vrayCreateProxy options + Maya 2016 crashing

[Fredrik Averpil]

I'm trying to export an animated vrayProxy in Maya 2016 with V-Ray 3.05 nightly build 25823.

First off, Maya freezes when scrubbing the timeline when viewing an animated vray proxy. It also freezes during vray proxy animation export. This may not be V-Ray related but other users get this in our facility as well.

Since I've got a custom script which sets up the proxy, I need to perform the proxy export using the vrayCreateProxy MEL command. I'm having some difficulties getting the animation settings right. See below:

In the vrayCreateProxy command, you choose to specify "Use playback range", "Use animation range" and "Specify range".
I'm assuming that this refers to the -animType parameter of the MEL command and that they work like this:

"Use playback range": vrayCreateProxy -animType 0
"Use animation range": vrayCreateProxy -animType 1
"Specify range": vrayCreateProxy -animType 2

Also, I'm assuming that "Use animation range" detects the frames on which there are animation and exports only that range. But when using -animType 1, the whole timeline is exported. When checking the docs, it just says "the whole animation is exported"... so it's difficult to understand what the intended use is here. Also, when I try -animType 0, only the first 10 frames or so are exported at all times, regardless of what my render globals are like or how long my timeline is.

So: if I want to export only the range where there is animation for the selected object (which I want to export to proxy), what -animType value should I be using?

[yolov]

"Use animation range" should export the Maya animation range vs. "use playback range" should get the Maya playback range. I'm afraid the proxy export will not scan the object for any keys/animation.
We'll update the docs to make this a bit more clear.



As for the crash - is there a way to try and make the same export with Maya 2015 for example? Or send us the file over so we could take a look. Also - does the drive you're saving to have enough free space?

[Algehov]

A sort of related issue I just noticed when we're testing this is that when changing the motion blur duration(frames) to more frames than 1, the vray proxy doesn't render with "longer" motion blur as the object will if its not turned into a proxy.
The motion blur looks correct if its set to 1, but seems to have no effect if changed. I tried this both having an animated alembic file and a vrmesh file, with velocity information. This is the case with one of the latest nightlies (a week old I think), and some of the older ones aswell.

Am I doing something wrong? (Did I miss to change something in the proxy settings) Or is this indeed a bug?

[vlado]

The V-Ray proxy does not support moblur larger than 1 frame (bounding boxes will be wrong).

Best regards,
Vlado

[Algehov]

Oh I see, I didnt realize that was a limitation. But makes sense.
Thanks for clearing it out

[Fredrik Averpil]

"Use animation range" should export the Maya animation range vs. "use playback range" should get the Maya playback range. I'm afraid the proxy export will not scan the object for any keys/animation.
We'll update the docs to make this a bit more clear.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]24548[/ATTACH]

Ah... I see now. Having used Maya for 10 years and I wasn't aware of the terminology "playback range" vs "animation range" - I've just been calling it "the timeline". Your image cleared things up. Many thanks for taking the time to make that.

As for the crash - is there a way to try and make the same export with Maya 2015 for example? Or send us the file over so we could take a look. Also - does the drive you're saving to have enough free space?

Yes, I can re-create and export in Maya 2015 without any crashes. The drive has several terabytes of free space. I'm getting the crash on another machine too, different nVidia based graphics cards (GeForce GTX 970, Quadro K5200). I'm attaching a scene file which will need a couple of external files: scene13.zip

Just open it and set the assemblyDefinition node to view the vrmesh representation or the abc representation Then scrub the timeline quickly. Perhaps you will need to go back and forth a couple of times between the representations and scrub again. Here that will eventually crash Maya with a Windows window saying the following:

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	APPCRASH
  Application Name:	maya.exe
  Application Version:	16.0.1312.0
  Application Timestamp:	54efcee1
  Fault Module Name:	StackHash_c1ff
  Fault Module Version:	6.1.7601.18869
  Fault Module Timestamp:	556366f2
  Exception Code:	c0000374
  Exception Offset:	00000000000bfc22
  OS Version:	6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
  Locale ID:	1053
  Additional Information 1:	c1ff
  Additional Information 2:	c1ff60389084812c4135c96e1c906b0d
  Additional Information 3:	e65a
  Additional Information 4:	e65a81f395ef7bfc4265c05cd65c5ac2

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[ivaylo.ivanov]

Thank you very much for the scene. I've reproduce the crash and it seems to be VRay related.

[Fredrik Averpil]

That is actually great news, as I was looking to start my own investigation on nVidia drivers and Maya 2016 incompatibility... but then I can move on to more important things!

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The crash/freeze should be fixed in the next nightly. The problem is that Maya 2016 tries to evaluate the graph in parallel, but VRayMesh nodes don't support this. It turned out we must manually tell Maya this.

[Fredrik Averpil]

Wow, that was fast. Excellent!