pale/dark DR buckets

[RobH22]

My bucket problem has gone away for now and I can't reproduce it. I didn't change anything so it's frustrating. I'm sure it will come back 6 hours before my next deadline but for now it's gone. I'll circle back here if it comes back.

[bob-cat]

Hey Guys
We are having exactly the same issue with DR, Max 2012 + Vray 3.00.05.
Local machine is rendering slightly lighter than the DR machines, see attached.
A re-start of max fixed the issue.

[glorybound]

the dreaded dark buckets! I solved it by increasing the bucket size. When I use 16, for the most part it works, but when I get the bucket problem I increase the bucket size. This. for some reason, solves it for me.

[Bruce Hart]

Also had the same problem just recently. One of 6 render machines I was using at the time rendered buckets lighter. Textures were pathed fine. Thankfully the DRBucket render element helped me track down the problem machine. After restarting that PC, everything was fine. Still none the wiser as to what was going on.
Vray 2.4 / Max Design 2014 (all with SP 5 installed)

[jpmartin]

Same issue here...local machine renders darker, but only when I'm on a tight deadline - ha ha.

I'm hoping to be able to hold out until the VRay update is released for Max 2015 so I can just do a mass upgrade to all the render nodes and see if that fixes the problem.

[svetlozar.draganov]

It seems that a lot of you guys are facing this issue on a random basis which makes it difficult to reproduce and troubleshoot.
If some of you could provide a reproducible scene for investigation or step-by-step instructions how to replicate it that would be great.

[glorybound]

Try to change the bucket size, it has been working for me. it doesn't happen often, but when it does, I increase the bucket size.

[jpmartin]

For me, it seemed to start happening when I installed Max 2015 on my primary computer, but not my render nodes. (I still work in Max 2014, but wanted to install it to see what was new)

The dark buckets are only on my primary computer, so although I can't say for sure, I think that the 2015 install changed some setting globally - *somewhere* - that may be affecting my computer when opening files in Max 2014.

I don't use 2015 yet, but had installed it to check out new features, etc.

It may not be super wise, but I am in the process of installing 2015 on all of the render nodes to see if that helps.

[AndresAhumada]

in the office, the same happens to us sometimes. There need to reset everything to make solutions.

It is very strange.



Regards

[vlado]

Are all of you using dome light for these scenes? I think I seem to remember an issue there (see http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...-wrong-subdivs) - but I'm not sure your issue is the same. In any case, I'm looking into that one now, as at least it is reproducible.

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

I use a dome light on almost all my work.

[AndresAhumada]

I use dome light in these cases

[samuel_bubat]

I also ran into this problem now. I was rendering DR, changing some material settings, 20 renderings work well and suddenly I get dark buckets. No dome light
was used. All maps are loaded correctly.
The only thing that seems to work reliable to get back to normal is saving the scene with a new name and the dark buckets are gone.
(Vray 2.4 Max2014)

[svetlozar.draganov]

Have you got broken version of the scene which could reproduce the issue constantly?

[samuel_bubat]

So we run into this problem more and more often. I can´t unfortunately send a scene. But it happens randomly with every project .
I´m pretty sure now that it is a gamma problem casued by max. We don´t use gamma 2.2. Instead we use Reinhard and counter correct the textures with an output node
depending on the Reinhard settings. So in our case gamma/LUT correction is turned off. I allready was looking into a gamma problem in the past but couldn´t
find a reproducable pattern. Now I think I can say where it comes from. In this case I was just rendering a background image and some buckets where darker.
Now when I turn on gamma/LUT with gamma set to 1.0 The whole image renders darker. Exactly the same like those darker/wrong buckets would render.
So one could say it´s because we don´t use gamma 2.2. But as I can see the same problem occurs to people who do use gamma 2.2.
So I can just speculate that from time to time
max messes up the gamma settings when DR rendering more specific the map counter correction.
Or the gamma correction is not transfered to the frame buffer. Something like that
Maybe someone else who runs into this problem can test, once this happens, to use different gamma settings. Like turning gamma correction off or setting it to 1 and see if
those settings will render like the wrong buckets.
Here are some pictures of this test.

Pic 1 shows how it renders with gamma settings off
Pic 2 shows the rendering with gamma settings on and gamma set to 1.0 It´s a screenshot
because once saved gamma correction is applied and it looks like pic 1.
Pic 3 (not a screenshot) shows the wrong buckets. If you compare the darker buckets to pic 2 you will notice they are exactly the same

Maybe that helps hunting down this bug.