Fume grid showing up as black box in mental ray (again)

[Mr.Blank]

Hi,
I am working on a scene with fumefx and mental ray and everything was working fine. The fire showed up in reflection in mental ray materials. The background was working fine with the mental ray Environment/background switcher.

So I upped the resolution of the FumeFx simulation, waited, waited and waited and then rendered and there was the fume grid showing up in reflections and showing up as a black box in the render.
The only thing I changed in the scene was the spacing in FumeFx. Nothing else.
Why is this problem still happening and how do I resolve it once and for all?

I have tried re-simming, I have tried deleting fume grid and making a new one and then re-simmed, I have tried moving the grid along z-axis and then y- and x-axis. I have tried moving the ffx particle source out of the grid. None of that helped.

I am using FumeFx 3.5.5 and 3d max 2014 64-bit.

See the attached rendered images of the same frame (again only difference in scene file is the Spacing in Fumefx).

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[sitnisati]

Hello,

Could you please let us know if you have autovolume enabled inside the mental ray?
If black box is still visible with enabled autovolume, we would need this scene to reproduce the issue.

Thank you.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[Mr.Blank]

Hi,
Yes, Autovolume is enabled inside Mental Ray.
Like I said the only difference in the scene between the to renders are the resolution(spacing) of the Fumefx simulation.

I have now uploaded the Max scene.

Kind regards
Thor.

[sitnisati]

Hello,

Thank you for the scene.
We have tested it with FumeFX 4.1 under 3ds max 2017 and frame 0 turns out properly.
Please see attached image.

Thank you.

Regards,
Kreismir Tkalcec

[Mr.Blank]

Hi,
Well that does not really help me...
I am using Fume 3.5.5 and 3d Max 2014 and I do not want to be forced into spending 295 USD to upgrade Fume and a lot more to upgrade Max from 2014 to 2017, to make this work, when it should work with the version I already own.

[sitnisati]

Hello,

Thank you for your reply, but I'm afraid you will have to upgrade not the FumeFX, but 3ds max to fix this problem.
The problem is present with mental ray that ships with 3ds max 2014 even with FumeFX 4.1.
More precisely, the problem seems to be with the Skylight.


Best regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[Mr.Blank]

Ok, thanks for your reply.
If it's the Skylight then hopefully I can work my way around it and worry about the max upgrade later.

Thanks for the help.

Kind regards
Thor.

[sitnisati]

Hello,

You could try to use the mr Sky Portal - it should work.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec