Cloud Render smoothing issue, no answer from support. 48 hours later...

[panFX]

Hi,

i have an issue that is stalling the render job for 2 days now. Support doesn't answer me, the project is stalled. For whatever reason the chaos cloud renders the object without smoothing, while all local previews and tests render fine.

I need a quick response, solution or complete refund for the credits to be able to choose a different render service.

[vladie]

Hi,

I've asked to raise the priority of your ticket and we'll answer you shortly. Most probably we'll need the original scene to investigate further.

Thanks,
Vladie

[panFX]

I think i found the solution by myself. First of all, the local VRay renderer is very tolerant against "wrong" input bitmap gamma settings, while the cloud renderer does not tolerate any of this and instantly renders a failed shader. On my end it started with a Substance to VRay shader conversion (to VRay Next, meanwhile i switched to VRay 5). For some reason, the Substance shader container's outputs had the wrong gamma setting and lured me into tinkering on the wrong ends to make the material work for Vray. I wonder if there isn't any way to add a deeper check option in the analyze process before submitting the render job to the cloud. Something like a preview of the shader, how the cloud will render it. This would instantly show that something is off and prevent render issues. Without a proper check you'll start to run in circles like i did.

EDIT: i was wrong. Input gamma settings do not trigger the problem. My test only did work for a still image. If i try to render the animation, the problem does still occur. Damn...

So the true issue is about something else, a difference on how the cloud renderer takes still images vs. animation.

[panFX]

I just tried to render a small part of the animation on my end, couldn't reproduce the issue locally. So my conclusion is that something during the animation export to .vrscene format for cloud render alters the scene data and triggers the problem.

[panFX]

I finally found out that something in frames 400-402 causes the issue. It triggers the cloud render problem and will affect all following frames. To circumvent the problem, i started rendering at frame 403. Took me 4 days to figure this out, no answer from support after i sent them my scene 4 days ago. I also wasted around 36 credits for testing certain approaches for troubleshooting. I don't think i can recommend Chaos Cloud as a service.

[panFX]

vladie
So here is my final report for the bug (support team has my project files):

Between frame 400 to 402 is the point where the animated slice modifier plane enters the object. In frame 400 the object is invisible and in the next frame the first slice becomes visible. This seems to be a problem for the .vrscene export, somehow the mesh gets corrupted. My workaround was to start the render range export at a point where the slice was already visible and to render the avoided frames locally. I would like to have the credits back, that i needed to isolate the problem.

[vladie]

panFX , thank you for the thorough report! It helps a lot and it is spot on.

I believe we have just contacted you in the support ticket regarding the issue and the credits refund. We'll refund you the credits. Please reply to us in the support case.

Thanks,
Vladie

[panFX]

vladie Hi. Yes, support reached out to me yesterday, they added the problem to the bug-tracker and will investigate the issue. Thanks for the refunded credits.

[panFX]

Good thing it turned out pretty good at the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOnPFb3qZ5k

[vladie]

panFX, it's beautiful! Thank you!