houdini.
Basically you need to render with a render script doing single frames instead of one long sequence. If you want to try this then here's how you do it.

In a textport, or better in hscript, type the folllowing replacing the renderer_name with your own render rop name.

for f = 1 to 100
fcur $f
render render_name
end

Make sure you turn off render sequence and turn off render in background too.

You did render it out, but it was probably not at the bit depth you wanted. I assume(unless you changed anything), it's at 8 bit integer since you channeled it through RGB and asked for a “normal” render - and this is probably insufficient for whatever you'll want it for. The *theory* is correct, though - you can do it that way(although it's not necessary), but you'll likely want to render at 32 bit float. Remember your monitor is only 8 bits so initially 8 bit and 32 bit will look the same.

Another way you can do it is to render is as a deep raster, but ensure the file format you're rendering to is “.pic” - that's why I was asking that question. Alternatively, you can just put a file path name as it's destination and it will render out as a single-channel file. Lots of fiddly bits to deal with doing this. Once you get used to it, though, you'll do it in your sleep.

Cheers,

J.C.

Simon, thanx for the tip. I will try that out next time.

J.C., I actually got it to render out as a 32 bit tiff; I just made sure i hit the little down arrow next to the Tiff box and selected 32 bit floating….thanx though!

-jon