Vray light display in the viewport

[SonyBoy]

I really wish you would do something about the mess that is Vray light widget display in the viewport. They seem to be classified by Maya as both lights AND locators, which is highly confusing and annoying to begin with, then on top of that they STILL sometimes disappear in viewport even when both of these object types are filtered on. It's sometimes necessary to go into the hypershade just to select a light to get it to show, very inconvenient.

Lights are often buried in a rig, parented under other objects and (where I work anyway) not named very intuitively. If you have a lot of them in a scene the easiest way to pick a certain light is to do it interactively in the viewport -- I don't want to have to open another menu just to do this. This has been an issue for years with every release of Vray since I started using it 10 years ago. Please fix this!

[oglu]

Agreed this should be fixed!

[yolov]

IIRC, V-Ray lights were originally classified as locators to allow instancing them. Maya doesn't allow instancing lights (classified as lights) and having them as locators allows instancing them in Maya. There are cases where this is quite useful.
At a later point, somewhere in recent years, we added a "lights" classification so that our lights could work with the Maya Light Editor, or for some other related reason.

There's the V-Ray Light Lister, that helps find a light, does that help in any way?

If you can point us to how we can replicate the case where the lights get completely lost, it would help make improvements.
I'm not sure we can ditch the classification without breaking everything, so if there's an issue here, we have to find a way to replicate it and fix it.

I wonder if isolating things in the viewport or having display layers have something to do with cases like that.

Thanks in advance.

[seandunderdale]

If having them classed as locators allows for instancing in Maya, is there a way to get them to be visible? I still dont instance light because there is no viewport shape to grab and use. Makes setting up a scene very difficult.

[SonyBoy]

IIRC, V-Ray lights were originally classified as locators to allow instancing them. Maya doesn't allow instancing lights (classified as lights) and having them as locators allows instancing them in Maya. There are cases where this is quite useful.
At a later point, somewhere in recent years, we added a "lights" classification so that our lights could work with the Maya Light Editor, or for some other related reason.

There's the V-Ray Light Lister, that helps find a light, does that help in any way?

If you can point us to how we can replicate the case where the lights get completely lost, it would help make improvements.
I'm not sure we can ditch the classification without breaking everything, so if there's an issue here, we have to find a way to replicate it and fix it.

I wonder if isolating things in the viewport or having display layers have something to do with cases like that.

Thanks in advance.

I'm not really sure what causes it. There are display layers in my scene but it's not that these lights were on one that was turned off. It seems to be completely random, and when it happens it's necessary to find the light another way to select it, upon which it will immediately show up again in the viewport. As I mentioned, the problem is that interactively selecting lights in the viewport is frequently the fastest and most convenient way of doing it, so it's a pain to have to open another menu (whether it's the Outliner, the Light Lister, the Hypergraph or whatever) just to have to then figure out which light you want.

[yolov]

If having them classed as locators allows for instancing in Maya, is there a way to get them to be visible? I still dont instance light because there is no viewport shape to grab and use. Makes setting up a scene very difficult.

Yeah, that's one 'gotcha' in this approach. I'll start some discussions with the team and see what we can do to improve things. It will help to collect as many different aspects that need improvement, so we can have the bigger picture. This one definitely goes on the list. Thanks for bringing it up.

[yolov]

[...] when it happens it's necessary to find the light another way to select it, upon which it will immediately show up again the viewport.

That's a good clue, thanks. I'll see with the team if it rings any bells.
Do you recall if the light was behind other (transparent) objects? Or behind other lights?
And just to make sure - just one (of a few) lights disappear, not all scene lights, correct?

Silly question, but just in case - you're running the OpenGL Viewport 2.0, correct? Not any DirectX modes or anything like that? Do you know if you're running the default "opengl compatibility" driver, or any of the others?
This may be irrelevant, but I'm just trying to collect as much information about it as possible.

[yolov]

I just wanted to use a separate post to welcome anyone else to share if there's any other issues with lights in the viewport so we can get a better picture of what needs more work and plan accordingly.

[SonyBoy]

Do you recall if the light was behind other (transparent) objects? Or behind other lights?

No

And just to make sure - just one (of a few) lights disappear, not all scene lights, correct?

No, this affects all lights -- it's a global display problem

Silly question, but just in case - you're running the OpenGL Viewport 2.0, correct?

Yes, though I may have experienced this with other hardware renderers such as Maya's default as well (not sure)

Not any DirectX modes or anything like that? Do you know if you're running the default "opengl compatibility" driver, or any of the others?

Not that I'm aware of, but I've had this issue on many, many workstations with no doubt a wide array of GPUs, OS and driver versions installed over the years. Based on others' comments this is not an experience limited to me.

[oglu]

It might be related to hiding lights. They wont show up in the viewport if unhided.

I have to test tomorrow. But i have this issues for years over several workstations. Also in opengl mode.

[SonyBoy]

It might be related to hiding lights. They wont show up in the viewport if unhided.

I have to test tomorrow. But i have this issues for years over several workstations. Also in opengl mode.

I very rarely hide things in my workflow, and almost certainly never would I hide lights.