Adventures with Composite 2013


My version of Composite 2013 never did start. It always gave me a Runtime Error at startup:

So I removed it and installed Composite 2013 SP1. That version silently failed: in fact, I wasn’t sure it was even running until I used Process Monitor to watch composite.exe. Process Monitor showed me that Composite was writing log files in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\toxik\logs, and I found this in the stdout.log:

Exception encountered: Cannot determine a product license to use.

This suggested to me that I needed to set the environment variable ADSK_COMPOSITE_LICENSE to Softimage, and that did the trick (when I checked, that environment variable was set to 3DSMAXDESIGN, and that’s why Composite was silently failing).

As a bonus, I also found the Composite Licensing log file %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\toxik\adlm.Composite.2013.log. The log entries make me think that my Runtime Error was caused by a Product Information (PIT) file problem. That’s why installing Composite 2013 SP1 fixed the problem.

584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	Reason=Fatal error
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	OS=6.1.7600.
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=584
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	VendorID=6 [ADLMPIT]
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	VendorError=12 [The root information in Product Information Table XML file is missing]
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	Reason=Fatal error
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	OS=6.1.7600.
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=585
584	2012/07/06	11:19:44	AdlmIntError=25 [The product key was not found]
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:17	Reason=Fatal error
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:17	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:17	OS=6.1.7600.
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:17	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=584
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:17	VendorID=6 [ADLMPIT]
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:17	VendorError=12 [The root information in Product Information Table XML file is missing]
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:18	Reason=Fatal error
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:18	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:18	OS=6.1.7600.
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:18	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=585
9448	2012/07/06	11:23:18	AdlmIntError=25 [The product key was not found]
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	Reason=Fatal error
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	OS=6.1.7600.
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=584
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	VendorID=6 [ADLMPIT]
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	VendorError=12 [The root information in Product Information Table XML file is missing]
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	Reason=Fatal error
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	OS=6.1.7600.
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=585
13860	2012/07/10	16:03:29	AdlmIntError=25 [The product key was not found]
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	Reason=Fatal error
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	OS=6.1.7600.
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=584
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	VendorID=6 [ADLMPIT]
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	VendorError=12 [The root information in Product Information Table XML file is missing]
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	Reason=Fatal error
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	ComputerName=MTL2UA0150CWY
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	OS=6.1.7600.
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	File=AdlmIntLicense.cpp,Line=585
8368	2012/07/17	09:50:58	AdlmIntError=25 [The product key was not found]

Composite 2011 SAP: Error while initializing plugin libDLofxUi.dlmodule


A customer reported that Composite crashed while loading libDLofxUi.dlmodule:

Error while initializing plugin: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Composite 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack/plugins/libDLofxUi.dlmodule :

Before we could do any investigation, he emailed back to say that he found the problem: it was a conflict with Furnace 4.2. When he removed the Furnace ofx plugins from the system, Composite started without error.

I downloaded and installed Furnace 4.2 for Nuke, but I couldn’t repro the problem at first.

By default, Furnace 4.2 for Nuke installs in the folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Nuke\Furnace_4.2_Nuke, and that doesn’t cause any problems for Composite.

However, I knew that Composite searches the following folders:

  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Toxik
  • C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\OFX\Plugins
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\OFX\Toxik

so I moved the contents of the Nuke\Furnace_4.2_Nuke folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins, and Composite would not start, and in the logs I found this error:

00:00:48.17 [Fatal Error   ] [Messages       ] Error while initializing plugin: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Composite 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack/plugins/libDLofxUi.dlmodule : Input srcColourSpace received null policy.

BTW, the Composite logs are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\toxik\logs.

The discussion in this AREA thread also mentions that OFX plugin conflicts do happen with Toxik/Composite. The error mentioned in the original post is a different libDLofxUi.dlmodule error:

Error while initializing plugin: C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Composite 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack/plugins/libDLofxUi.dlmodule : Assertion ‘_sortedPairs.find( defaultVal ) != _sortedPairs.end()’ failed.. 

PS – The shotgun approach to solving a Composite error like this is to rename the offending plugin file, so that it is no longer loaded.