Extremely Slow Swatch Generation in the Hypershade

[snivlem]

Is anyone else experience extremely slow swatch generation in the Hypershade?

I'm using Vista x64 + Maya 2010 x64 + the V-Ray Mar 10 2010 build.

It's talking around 10 seconds per swatch with or without hi-res textures.

Thanks.

[vladimir.nedev]

Does it happen for even the simplest materials ? Like a VRayMtl with only a diffuse color ? May be the connection to your license server is very slow ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[snivlem]

Hi Vladimir.

It happens on simple materials...and I'm using the dongle for the licence if that helps.

I can't work this one out. It used to be lighting fast when using the Hypershade. I thought it might be a gfx card issue, but I upgraded to the very latest drivers and it also happens to me on my home machine (same specs ie - i7 machine, 12gb ram).

I might wait until Maya 2011 comes out (April 7th) and see if that helps. It might be Maya, not V-Ray.

Edit: Reset Maya prefs and this does not resolve the issue either.

[snivlem]

Am I correct to assume that V-Ray is supposed to cache these hypershade swatches as a .exr file? I looked in the .vrayThumbs folder on my project and for about 30 materials I have there are only two exr files in the .vrayThumbs cache folder.

Maybe it's my imagination but I thought V-Ray used to cache every material regardless if it had a bitmap or not?

Cheers.

[vlado]

The thumbnail caching is done by Maya itself and it appears we have not much control over it. In the .vrayThumbs folder we only store low-resolution versions of the textures for the materials (Since V-Ray does not keep textures in memory, but instead reloads them each time, when using large textures the swatch update would be very slow without this caching.)

Best regards,
Vlado

[snivlem]

Thanks for clearing things up Vlado.

I'm lost to what's going on honestly. I opened the same scene up (mental ray version) and the swatches were almost instant, which is strange because I've generally found mental ray to be quite slow in the Hypershade compared to V-Ray....Anyway Maya native shaders are fast - so my problem does seem to be only the vrayMTL shader.

If no one else has the problem then it must be my particular setup. After I get access to Maya 2011 via sub, I'll post here if it is resolved. Thanks guys.

[vlado]

Does it happen on any scene or just a particular one? We would definitely like to get to the bottom of this.

Best regards,
Vlado

[snivlem]

Good idea, however my Dongle is at work at the moment. I will check tomorrow!

(I'll try installing the original release and older scenes as well while I'm at it). Thanks Vlado for the suggestion.

[snivlem]

Okay, I did some tests with the latest build and the original release.

Basically, on my computer, it takes around 5+ seconds for Maya to create a V-Ray swatch in the Hypershade whether it is a light, sss, standard etc...This is is in a clean blank scene but it does happen to all my other scenes as well.

I'm not really complaining, I mean 5 seconds isn't too bad per swatch, but it does add up and was just wondering if this was normal in the first place.

However it's interesting because Maya native shaders are created practically instantly; so are mental ray shaders (albeit a bit slower than Maya native shaders, probably half a second).

I'll report back when I get Maya 2011.

Cheers.

[vlado]

The swatches for standard Maya materials are generated with the Maya software renderer and V-Ray has nothing to do with them.

Do you get similar slowdowns when rendering scenes (f.e. a blank scene with 320x240 resolution)? If you do, can you look at the V-Ray output and see which phase is the slowest one?

Best regards,
Vlado

[snivlem]

Hi Vlado, V-Ray seems to render very quickly and translates/renders quite fast. If I was to forced to say something is slow - it would be right before V-Ray loads bitmaps but reallly I think it's fine.

Just the swatches are slow.

I hope this makes sense: When I create a shader it first loads a blank background (couple of seconds), then it loads the swatch (another few seconds), then refines the swatch (another few seconds) - this whole process clocks in at ~5 seconds in total.

How long does it take on your end for a swatch to be created?

Cheers.

[vlado]

It is very fast here (Windows Vista, Maya 2010 x64, build from yesterday). Have modified the VRAY_ASSETS_PATH environment variable? Perhaps it's trying to fetch the maps from a network location or something...

Best regards,
Vlado

[snivlem]

Unfortunately not. I work locally and it also happens to blank shaders without textures. Maybe it could be a gfx driver problem (GTX 260)?

Doesn't really matter in the end I guess - there's more important things. I'll can wait until April 7th when Maya 2011 comes out and I'll test then.

Cheers.

[snivlem]

Hi sorry for the late reply - just tested with clean prefs and a new install of Maya 2011 and Apr 7 build of V-Ray and it's the same result. mental ray and maya soft swatches render quickly yet V-ray ones are considerably slower.

I've uploaded a blank scene full of materials - on a i7-965, 9gb of RAM, Vista x64 and a GTX260 1GB with Autodesk certified drivers 190.38 - Maya takes about a minute for all these swatches to generate.

Sometimes Maya will lag and lockup a bit after the swatches generate but once this finishes it's back to normal speed....that is until I close down the scene and open it again.

As a workaround I'm turning off the option "Render swatches for VrayMtl and V-Ray lights"

Regards

[vladimir.nedev]

The swatches rendered in seconds on my machine which is an i7 as well. I have no idea what might be wrong considering you have a local license.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev