I have instanced some geo using PFflow 2009design.  I have it where I want it, but the geo will not render over backburner using MR.  I literally can render it on my local machine from max, but I send it to backburner and my local machine will net render the instanced geo when used as render node running server; thus my render farm will not render the shot either.  Is there a way to bake the particles into real geo?

How is it not rendering? Does nothing happen? Is there an error message? Does it render with particles missing?

renders with no particles (instanced geo), I then take the same scene and render it locally it works just fine.

I’ve got the same problem here at work.

My Pflow renders just fine on my local machine, but when submitted to the backburner it renders without the particles.

(Scanline render 768x768 resolution and a couple of omnis)

I just run a couple of tests here, albeit with a simple Pflow - Shape Instance scene, and no such problem.
Do you have any more detail about the scene or setup, is it very comlex, high part count?
Is it only this scene, or any with Pflow and Shape Instance?

The scene is set up like this:

1. An animated noise on one side of a box (Water flowing downwards).
2. Extruded text moving from inside the “waterbox” out to the noise-side.
3. Pflow particles emitting from selected faces of the text to simulate water splash/cloud.
4. Particles with opacity mapping are facing the camera.
5. Total particles ~6000, standard gravity, kill after 40 frames +/- 10.
6. (This may be the culprit...) Text moves back inside the box and a new text emerges. This goes on with 12 different texts. In the particelflow window I’ve set the whole thing up with 12 events (each assigned to it’s specific text) and a common delete-event.

I talked to a couple of collegues at work, and they had experienced the same problem earlier in other projects. I must stress however, that it’s the first time I’ve encountered this problem.
I guess I’ll solve it this time by rendering the particles from my own machine, and let the renderfarm deal with the background.

I’ve seen problems before when the part count is very high, about a million I think, but 6000 x 12 (72000) should be OK. When I had this problem, it skipped some events in the flow, so some rendered and some did not. I think I fixed it by increasing the limit.
Does it render OK with ordinary shapes (not instance)?

Just had another thought… are you using a Cache? Is it set to Use at Render?

I’m not using the cache, and it is in fact ordinary shapes I’m using.
But the problem only arrises when I subit the job to the renderque - Not when I render locally.

FOUND IT ! :)

The problem disappeared when I turned off motionblur on the particles. Guess the renderfarm doesn’t like to compute frames before/after with pflow....