When I render a nighttime image locally, it looks fine (see first image).  This is rendered with useEnvironmentMap=false and FG disabled.  Of course, the useEnvironmentMap MAXScript variable refers to the ‘Use Map’ checkbox on the ‘Environment’ tab of the exposure settings dialog.

However, when I submit it to backburner (just by selecting Net Render), it renders as if useEnvironmentMap=true (see second image).  When I render locally with useEnvironmentMap=true, I get the same (wrong) image as backburner.

What do I have to do to get back backburner to use the same environment settings as I have locally?  I get the same result if I setup and submit the job through MAXScript or manually through the UI.

EDIT: I tried creating a pre-render script that just has the line useEnvironmentMap=false, and that didn’t work.  I did verify that the script was running properly on the backburner machine and setting the flag properly, but the image still renders incorrectly.

3ds Max Design 2011 (Plugins: FBX 2011.3, ArchVision RPC), Dual Quad Core Xeon 2.3Ghz, 16GB RAM, Mental Ray renderer

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In case anyone ever comes across this in the future, I finally figured it out.  It turns out that 3ds Max doesn’t explicitly save the useEnvironmentMap variable because it is set back to ‘true’ after save/close/reopen.  So I also have to set environmentMap=undefined which is the same as selecting ‘NONE’ as the Environment Map in the exposure dialog.

In MAXScript I just did:

prior to submitting the render job to Backburner.

3ds Max Design 2011 (Plugins: FBX 2011.3, ArchVision RPC), Dual Quad Core Xeon 2.3Ghz, 16GB RAM, Mental Ray renderer