Phoenix Previewer GPU Preview non-functional

[Joelaff]

Hi,

I am unable to toggle the GPU Preview on in the standalone Phoenix Previewer. The checkbox never gets checked and the preview never happens.

Max 2021.1 Win 10
4.20.00, Build ID: 20200615

Is this a known issue? Thanks.

[slavina.nikolova]

Hey,

With today's Phoenix FD 4.20 Nightly everything should work properly - https://nightlies.chaosgroup.com/mai...est/2020-06-25

Please ping us in case there are any issues.


Cheers!

[Joelaff]

Thank you,Slavina!

[Joelaff]

This new versions works great. Thanks.

A small feature request would be to have the previewer show the current cache filename (biased towards the end of the path name so that the end part of the file always displays in case of long paths). Right now I don't know what cache I am looking at.

Ideally this would be next to the Open New Sequence button, but could also be displayed on top of the display window (like a stamp). This way we could easily tell what cache file was used to make a preview sequence.


Thanks.

[Georgi.Zlatarev]

Hey,

Thanks for the suggestion, hope the tool is proving useful.

This feature shouldn't take too long and i'll ping you when it is ready.

Regards,
Georgi.

[Joelaff]

Wow! Thanks so much! The Tool is very useful indeed. We can use the command line to simulate on another machine which is faster for simulation than the main workstation anyway (NUMA issues). Then we monitor the progress in the previewer because it is fast and lightweight.

[Joelaff]

Another useful feature would be a button to re-scan the cache file for new frames. Essentially a way to update the length of the cache file.

Right now, as a simulation is in progress we have to keep re-opening the cache files over and over to view new frames. If there were some way to re-scan the directory with a button (or some way to do it automatically without polling) that would be awesome.

Might be nice to have a modification time for the cache files displayed as well. Sometimes keeping track of what version is what is aided by checking file modification times. Thanks.

[Joelaff]

Also... The thin framed windows for the settings and info window are nice to look at, but they are difficult to minimize. Perhaps they should be minimized when the main preview window is minimized, rather than being independent. I don't think there would be a state where I would need to see the settings or info window WITHOUT seeing the preview window (the one with the pretty pictures).

[Georgi.Zlatarev]

So for updating the length of the timeline when new cache files are introduced., you can already achieve this in a way.
Using the input box next to the timeline or the + - buttons you can go out of range of the timeline length. If a cache exists it will open it, otherwise nothing will be drawn, but the timeline length itself will get updated. You can also CTRL+Click on the timeline and it will turn into a input box as well.
Still I see your point of making this automatic whenever a new cache appears in the directory. Don't want to make promises on how fast this will be implemented.

[Joelaff]

So for updating the length of the timeline when new cache files are introduced., you can already achieve this in a way.
Using the input box next to the timeline or the + - buttons you can go out of range of the timeline length. If a cache exists it will open it, otherwise nothing will be drawn, but the timeline length itself will get updated. You can also CTRL+Click on the timeline and it will turn into a input box as well.
Still I see your point of making this automatic whenever a new cache appears in the directory. Don't want to make promises on how fast this will be implemented.

Oh, very cool! I thought of typing a larger number in the text box, but honestly thought it wouldn't work so didn't try. Shame on me.

Just a nice thing to have work automatically. I know you guys have lots of stuff to do.

Thanks for listening.

[Georgi.Zlatarev]

Regarding the side window for Log and Information. This space is a bit of a testing ground for the main window, mainly related to docking. Eventually the idea is to have all modules like Particles, GPU, Voxel, etc become separate dock-able windows, which would have a default layout but the user can re-order and save. So should you have any other layout suggestions they are very welcome, and we'll probably not going to have the Information and Log completely separate like they are now.
As for the difficulty minimizing, I'm only having difficulty minimizing when there's a bit of lag while loading or drawing something. But once the indicator becomes light blue it always clicks instantly. If there's something else to it on your side please let me know.

[Georgi.Zlatarev]

Hey Joelaff,

Quick update. The name of the sequence and the last modified date are coming in the next nightly.
I overlooked your comment about minimizing the side window when the main window is minimized. This is also coming with the above changes.

Regards,
Georgi.

[Joelaff]

I thought I would bring this up here. The nightly I just installed (phoenixFD_adv_42001_max2021_vray4_x64_30173) crashes whenever we try to render FireSmoke (volumetric). It hangs Max, which goes into a Suspended state, and then eventually dies.

I went back to the release build from June 15 and it works fine.

Let me know if you need more info. I will see if I can get one frame of sim that crashes for you.


2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Compiling render instances geometry.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Compiling lights geometry.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Preparing ray server.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Using Embree ray tracing.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Setting up 1 thread(s)
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Threads completed
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Building Embree moving trees took 70 ms
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Building dynamic geometry trees took 0 ms.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Embree dynamic geometry tree contains 0 primitives.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Setting up 1 thread(s)
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Threads completed
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Embree dynamic geometry tree built in 1.89 ms.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Embree dynamic geometry tree takes 0.00 MB.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Full rayserver build. Took 77.852 ms.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Scene bounding box is [-42061.5,-9392.64,-25305.4]-[41987.5,48226.3,35928.5]
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Preparing direct light manager.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] 3 render channels in sequence data
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Preparing global light manager.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Irradiance sample size is 84 bytes
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Using fast GI when possible
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Broadcasting NOTIFY_PRE_RENDERFRAME.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Broadcasting NOTIFY_BEGIN_RENDERING_ACTUAL_FRAME.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] beginFrame_internal() done.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Calling beginFrame() in the main thread done.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Setting up DoneCallback.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Rendering frame region (0,0)-(1920,817).
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Photon size is 56 bytes.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Light cache sample size is 184 bytes.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Light cache built state is 0
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Rendering image.
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] Setting up 64 thread(s)
[2020/Jun/25|13:32:46] error: UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: Rendering region (1728,96)-(1752,120)
Last marker is at D:\cgrepo\vray\vray\src\vrayrenderer.cpp, line 4428: Preparing global light manager

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Oh yes, please - if you can get us the scene or a crash dump file it would be very helpful.

[Joelaff]

OK. I sent two different scenes that might be trigger two different bugs, or two forms of the same bug.

Case# 307-414-3903

There are two emails. I replied to that case with the link to the second scene file.

Thanks.