IPR still crashes Max when copying lights

[Alex_M]

I've got a product shot scene where IPR crashes Max frequently without save dialog when copying the dome lights. I will send the scene to support to be checked.

[andy51]

May I ask, why you would copy dome lights. While I can understand copy/instancing ordinary vray plane, sphere. disc and mesh lights. A dome light is basically an infinite sized spherical or hemispherical light. The majority use one for a sky dome, placing an HDRI map in it's texture slot....

Also a Vray dome lights placement, doesn't really matter.. Place one in the top viewport, start an IPR render, move it and you will notice no difference, even with an HDRI 360 texture applied, you can move it around, bu the sky will not move. There is a way to link the texture to the Dome light of course, but that would only (far as I know, affect the maps rotation) You could place the dome light behind, in front or off to the side of the camera and the sky would look identical,

So creating more than one dome light, is actually pointless, at least as far as I can see

HOWEVER, you could mean sphere lights.. and if so, forget everything above

[Vizioen]

May I ask, why you would copy dome lights. While I can understand copy/instancing ordinary vray plane, sphere. disc and mesh lights. A dome light is basically an infinite sized spherical or hemispherical light. The majority use one for a sky dome, placing an HDRI map in it's texture slot....

Also a Vray dome lights placement, doesn't really matter.. Place one in the top viewport, start an IPR render, move it and you will notice no difference, even with an HDRI 360 texture applied, you can move it around, bu the sky will not move. There is a way to link the texture to the Dome light of course, but that would only (far as I know, affect the maps rotation) You could place the dome light behind, in front or off to the side of the camera and the sky would look identical,

So creating more than one dome light, is actually pointless, at least as far as I can see

HOWEVER, you could mean sphere lights.. and if so, forget everything above

Simple: mutiple domelights for multiple HDRI setups for different moods.

[andy51]

You only need to setup one Dome light and give it different HDRI textures, for each mood, and switch them using the "Scene States" feature. Creating more than one dome light, is totally unnecessary. like creating 4 vray plane lights, in exactly the same position, with different colour/intensity values, it will only cause problems. I use scene States a lot.. for daylight, evening renders. saves a hello of a lot of time.. I have seen so many people save two or more versions of a file, when they could so easily just use the Scene States feature and save just the one.

[Vizioen]

You only need to setup one Dome light and give it different HDRI textures, for each mood, and switch them using the "Scene States" feature. Creating more than one dome light, is totally unnecessary. like creating 4 vray plane lights, in exactly the same position, with different colour/intensity values, it will only cause problems. I use scene States a lot.. for daylight, evening renders. saves a hello of a lot of time.. I have seen so many people save two or more versions of a file, when they could so easily just use the Scene States feature and save just the one.

Yeah I use RPManager for that stuff but I'd rather shoot myself in the foot than use Scenes states . And in my eyes it's still visually faster to see the dome light with the direction of where the sunlight (lock texture to icon) is coming from, than using any scene manager. 5 dome lights won't make an unstable scene

[andy51]

Yeah I use RPManager for that stuff but I'd rather shoot myself in the foot than use Scenes states . And in my eyes it's still visually faster to see the dome light with the direction of where the sunlight (lock texture to icon) is coming from, than using any scene manager. 5 dome lights won't make an unstable scene

Well the original thread says that IPR is constantly crashing, without error, when copying dome lights and my comment was why are THEY using more than one dome light, when THEY could use scene states and just ONE dome light. Thing is the discussion is more about IPR than dome lights, so why they would want several dome lights isn't really the question. I would have to ask, why they didn't set up all the dome lights first, before you start using IPR.. I still think it's a memory thing. If they were just dome lights, with no textures (HDRI sky) my guess would be it would not crash. but say you have one dome light with a daylight HDRI sky texture, you are using IPR and then you decide to copy that dome light.. for one thing you are also copying the texture associated with it and I think that confuses IPR, since every time you change anything in the scene, it has to refresh, hence the crash.

As for having several dome lights instead of one and using scene states, I find it far less troublesome and a lot cleaner to use scene states.. and though it may not male for an unstable scene, doing things the way you suggest, have you actually tried to replicate what the original poster was doing, when they had IPR crash??

[Alex_M]

I just wanted to give a quick update. Max crashes no matter the type of light being copied. I'm also getting crashes when doing undo operations while IPR is running. It's quite unfortunate since I'm losing work and autoback files are not really useful when you nail the shot exactly how you want it and then have to remember how you did it to get the same result. I feel like I'm always on toes when using IPR so I save literally every minute when it's running. Anyone else having the same experience with it?

Sorry for not being able to send a scene. Too busy with delivering the shots. Will do as soon as the job is complete.

[andy51]

Well I have tried copying dozens of lights with IPR running and since the latest update (whether that has fixes for it or not) I have yet to crash Max. I did have a problem earlier, when I tried adding a new object to a scene and Max crashed without error. but as I say, it seems to have been fixed (at least for me) in the latest version. However without a scene for others to test, it would be difficult to say if it is Vray, Max or the scene itself, perhaps being very complex. For now, al I can say is since the latest Vray update, I am enjoying using IPR and have yet to experience an crashes.. I should note that I am still using Max 2014. My suggestion would be to upgrade Vray and see if it fixes it, as I note from your posts that you are using 3.50.01 (unless of course that's out of date information)

[kosso_olli]

Using 3.6.03 on Max 2018 here, I don't get any crashes when copying or instancing lights while running IPR.

[Alex_M]

I've just sent the scene to support.