Green color wash over render output when rendered on server

Question

When I render my project locally, it get the following desired result:

When rendering on an Amazon server though, I get this greenish result:

This is not observed in a simple test scene containing the default cube.

To eliminate possible causes, I only rendered a single layer and disabled compositing. The exact same files are used on the local system and the server, and both have blender 2.79 installed. On the local machine, I installed according to the official manual, on the server I used the blender package from this ppa: launchpad link

The console output is as follows:

ubuntu@computer_name:/media/BlenderProjects/monument_valley$ blender -v
libdc1394 error: Failed to initialize libdc1394
Blender 2.79 (sub 0)
ubuntu@computer_name:/media/BlenderProjects/monument_valley$ blender -b *.blend -o ~/frame_###### -s 55 -e 55 -j 1 -t 0 -a -y
libdc1394 error: Failed to initialize libdc1394
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:4248:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:4727:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2239:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
AL lib: alsa_open_playback: Could not open playback device 'default': No such file or directory
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': No such device
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'nvidia': No such device
Read blend: /media/BlenderProjects/monument_valley/monument_valley.blend
Dependency cycle detected:
  aquaduct_lower_bool_operand depends on aquaduct_lower_bool through Parent.
  aquaduct_lower_bool depends on aquaduct_lower_bool_operand through Boolean Modifier.

Dependency cycle detected:
  sim_outflow_2 depends on sim_domain_2 through Parent.
  sim_domain_2 depends on sim_outflow_2 through Fluidsim Object.

Fra:55 Mem:42.05M (0.00M, Peak 42.05M) | Time:00:00.09 | Mem:0.00M, Peak:0.00M | Scene, RenderLayer | Synchronizing object | aquaduct_lower_bool
Fra:55 Mem:42.95M (0.00M, Peak 62.33M) | Time:00:00.14 | Mem:0.00M, Peak:0.00M | Scene, RenderLayer | Synchronizing object | ida_path
[...loading of assets, ray tracing progress, no errors]

Note that there are no errors related to color management. I wouldn't worry about the nvidia or alsa errors as I render on the CPU and don't use sound. Is the libdc1394 error cause for concern? There is no lamp with the greenish tint. The scene has 2 emission materials with a greenish tint, used on another layer. (see the storyteller objects in the attached blend file) The amount of usage of these materials is as expected. In the Render Layers settings, I selected the main Render layer and ticked the exclude box for the scene layer with the objects which use that material.

Answer 1

This is not caused by the remote server, amazon, the CPU, the GPU, 1394, or some weird vudu curse. Any computer that is not your local machine will render the images green, because the file has not been been saved correctly to render in a different computer.

Your file is using images as textures, but the images are not packed into the file, or are stored in a place that is not available in the remote computer.

Images used as textures are not stored as part of the blend file unless you explicitly pack them.

Missing textures will render pink.

So where is the green coming from?

The texture you are using for the world is using a hue/saturation/value node that turns the missing texture's pink texture to cyan-green.

You need to pack the images so that they become part of the file. Else the blender project will have no access to them on a remote computer. As an alternative you need to create a folder that holds the images using the same path as in the original computer, so that blender can load them.

Read: Why are all the textures in my file pink?

And: Why is that when I open up my file in blender, the reference picture is gone