RT Activeshade keeps restarting rendering.

[JezUK]

I'm having a play with RT and Activeshade, I set my noise to be 0.015, the Messages dialog box shows Noise Threshold gets to .100000 and then restarts the rendering again....

It then tries again, gets to 0.076xxxx and then starts rendering again......

What's happening ?

[yavor.rubenov]

Hello,

Can you share the scene where this happens ?

Best regards,
Yavor

[JezUK]

Hi Yavor, Yes I can (it uses Forest Pack Pro) and was a very simple scene, just for playing with RT - I will send to chaosgroup support email.

Thanks.

[JezUK]

Hi Yavor, I sent a WeTransfer download link for your attention via email support@chaosgroup.com. Many thanks.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

We did a few tests on different machines here but everything worked as expected.
What's the Forest Pack Pro version and are you using V-Ray 3.50.04 as described in your signature.
I'll send you a video from one of the test we did on your email, please review it and let me know if you find something suspicious.

[JezUK]

Hi Svetlozar,

I am using FPP 5.3.2.

I have read elsewhere issues regarding NVidia drivers - is this still an issue ? I am using 382.05 (I don't have access to drivers < 38x)

I'm also experiencing other issues with RT (switching from ActiveShade to Production) and am getting very inconsistent render results with a 'simple' scene (with exposure and textures issues) and this is currently affecting my ability to use RT with confidence.

For example, I had a scene yesterday where I changed from using RT in Activeshade (where of course my scene was looking correctly exposed) to Production (RT), where the exposure was ridiculously off (like 6 EV values underexposed in RT Production).

I checked everything but no settings had changed - yet the exposures were completely different.....

Also - my bitmaps weren't being displayed in RT Activeshade (when the day before they were fine) - so I had to give up on RT and switch to ADV (where it rendered the textures fine) - this all concerns me..

Yes, my Signature details are correct - I'll add the NVidia Drivers as well.

Thanks for your help.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Yes, we got issues with the latest Nvidia drivers 380+ , as for now it would be better to stay on 37X drivers until we solve this.
We have a sticky topic for this issue under the GPU forums here:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...rs-380-warning

[matanov]

Hi Jez,

Drivers can't be the cause for the render restart. Also please send me the scene with the exposure and texture problems.

[JezUK]

Yes, we got issues with the latest Nvidia drivers 380+ , as for now it would be better to stay on 37X drivers until we solve this.
We have a sticky topic for this issue under the GPU forums here:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...rs-380-warning

Yes, I saw that and but it was done a while ago, so I wasn't sure if it still was an issue.

Alex has posted a link for drivers 37x but I'm not confident that those are for 1080 ti's - especially as his link has "notebooks" in it... (do you have a reliable link for NVidia 1080 ti 37x drivers for Windows 7 PC (not laptops/notebook etc)) ??

Coincidentally, NVidia today issued newer drivers for the 1080ti and I'm keen to give those a try.

I cannot give this scene to you on this occasion - I will try again with other drivers and see if that solves anything (though I agree with Peter, drivers wouldn't be an issue for restarting RT rendering).

Many thanks.

[JezUK]

Please can you confirm what is supposed to happen in RT Activeshade when the Noise Threshold has been reached (in my example at the beginning of this thread I was aiming for noise threshold of 0.015) ?

For me, it gets there, it then waits and after a few minutes it restarts creating the rendered image from the beginning again.

I guess that makes some sense since this is *activeshade* - but why doesn't it write an image file to the History ?

Because once it restarts, you have lost that nice clean image for good and if you do cancel then save that 2nd activeshade image, you get a false timestamp in the History for that 2nd *noisey* image (i.e. the two render times for added together) ??

[yavor.rubenov]

It is not supposed to restart without changes. When the noise threshold is reached - it is supposed to stop rendering and wait for changes or you to stop it.
Do you have Auto Save enabled in Max ?

Best regards,
Yavor

[JezUK]

Hi Yavor,

Yes, I do.

Maybe "Completed Renders Only" needs to be checked ? (I'm trying that now) - **** Update, Checking "Completed Renders Only" didn't fix it).

[yavor.rubenov]

Recently there was a report that in some cases when auto save happens - RT restarts. Could you try to turn it OFF just for the test ?

[JezUK]

That was it !

I disabled Autosave (the 3DS Max Scene file) - it gets to the Noise Threshold you set and once reached it will basically be in a pause state until you hit Stop and then it will write to the VFB History !

Why things were getting messed up for me was because my save 'interval' was 10minutes (around the same time it took to reach 0.015 Noise Threshold !).

That's fantastic - thank you so much for helping me get to the bottom of this

[JezUK]

It is not supposed to restart without changes. When the noise threshold is reached - it is supposed to stop rendering and wait for changes or you to stop it.
Do you have Auto Save enabled in Max ?

Best regards,
Yavor

What changes could you apply at this stage ? For example, I'd have thought it'd be possible to further decrease the Noise Threshold to refine the image, but I've done that and RT just seems to sit there in a waiting state ?