combining saved Irradiance maps

[Bart247]

I'm having problems when I combine 3 Irradiance maps with the Irradiance map viewer.

I'm saving Irradiance maps for office renders with a camera flythrough.
I'm using Irradiance map for the primary bounces and Light Cache for secondary bounces.
I have 3 different cameras at different angles for the flythrough shots.
I'm saving out the map files with "use camera path" activated for each camera movement.

When I use each saved irradiance map separately for each camera movement, the renders come out as expected.


When I combine all 3 irradiance maps and use that saved file for all the camera movements I get artifacts or low samples.


I thought that when you add an Irradiance map to another in the Irradiance map viewer, it would add the samples to the existing ones? It seems like the samples in certain spots are being overwritten?

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Would it be possible to send us a striped version of this scene with the calculated light maps so we could investigate further? Also which V-Ray version are you using?

[Bart247]

Hi Zdravko

We're using the latest version of V-Ray (3.4) with Maya 2016, SP6 on windows 7.

I sent you an email with a download link.
To recreate the process I included the Irradiance maps I combined. I started with *cam1 file and added each file in order of camera number, *cam1 then *cam1B then *cam2, etc. to create the *combined file.

Let me know what you discover.

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Thank you for sending us the scene. Next time you can forward it directly to support@chaosgroup.com this way we can have a ticket assigned to your issue and we can easily follow it.
As for the issue I tried both Add.. and Incremental add.. options to merge all four camera Irradiance maps. The resulting combined map did not have any issues rendering and it looked different (in the irradiance map viewer) from the one you have send us. Therefore would it be possible to try add/Incremental add those four maps again and check if the issue persist. Also please attach the info from the About window: Help>About

[Bart247]

I added each map using Incremental add and did a test render after each addition. Everything rendered fine until I add one particular map. I recalculated that map, replaced it and everything worked fine. The Light Cache in that particular map was not generated properly.

The problem with the map was that one of the computers on the network kept crashing during the Light Cache process. I re-rendered the Light Cache with distributed rendering turned off and the map came out fine. The computer that kept crashing had the least amount of ram in our network so I assume that was the cause.

When the light cache is being generated via distributed rendering and merged by multiple computers, If one crashes, is there any recovery attempts by the other computers to take over that task?
To play it safe, should I always re-compute the light cache if a crash occurs?

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

When the light cache is being generated via distributed rendering and merged by multiple computers, If one crashes, is there any recovery attempts by the other computers to take over that task?

There should be, we are currently testing and debugging the scene.

To play it safe, should I always re-compute the light cache if a crash occurs?

for now, yes.