Overbright or Invalid Color

[dariofx]

V-Ray for Maya version 2.25.01, revision 22615 from Dec 21 2012, on Maya 2013 SP2 Win 7 64bit

A colleague keeps getting this error when he renders:

// Warning: Material "shinnyMetalAno@material" produced overbright or invalid color (rgb=1.#QNAN0 1.#QNAN0 1.#QNAN0).
And force sub sampleing.

Does anybody ever ran into this, and if so how did you fix it?

Thanks!

[vlado]

Can you get me a scene where I can reproduce this? You can either post it here or send it to vraymaya@chaosgroup.com

Best regards,
Vlado

[J_Anguix]

Just wondering if this issue was resolved. I occasionally get similar errors which keep killing my render setups and are now costing me time.
I'm trying to figure out what triggers it.
Seems like it only happens in scenes where I have referenced objects, with and without referenced VRay materials applied.
And so far only in scenes with vray sphere or rect lights. Doesn't seem to occur in scenes with only dome and ies lights.
Everything works fine until I add a rect or sphere light. Works ok for a while then for some reason just bam, errors everywhere on materials in close proximity to new sphere or rect lights.
Can't seem to fix problem scenes until I save, close down and re-open scene. Then when I check the problematic lights, they now have Intensity set to "inf".
So far only way to get around this is to change to correct intensity and lock the attribute. This gets really frustrating though when trying to tweak multiple lighting setups.

Is this a common problem or am I just lucky?
I hope this gets fixed for next update.

[Morbid Angel]

Yeah i've seen this issue before but a long time ago. It happens on referenced lights. One way to solve this would be to create a control node and plug your light intensities from the control nodes into light values. Then you can still use the lights but not directly, rather through the node.

[J_Anguix]

Yeh I might try doing that.
In my case I'm not using any referenced lights, just meshes with materials pre-applied. Might be some sort of problem with references across the board.
I'm using v2.30.01 by the way.
I did read somewhere that this was old problem that got fixed with update but I guess not completely.

[Morbid Angel]

You know it can be related to the type of light decay you are using, like in vray light you got units, I think that may affect directly how that value is calculated. I usually leave at default but it may be the root of the cause?

[J_Anguix]

To make matters even more complicated, I re-opened the scene and fixed the 'inf' value that was on the problematic Sphere Light's intensity attribute and locked it.
Render was good again, no errors.
Then I duplicated the Sphere Light and errors came back with a vengeance.

The units I'm using are Watts but if you use a different unit type for intensity the number is converted when you switch units from drop-down selection.
I sometimes use lumens as a familiar real-world measure of light.

When I get the errors there's nothing I can do to fix it.
Only thing that works is close down Maya and reload scene. The bad lights will almost always have "inf" in Intensity attribute when you reopen scene.
Gotta remember what the intensity was and replace value. Incredibly tedious and time consuming.
Doesn't always work though. Sometimes gotta just delete lights and make new ones. Other times, revert to older scene and hope for the best.
Grrrrrr.....

[yolov]

Hi J_Anguix,

What V-Ray/Maya versions are you using (will need the V-Ray build number)?

[J_Anguix]

hey yolov,
I'm running Maya 2013 x64 -ServicePack2
This info from Maya's Output Window.
VRay 2.30.01.

[2013/Mar/14|09:40:18] V-Ray: V-Ray for Maya version 2.30.01 from May 11 2012, 01:51:11
[2013/Mar/14|09:40:18] V-Ray: V-Ray core version is 2.00.01

I installed same version on all render nodes but when I look at VRay Render Slave window it says it's v2.20.01.
See pic attached.


Also the error I get is this:

[2013/Mar/14|11:05:56] V-Ray warning: Invalid light cache sample(s).

then this on multiple materials.

[2013/Mar/14|11:08:04] V-Ray warning: Material "VRayMtl_StainlessBrushed@material" produced overbright or invalid color (rgb=-1.#IND00 -1.#IND00 -1.#IND00).
[2013/Mar/14|11:12:33] V-Ray warning: Material "VRayMtl_GrassUnderLay@material" produced overbright or invalid color (rgb=-1.#IND00 -1.#IND00 -1.#IND00).

I've tried with and without distributed rendering.
Here's a screengrab of GI calc phase (Irr Map and LightCache). Dark splotches all over materials. (see pic)
And here's also final filtered GI pass.

[yolov]

We did fix an issue with invalid or overbright colors in the nightly builds some time ago. You can try any of the latest ones and see if the problem still persists.

[J_Anguix]

How do I go about getting access to nightly builds?

[vlado]

Email our support guys to vraymaya@chaosgroup.com and they will help sort it out.

Best regards,
Vlado