Having a tough time transitioning from 3.6 to Next

[tinybot]

With a blank slate, setting up a super simple scene with just 2 objects, using default settings, and the new V-Ray Physical Camera, I'm finding that V-Ray Next is being super flaky.

Encountering this strange situation where the estimated time at the bottom of the VFB starts accelerating into several hours or even days, even while the render itself doesn't seem to be progressing and appears stuck. I have to force close Max (2017).

Am I missing something here? I've tried rebooting, and that hasn't helped. When I re-install 3.6, things seem to work perfectly again.

I originally installed Next in order to be able to play with the V-Ray Cloud beta.

I'm using an Intel i7-6800K 6 core / 12 thread CPU.

I've only attempted V-Ray in CPU mode (not GPU).

I thought I scanned in the forum something about the denoiser causing issues, but even after removing it as a render element, the problem persists.

I'm also unable to start the IPR, either from the VFB, nor from the V-Ray Settings VFB section button.

I'm hoping there's something super obvious or silly I'm doing...

PS - I caught something about setting the ENV for the number of cores to 1 less than you have (which seems absurd to have to do?), and set it to 11, but that didn't seem to have any effect (but I only tried restarting Max, not rebooting - not sure if that requires a complete reboot, I'll try it next).

[vlado]

I'm not entirely sure what might be wrong from this description and it's not something that I would expect to happen. It would be best to email us at support@chaosgroup.com and arrange a remote session with our support team to check what's going on. It looks like it might be something in the scene, but I'm not sure what.

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

If you let it render does it eventually complete? Mine locks up, looks to be sitting there not doing anything, but at the end, it'll update and release my computer from the V-Ray god. Try CPU PowerCoreTools and see if that works for you, it helped me some. It has something to do with the CPU Affinity. In Windows 10, I can't remove cores like I could in earlier versions of Windows, but this script seems to get around it. I have 36 cores, so if I uncheck two cores, my machine isn't taken hostage anymore.

[tinybot]

I'm not entirely sure what might be wrong from this description and it's not something that I would expect to happen. It would be best to email us at support@chaosgroup.com and arrange a remote session with our support team to check what's going on. It looks like it might be something in the scene, but I'm not sure what.

Best regards,
Vlado

Thanks for the follow-up, Vlado! I don't think it is the scene - I installed V-Ray Next on a different workstation, and the same scene (and everything else) works just fine! So it seems it is something specific to my main workstation. I'll get in touch with Support as you suggested and see if they can help me figure it out!

[tinybot]

If you let it render does it eventually complete? Mine locks up, looks to be sitting there not doing anything, but at the end, it'll update and release my computer from the V-Ray god. Try CPU PowerCoreTools and see if that works for you, it helped me some. It has something to do with the CPU Affinity. In Windows 10, I can't remove cores like I could in earlier versions of Windows, but this script seems to get around it. I have 36 cores, so if I uncheck two cores, my machine isn't taken hostage anymore.

I've been following your thread... not sure if we are experiencing something similar! I will give the CPU PowerTools thing a shot and see what happens!

I think I'm getting the same issue as the guy here: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...g-image-pass-3

When I leave the denoiser render element on (not using the Nvidia AI option), I'm getting the same stuck result as that person describes!

[glorybound]

Running these two also worked for me, even better than the CPU Power Tools. You need to run an escalated cmd then cut/paste one at a time.

set /a CORE_COUNT=%NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS%-1
setx /M VRAY_NUM_THREADS %CORE_COUNT%

No more setting affinity and no more frozen computer. So far, it seems that my renderings are a lot faster. Most of my exteriors are the same and usually take an hour. I am typing this while running a rendering, which couldn't have happened since VRay Next and the render is pretty much done in 1/2 an hour. Matter of fact, I think I'll get some sleep tonight!

Oh yeah! Setting the environment value wasn't working for me, no matter what I tried.

[jackieteh]

Running these two also worked for me, even better than the CPU Power Tools. You need to run an escalated cmd then cut/paste one at a time.

set /a CORE_COUNT=%NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS%-1
setx /M VRAY_NUM_THREADS %CORE_COUNT%

No more setting affinity and no more frozen computer. So far, it seems that my renderings are a lot faster. Most of my exteriors are the same and usually take an hour. I am typing this while running a rendering, which couldn't have happened since VRay Next and the render is pretty much done in 1/2 an hour. Matter of fact, I think I'll get some sleep tonight!

Oh yeah! Setting the environment value wasn't working for me, no matter what I tried.

What is cmd? how to run it? if i follow your step, is it work on AMD pc?

[Ihno]

What is cmd? how to run it? if i follow your step, is it work on AMD pc?

Press windows key, type cmd, hit enter
You may need to run it as administrator.

[hubmer3]

I've been following your thread... not sure if we are experiencing something similar! I will give the CPU PowerTools thing a shot and see what happens!

I think I'm getting the same issue as the guy here: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...g-image-pass-3

When I leave the denoiser render element on (not using the Nvidia AI option), I'm getting the same stuck result as that person describes!

What Hardware do you have?
is the denoiser running on gpu in standalone?

[tinybot]

UPDATE: I did manage to resolve this issue - I ended up completely uninstalling 3ds Max 2017, and then re-installing it from scratch. This was a real pain in the ass - the installer and updates take forever to run. Not to mention hunting down all the various bits and pieces hidden in the appdata, program files and other folders. And I still have to figure out which plugins and scripts I need to re-install, too. But the effort seems to have been worthwhile - I'm running V-Ray Next flawlessly now, with everything working exactly as I would expect (IPR works great, no weird hang-ups, etc.), without any need for CPU tweaks or environment variables. A drastic measure to take, but I'm happy now.