phoenixFD atomosphere effects(as light sources) do not illuminate to scene.

[kenji_kaburagi]

Dear all,

Environment:
windows10 x64
3dsmax2023 x64
vray_adv_60020_max2023_x64
phoenixFD_adv_51000_max2023_vray6_x64

Situation:
in the .max file, polys 290,071,573 and verts 170,021,616.
the file size is about 8GB.
also, phoenixFD fire cache files(.aur) are imported and used as light sources.
for phoenixFD, 'Active' is checked in Atomoshere Settings.
also, adaptive lights is checked and the number is set to 8(default settings).

Issue:
sometimes, phoenixFD fires do not illuminate to scene (the result is all black).
sometimes it works. no reproducibility.
i don't know the cause.

Consideration:
the number of a light source by phoenixFD fires seems to be 300.
also, scene graph may be very complex.
so, the importance sampling of adaptive lights may be failed.
now, we set not Adaptive lights but Full lights evaluation.
but as you know, rendering time will increase.

Question:
is it possible that Adaptive lights is fail in very huge and complex scene?
if so, is the reproducibility possible or not?
does it depend on the environments of a worksattion, cpu, ram and etc.


I'm sorry for my poor English.

Best regards,

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey,

Is it possible to send over the scene through our support form so that we can try to reproduce the problem and check what is going on?

You can use the Submit a request link in the top right on this page - https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us

Thank you!

[kenji_kaburagi]

Dear Mr. Georgi Zhekov,

thank you very much for your kindness from the bottom of my heart.
now, i am preparing to upload the data. please wait for a while.
(sorry, re-pathing texture and cache file paths may be very difficult because of the number of them...)


btw, the result has not changed even if Full lights evaluation is turned to on.
also, by using standalone vray.exe(export to .vrscene before), phoenix fd caches works goode as light sources.

Best regards,

[aleksandar_ivanov]

Dear Kenji Kaburagi,

Thanks to the Phoenix team's great investigation, they found that the observed behavior is related to a bug in our system.

It looks like that If the hidden lights option in the V-Ray Global Switches option is turned off and if you hide the active layer in 3ds Max (even if it is empty) the Phoenix lights won't illuminate the scene.

In order to make it work correctly - go to the 3ds Max Layer explorer and make sure that the active layer is visible ( the eye is enabled). It doesn't matter which layer you will choose to be active, it just needs to be visible. The active layer is the one where the three planes are in color - like this:




Thanks

Best regards.