HairVrShadeable

[Nearl]

Can someone explain to me, like I'm a 6 year old, why I'm getting 8892 "warning: Invalid geometric normal (000) for "HairVrShadeable" warnings? I found somewhere that it has to do with the normals on the "emitter" object for Hair&Fur. So I check, everything looked fine, and I applied a Normals modify with Unify checked...just for the hell of it. No change. Everything renders fine. Just the warnings are driving me nuts.

What am I missing?

[Nearl]

Second question regarding rendering Hair&Fur. The Exception dialogue "An exception occured when when accessing DRA" What causes this? It seems to be random. Is there a fix?

If someone could point me in the right direction to find a fix and/or an explanation for these two issues, I'd appreciate it.

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Could you please clarify which V-Ray and 3ds max version is this? Would it be possible to attach an example scene with those errors? Also have you enable/disable Embree?

[Nearl]

3ds Max 2016 SP3. V-Ray 3.30.5. Embree is Enabled.

[Nearl]

Here is the isolated hair.

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Thank you for providing the scene. I opened an issue in our bug taking system, we'll keep you posed.
As for the DRA exception I didn't manage to reproduce it, I'll try a few more times but if we can't reproduce in our environment we can't debug it. The only information that I found is that the DRA file is a binary data which hair and fur writes here C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\20 16 - 64bit\ENU\temphair\hair.dra before sending the scene to render. So it might be an issue with the access to that file.

[Nearl]

Thanks for the reply!

What confused me is that I have approximately 9 objects in scene with Hair&Fur. When I get the DRA error, all but 1-3 of those object render perfectly fine. When I went to the location of the "temp" folder I found one "vrayhair.dra" file. So, it is "accessing" the DRA file. Why would it render some but not all. Assuming something was corrupt/wrong with the file itself I deleted it and rendered. Seems to have fixed the issue. I wonder if the DRA file has issues "refreshing."

The only other thing I've found that "might" fix this is to change the location of the temp folder. I might try that next if it comes back up.

[Nearl]

Here's a WIP of the scene. Just for fun I need to refine the eyes and brow line a bit more but it's getting there.

[Nearl]

• Does anyone know why DRA error happens? I don't understand why it states it can't access the DRA file when it IS accessing it because it is rendering some, but not all of the hair.
• Is this a 3ds Max issue or a V-Ray issue?
• Does anyone else have these issues or is it just me?
• Should I stop using MrParm and switch the mode to Geometry? ...which is probably what I'll do to side step the issue.

The sporadic nature of the error is an issue when rendering thousands of frames of animation. And, since Backburner's "skip existing frame" function doesn't work with VFB it makes patching those frame difficult/inefficient.

Sorry for the semi-rant....Hair drives me insane

Help/information would be appreciated.

Party on!

[Nearl]

Hurrah! Apparently it's just me. I'm going to go cry in the corner.

[vlado]

The DRA error is a 3ds Max error from the Shave&Haircut engine. It is, very unfortunately, one of the reasons why many users opted for a 3rd party hair plugin like Ornatrix and HairFarm.

The invalid geometric normal warning is on our end and we'll fix it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Nearl]

THANK YOU! You might be my favorite person today Have a good one!