Start/end frame override causes commandline render to always render full range

[Fredrik Averpil]

Hi,

I am not sure whether this is a Maya bug or a V-Ray 3.6 bug, but here goes:

Problem: Maya commandline rendering args -s and -e are not respected if a Render Setup override has been applied on the render globals framerange.

Attached is a Maya 2018.3 scene (but renders wrongly also in Maya 2018.5): scene8.zip
It requires V-Ray for Maya 3.6 (official release), and if I change to e.g. Maya Software Renderer, the issue is gone. So maybe, just maybe, this issue is a V-Ray issue. The issue appears on both Linux and Windows.

The commandline command we ran when able to repro this:

Render -r vray -x 1920 -y 1280 -s 10 -e 10 -rl NexusCU -cam renderCamCU -proj //SERVER-REDACTED/prod/proj371/maya -rd //SERVER-REDACTED/vers/proj371/maya/images/scene8_v5 //SERVER-REDACTED/prod/proj371/maya/scenes/scene8.mb

The expected output from this command is that frame 10 only should be rendered. This is a copypasta from my cmd window, which shows that V-Ray for Maya goes on to render the next frame after being done with frame 10, which should not happen:

>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:57] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m  0.8s): 91 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m  0.6s): 93 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m  0.4s): 96 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m  0.2s): 98 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: VDenoise: Using device 0: GeForce GTX 970
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: VDenoise: Driver version 416.94
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: VDenoise: OpenCL compiled successfuly
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: Denoising complete in 0.03 s
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: Number of raycasts: 28112754 (11.44 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Camera rays: 28112754 (11.44 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Shadow rays: 0 (0.00 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  GI rays: 0 (0.00 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Reflection rays: 0 (0.00 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Refraction rays: 0 (0.00 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Unshaded rays: 0 (0.00 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: Number of light evaluations: 0 (0.00 per pixel)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: Maximum memory usage for resman: 0.00 MB
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray: Number of intersectable primitives: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  SD triangles: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  MB triangles: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Static primitives: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Moving primitives: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Infinite primitives: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Static hair segments: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:17:58] V-Ray:  Moving hair segments: 0
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Successfully written image file "//192.168.0.226/vers/proj371/maya/images/scene8_v5/scene8/scene8_NexusCU_renderCamCU.0010.exr"
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Total frame time  0h  0m 36.7s (36.7 s)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Updating frame at time 11.00
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m  0.0s): 2 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Total time updating frame  0h  0m  0.0s (0.0 s)
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Preparing scene for frame...
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Compiling geometry...
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Using embree ray tracing.
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Building embree dynamic geometry tree...
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Embree dynamic geometry tree contains 0 primitives.
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Embree dynamic geometry tree built in 0.99 ms.
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:03] V-Ray: Embree dynamic geometry tree takes 0.00 MB.
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:04] V-Ray: Tracing 25000000 image samples for light cache in 64 passes.
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:04] V-Ray: Using 93.75 MB for light cache preview buffer
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:04] V-Ray: Building light cache...
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:04] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m 20.6s): 1 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:04] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m 20.2s): 2 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:04] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m 20.3s): 3 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:05] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m 19.7s): 4 % completed
>>> [2018/Dec/5|10:18:05] V-Ray:  (Estimated time remaining:  0h  0m 19.4s): 5 % completed
​​​​​​​

Do you think this is a V-Ray issue or a Maya issue?

[yolov]

That's really strange. Seems like a bug, most probably with V-Ray. I'll report it to the developers.
Thanks for the report.

[yolov]

Hmm, it's really strange. I could reproduce this a few times in a row, then all of a sudden - I couldn't anymore. Do you still have the same problem?

[Fredrik Averpil]

Yes, I believe so.

[flat]

This issue has been resolved in the latest Next build, but please apply the fix to the V-Ray 3.0 maya stable brunch.

Thanx

[yolov]

There was one fix that we did, but it was for when the animation type was set to 'specific frames', as this turned out to be the cause of the problem. The fix was then ported to the 3.x stable builds and it should be available there too. If you're still having an issue with 3.x - what build are you using? Can you test a latest stable build?

[flat]

My customer who reported the problem is using V-Ray 3.60.05 (official form htttp://download.chaosgroup.com).

Is the 3.x stable build you say the version distributed at http://nightlies.chaosgroup.com?

[yolov]

Yes, it should be under V-Ray 3.0 for Maya > stable > stable_3.6, as the fix was done a few days after the official 3.60.05 release. Please try any of the latest builds and let me know if it works. If it doesn't - we'll further investigate.

[flat]

My account does not have access to Nightlies in V-Ray 3.0 for Maya, so I send an email to support.

Thank you for the information.