Hi..
I have seen before--- about three times -- In each case it was ONE of the below reasons -- You can check the below list and see if ANY or ALL apply to you...
1) The first time was due to an improper setting under the 3ds max render menu... Remember that there are a LOT of file render options and settings that can be selected under the 3ds max RLA or RPF render menu.. You MAY already know this, but in case you don't >> Below I have pasted a section of RLA/RPF file explainations (this is from my book.)
2) The other time was when an animator tried to render to a hard drive that was in another PC (in another room) over a congested NETWORK --- Note: ALWAYS render to a LOCAL DRIVE First. After rendering, THEN move it over the network to your Combustion local drive for compositing.
3) The other time was when a 3ds max animator had an OGL (OpenGL) card installed and rendred his rla/rpf using that hardware. Discreet HIGHLY recommends that you turn OFF OpenGL rendering when submitting network renders. Use SOFTWARE rendering for your network rendering, as the presence of unsupported OpenGL hardware on ANY render workstation on your network may cause visual differences between the frames of your project or corrupt/unusable files in your sequence. In other words, if you have different cards on each PC on your network, each card might give you different and unpredictable results. Again, remember that software rendering is always recommended for final rendering.
When using Combustion with an OGL card, Discreet AGAIN recommends that you use OpenGL just to speed up the preview of your work, but then ALWAYS switch to software rendering for your final renders, much as you would in any other 3D application. In fact, some hardware/software combinations may result in corrupted renders using Software OpenGL. Therefore, with unsupported graphics cards, you should always use the Software Renderer.
Regards,
Jack Pfeiffer
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RLA Files: The RLA format is a previously used with SGI computers and popular because RLA supports the ability to include arbitrary image channels. This means that, when you render and specify the RLA file for output, you can set RLA Image File parameters from a specific list. You specify what channels (and what format) you want to write out to the file.
The RLA Image File Format typically has a dialog box with the following options. Side Note: the MORE info you include within that dialog, that larger the file size gets..
-Standard Channels: The standard channels are RGB color and the alpha (transparency) channel.
-Bits per Channel: Choose either 8 or 16 as the number of bits per channel. Default=8.
-Store Alpha Channel. Choose whether to save the alpha channel. Default=selected.
When created from Discreet 3ds max, there are additional Optional Channels when you render your RLA files. There are eight additional channels that can be generated and also viewed in the virtual frame buffer:
-Z Depth: Displays Z-Buffer information in repeating gradients from white to black. The gradients indicate relative depth of the object in the scene.
-Material Effects: Displays the Effects Channel used by materials assigned to objects in the scene. The Effects Channel is a material property set in the Material Editor and used during Video Post compositing. Each Effects Channel ID is displayed using a different random color.
-Object: Displays the G-Buffer (p. v3-61 1) Object Channel ID assigned to objects using the Object Properties dialog. The G-Buffer ID is used during Video Post compositing. Each GBuffer ID is displayed using a different random color.
-UV Coordinates: Displays the range of UV mapping coordinates as a color gradient. This channel shows where mapping seams might occur. Note: UV Coordinates will not be displayed on objects that have the UVW Map Modifier applied unless a map has been applied that uses the coordinates.
-Normal: Displays the orientation of normal vectors as a grayscale gradient. Light gray surfaces have normals pointing towards the view. Dark gray surfaces have normals pointing away from the view.
-Non Clamped Color: Displays areas in the image where colors exceeded the valid color range and were corrected by 3ds max. The areas appear as bright saturated colors usually around specular highlights.
-Coverage: This saves the coverage of the surface fragment from which other G-buffer values (Z Depth, Normal, and so on) are obtained. Z-Coverage values range from 0 to 255. To see Z Coverage, render to an RLA file after first checking Z Coverage in the Setup sub-dialog, then choose Z-Coverage in the virtual frame buffer