Batch rendering problem in Maya 2011

[digicraft63]

Hi!
Problem with Craft Director Studio v10.1.2
There seems to be a problem with batch rendering in Maya 2011 on Windows. Both on 32 and 64 bits machines.
Using the 4-wheeler in Maya and "Render Current Frame" works. Batch render the same project does not. It exits with the "very claryfying" error message:
"QWidget: Cannot create a QWidget. Maya exited with status 1"

Googleing up that problem, support forums have come to the solotion that you have to inactivate the Craft Director Studio plugin (craftdirectortoolsadaptor_maya2011.mll) to make it work. Then you can not use the Craft Director tools. Same as curing a headake by biheading yourself.

Same thing happends if you try to Backburner animate the scene. You can not have the craftdirectortoolsadaptor_maya2011.mll line in C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\maya\2011\prefs\prefspluginPrefs.mel. You have to delete that line on the rendering clients to make it work. Otherwize it will exit with the error message:
Qwidget: Cannot create a QWidget when no GUI is being used// mayabatch.exe exited with status 1

After have baked all the Craft Director driven animations and inactivated the plugin I got it to work.

Is it suppose to be this way? Seems like something is wrong here. It could be a very tidious job to convert all animations driven by the Craft Director tools to baked animations before you can render an animation.

[digicraft63]

Hi there!
A replay on my own post.

You don´t have to bake the simulation. The only thing you need to do is to inactivate the craft director plug in before rendering. i.e delete the craft director line in pluginPrefs.mel.

Then it works. That way you can keep the 4-wheeler simulation or other craft tools used in the scene. A little releif in the work around.

[Patrik Martin]

There is a function called Unplug in Craft Director Studio which can be used to disconnect CDS from the scene and therefor it will be possible to render on render farms or render nodes. Remember to save the scene before you make an unplug to make sure you have the scene in case you need to make changes to it.

[digicraft63]

Thanks.

So you knew of the problem. I did not find that solution anywhere in the documentation, but maybe I didn´t search good enough.

I have another problem concerning Maya 2011.
If I set up a scene with the 4-wheeler ext on a 32 bit machine and save and reopen it on a 32 bit machine there is no problem. If I open the scene on a 64 bit machine a strange problem occur. It creates another WheelerExt_01_TargetMeshTransform object called WheelerExt_01_TargetMeshTransform1. Running a simulation makes the WheelerExt_01_CarBodyMeshTransform entire hierarchy to fly away in to infinity. The extra TargetMeshTransTransform object is messing up the simulation somehow. If you delete WheelerExt_01_TargetMeshTransform1 it deletes the whole CarBodyMeshTransform hierarchy.

Heard of that problem?

[Patrik Martin]

Never heard of it. If you install the latest version 10.1.4 do you get the same effect?