VFB - Texture dissapears when changing any paramater in the layered node

[haniel1107]

Hello,

at interactive rendering the texture dissapears from an object when I change any parameter. This happens as far as I can see only when using vray bitmaps nodes. with color nodes for example it works how it should.
I am using the latest nightly build, but it happens also with the one from before yesterday. I will try to go further back.. hope this bug is something from the later nighlty builds?

I've captured a video to demonstrate better what I mean...

Working on Windows11 / Vray 6.2 latest nighlty build / C4D 2023.2.2 / CPU rendering

[haniel1107]

Sorry, if this is getting confusing, but this issue is bigger... not only with layered node...
Could you take a look this next video, too please?

s no one seems to have the same issue, I think it could be my system?

This video is with the nightly build from the 23.1.24

[haniel1107]

And another very strange one

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Hi haniel1107, all these videos seem very strange and I can not reproduce this effect on my end. From the screen recordings, it seems like the nodes are behaving as if the "solo" mode is activated, but it clearly is not.

Can you try renaming your preferences directory, so the node database caches may be recreated. Sometimes when we modify nodes the database gets corrupted and needs to be recreated. When it gets corrupted, problems like your example may be observed.

[haniel1107]

Hi deyan.hadzhiev, thanks for taking care of my problem. This didn't help. Do you maybe have another idea?

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Can you enable full logging and check the log output from V-Ray for any problems or simply send us the log after observing the issue.

[haniel1107]

Could you help me, how and where to enable, please... and where to find the logfile?

BTW. I tried C4d R 2024, and here I have the same issue...

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Here are some screenshots for enabling and getting the log:

[haniel1107]

Thank you deyan.hadzhiev,
please find here the output..:


Successfully initialized V-Ray 6 for Cinema 4D, update 2 (API 2023.100, runtime 2023.202, V-Ray version: 6.20.00.32457, revision: 871cc74f, build date: Feb 8 2024)
Successfully initialized Chaos Scatter interface for V-Ray usage (version: 1000, size: 136)
Loading plugins from "C:\Program Files\Maxon Cinema 4D 2023\plugins\V-Ray\res\libs\win64/plugins\vray_*.dll"
82 plugin(s) loaded successfully
Finished loading plugins.
Bitmap manager created.
Starting render of scene: test.c4d
[0h 0m 0.0s] Setting number of rendering threads to 127.
[0h 0m 0.0s] GI engines: 'Brute force' and 'Brute force'
[0h 0m 0.0s] Reducing shading rate from 6 to 2 for interactive rendering
[0h 0m 0.0s] Preparing renderer...
[0h 0m 0.2s] Using per-pixel filtering for IPR.
[0h 0m 0.2s] [Progress] Preparing scene for rendering... [0h 0m 0.2s] [0h 0m 19.9s est] : 1% (1 of 71)
[0h 0m 0.2s] Tiled texture cache set to 4096 MB
[0h 0m 0.2s] [Progress] Preparing scene for rendering... (finished in [0h 0m 0.2s]) : 100% (71 of 71)
[0h 0m 0.2s] Light tree is enabled with clamp coefficient 0.1 and even split coefficient 1.
[0h 0m 0.2s] Using lowest thread priority.
[0h 0m 0.6s] Max ray intensity is enabled: rendered result may have incorrect brightness.
[0h 0m 0.6s] Consistent lighting elements are enabled.
[0h 0m 0.6s] Disabling info and debug messages for IPR.
[0h 0m 0.6s] [Progress] Preparing scene for frame... : 0% (0 of 71)
[0h 0m 0.6s] [Progress] Preparing scene for frame... [0h 0m 0.0s] [0h 0m 0.0s est] : 1% (1 of 71)
[0h 0m 0.6s] [Progress] Preparing scene for frame... (finished in [0h 0m 0.0s]) : 100% (71 of 71)
[0h 0m 0.6s] [Progress] Compiling geometry... [0h 0m 0.0s] [0h 0m 0.0s est] : 33% (1 of 3)
[0h 0m 1.0s] [Progress] Compiling geometry... (finished in [0h 0m 0.4s]) : 100% (3 of 3)
[0h 0m 1.0s] [Progress] Building Embree moving trees... : 0% (0 of 100)
[0h 0m 1.6s] [Progress] Building Embree moving trees... [0h 0m 0.5s] [0h 0m 1.4s est] : 40% (40 of 100)
[0h 0m 1.7s] [Progress] Building Embree moving trees... (finished in [0h 0m 0.7s]) : 100% (100 of 100)
[0h 0m 1.7s] [Progress] Building Embree dynamic geometry tree... : 0% (0 of 100)
[0h 0m 1.7s] [Progress] Building Embree dynamic geometry tree... (finished in [0h 0m 0.0s]) : 100% (100 of 100)
[0h 0m 1.8s] [Progress] Rendering...
[0h 0m 19.0s] [Progress] Clearing geometry... [0h 0m 17.2s] [0h 0m 51.6s est] : 33% (1 of 3)
[0h 0m 19.0s] [Progress] Clearing geometry... (finished in [0h 0m 17.2s]) : 100% (3 of 3)
[0h 0m 19.0s] Re-enabling messages.
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for IPR rendering: 4.00 GiB collected for 22 categories
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Bitmap": 3.60 GiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Bucket image sampler": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Dynamic displaced geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Dynamic geometry": < 1 MiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Dynamic moving displaced geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Dynamic moving geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "GI": < 1 MiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Lights": < 1 MiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Misc.": 306.97 MiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Misc. displaced geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Misc. geometry": < 1 MiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Misc. moving displaced geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Misc. moving geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Progressive image sampler": 73.11 MiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Static displaced geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Static geometry": 4.96 MiB
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Static hair": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Static moving displaced geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Static moving geometry": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Static moving hair": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "Tiled bitmap": 0 B
[0h 0m 19.6s] Peak memory for "VFB": 24.57 MiB
[0h 0m 19.9s] Maximum memory usage for attributes: 0.00 MB

