VFB window unpredictable?

[RICHARD_SIMPSON]

I'm just jumping into this, sorting through a number of issues, but does anyone else's VFB window act odd and unpredictable? Sometimes it launches fine, other times I click Show V-Ray VFB and nothing happens. Sometimes, if I render current frame, it'll appear as it should, other times just an outline of what might be the window flashes on screen and then disappears. It's not minimizing or going behind Maya.

It's far superior to Maya's render window (by a long shot) but not if it won't show up.

Any ideas?

(I'm running Maya 2012 HF4 on Centos 5.6 and Gnome. V-Ray: V-Ray for Maya version 2.00.04 EDU, V-Ray core version 2.00.01)

Thanks!

Rich

[bigbossfr]

Same problem for me on Linux Maya 2011.
When i click on : "show Vray VFB", nothing happens

[t.petrov]

Hello,

Is this problem related to a specific scene?
Or after you start Maya in the beginning it works and after some usage/rendering it stops working?

It you have a scene which breaks the VFB, I'll be happy to look at it.

I've tested it on Maya 2012 V-Ray 2.00.04. It worked perfectly in empty scene.

Please keep in mind that we have an implementation problem with the VFB on Linux and there is a chance of random crashes.
If you get the crashes the only solution would be to disable the VFB.

/Teodor

[RICHARD_SIMPSON]

Hey Teodor,

There's definitely an issue, but I can't pin it down to a specific scene or reproducible problem, EXCEPT that I've found that if I try to render any higher resolution than 1080p to it, it seems to no longer work. In reality, I was only doing that for DR testing and won't be normally.

As for the implementation problem on Linux, you're seeing that it can crash out VFB or crash Maya entirely? I have been getting random crashes due with segmentation fault errors but haven't pinned down why.

-R

[t.petrov]

The VFB/V-Ray is running inside the Maya's process, thus if there is a crash in the VFB/V-Ray, the whole Maya will crash.
(sometimes we are able to catch the exceptions and we prevent the crash, but not this one).

[RICHARD_SIMPSON]

Ouch. I'd hate to not use it... it was love at first site

A fix for the next release?

-R

[vlado]

We will definitely try to get the VFB more stable for the next release.

Best regards,
Vlado

[RICHARD_SIMPSON]

Cool, thanks. Gotta say, being new here, you guys provide great support.

-R

[MartinB]

Is there any chance of having the VFB as a separate program like 'IT'? Having come from renderman the VFB was a very pleasant surprise as I thought i'd be forced to use maya's default renderview, but it does seem to be the largest cause of problems for most of our artists. With it either disappearing or crashing and taking maya with it.

EDIT: Although saying that, the nightlies bug fix listed about fixing random VFB crashes seemed to be working from the small amount of testing I did, but I had to switch back to a stable release because of the surfaceShader bug I posted about...

[vlado]

Well, the VFB fix will be ported to the stable builds for the next week.

Best regards,
Vlado