Error creating thumbnails using textures mapped to environment variable

[colorbleed]

Hey,

I'm having some problems with V-ray shaders that are using textures mapped with environment variables where it results in Error creating thumbnails....
Tested this on Maya 2016 Ext 1 (Windows 7) using V-Ray for Maya 3.30.01.

For example (simplified the path):

// Error: Error creating thumbnail for image ${STORAGE}/textures/wood.tga

The ${STORAGE} variable is stored as a drive, e.g: P:

import os
os.environ['STORAGE'] = "P:"

With this error it also means thumbnails in the hypershade don't work. Starting a render does actually render the textures as they should, also the viewport shows the textures alright. Nevertheless for larger scenes when opening the hypershade you get spammed with error messages about the thumbnails.

Am I writing the texture path wrong? Should it be formatted differently? Or is this a bug?

Also linking the texture in a non v-ray material works fine with thumbnails (e.g. a lambert) and doesn't give any errors. It seems the "thumbnail renderer" for V-ray materials doesn't take into account the current environment variables or can't resolve environment variables?

[yolov]

Sounds like it should work for vray materials when it works for maya materials and it's probably a bug. We'll have a look at this one, thanks for the report.

[colorbleed]

Hey Alex,

Any update on this error? Were you able to reproduce this problem?
Is this fixed in newer releases or do you have a possible fix or ETA for coming fix?
Would be great to have this working flawlessly.

Cheers,
Roy

[yolov]

No, I'm afraid there's not been any progress yet.

[scorpes]

I see they solved it in the latest nighly vray_34501_26848:
[Bug] Error creating thumbnails using textures mapped to environment variable

Still got the creating thumbnails Error if maya put's <f> for the frame number if you use a sequence with custom numbers (not the auto expression)

[yolov]

That might be another bug. We'll look into it.

[colorbleed]

I see they solved it in the latest nighly vray_34501_26848:
[Bug] Error creating thumbnails using textures mapped to environment variable

Thanks, this sounds great. Looking up nightlies I only see 26842 as latest, but might be because I'm looking under nightlies stable? I don't see more recent nightlies. Do I need to request access?

Still got the creating thumbnails Error if maya put's <f> for the frame number if you use a sequence with custom numbers (not the auto expression)

I think luckily that's something we're not using in masses on short-term so won't directly be an error-spamming bottleneck Nevertheless thanks for the heads up.

[yolov]

26842 is from the stable nightlies, yes. You need to request access to the nightly-nightlies (so to speak).

[yolov]

Still got the creating thumbnails Error if maya put's <f> for the frame number if you use a sequence with custom numbers (not the auto expression)

I don't seem to be able to reproduce it, or I'm missing something. Can you attach a simple example?

[colorbleed]

26842 is from the stable nightlies, yes. You need to request access to the nightly-nightlies (so to speak).

Thanks. Tested the release and fix seemed to work here; team is mega-happy!

[scorpes]

I don't seem to be able to reproduce it, or I'm missing something. Can you attach a simple example?

For a sample scene, I'm kinda in a hurry with deadlines at the moment, but I did tests yesterday and it seems like if you create a plane with texture.01.tif and texture.02.tif, open them with a file node and check sequence, then if you delete the expression on the frameExtension and manually put in number 1 or 2 then viewport updates correctly but if you render you only see texture.01.tif. (if you put 2 at the frameExtension)
I will post a sample scene soon. We are on Maya 2016 SP6 Linux x64

[yolov]

No, I don't any errors here. But still, the render is wrong, which is known and is on the to-do list.

[yolov]

Today's nightly builds should fix the image sequences when manual index is entered for image number.