Ending render of scene: test.c4d
[Progress] Render completed (finished in [0h 0m 19.9s])

[deyan.hadzhiev]

The log seems quite normal and nothing unusual is present there. Just for the test - can you try disabling the node material previews, just to test if they are somehow messing with the renderer.

[haniel1107]

Hello deyan.hadzhiev, thank you, it doesn't help. It seems something with the geometry or wit the scene is wrong. I tried another scene, everything worked well, Then after trying my problem scene, the error appears again.
For my test scene today I've copied the geometry from my problem scene. I think this was not so smart and that's why I believed it is a general problem...

As long as the scene is the reason, I am of course fine and will try to find the error exact myself. (It looks like) Sorry, if this was confusing, the geometry didn't came into my mind...
Many thanks for your help today... !!

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Hey haniel1107, even if the problem is with the exact scene, the screen recordings you show do not seem like the renderer behaved as expected. I would appreciate it if you could share the scene so we may take a closer look at what triggers this behavior.

[haniel1107]

Hi deyan.hadzhiev, yes of course, happy when you take a look. I've send to you a PM with a dropbox link of a dummy scene with this beahaviour... Thanks!!

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Hi haniel1107, after further investigation of the scene, the problem you observed proved to be an edge case bug on our side (internally reported as VC4D-2190). In particular, the following setup in your scene seems to trigger this edge case, which results in the material projection being applied with invalid transformation:
1. Using a projection for the material ('Flat' projection).
2. Having the geometry tag, which uses the same material for UV generation of the displacement. Even though the displacement is disabled.
3. Having the motion blur enabled for the rendering camera.

So until we fix this, you can use any of the following steps to workaround the issue:
1. Use a UVW channel for the material.
2. Remove the texture for displacement from the geometry tag, or remove the geometry tag completely, if it is not necessary.
3. Disable the motion blur in the camera.

Sorry for the caused inconvenience, I will post here when we have updates on resolving this issue.

[haniel1107]

Hello deyan.hadzhiev, thanks a lot for the investigation you did. This helps a lot!! I will keep the mentioned workariunds in mind.