Vray 3.4.04 Renderelements not working at all!

[leabum]

I have been working on a scene for a couple of weeks with vray 3.4.02 installed and the RenderElements worked fine. My school now updated to vray 3.04.04 and so did I, but all the sudden the lighting, specular and reflection Render Elements are not usable at all! The are just mostly black with some rendering errors around objects with opacity map plugged into. I as a student am dependant on the render capacities of my school and I have to deliver my finished demoreel in a month. So it is really urgend. Also my school probably won't update the next few weeks, so a workaround would be best.

Fixes I have tried so far:
- Exporting everything in my scene to a .mb to have a fresh start
- Setting rendersetting back to default
- creating/assigning RenderElements from scratch
- hiding all excisting lights and replacing them by a default Maya dirlight and domelight to get reflections

I checked and the exact same scene renders as expected on my laptop with still vray 3.4.02 installed.

[leabum]

Okay so after firstly assigning a basic VrayMTL to everything the problem seems to be gone. I went back into my main scene and started repalcing each material after the other by a basic VrayMTL to investigate if its a certain one causing the bug. In fact I am noticing something extremely wierd! When I assign a basic MTL to lets say the ground it appears as expected in the lighting AOV, one I introduce reflectivity into the MTL the lighting AOV turns completey black whereas the refl AOv is okay, after again removing the reflectivity completely the reflection AOV is black (obviousely) but the lighting AOV still remains black?!

Is there anyone knowing a efficient way of exporting the the scene, without MTLs and each Material and putting it all back into one scene?

[vlado]

There is a bug in the lighting elements in the official builds; please email our support guys at support@chaosgroup.com and ask for access to the stable nightly builds where this is fixed.

Many apologies for the inconvenience.

Best regards,
Vlado

[leabum]

Okay, could I also give them to my school so they can maybe install them?

[vlado]

Yes, they will have to install the builds.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jasonhuang1115]

There is a bug in the lighting elements in the official builds; please email our support guys at support@chaosgroup.com and ask for access to the stable nightly builds where this is fixed.

Many apologies for the inconvenience.

Best regards,
Vlado

Good to know. Was hitting this exactly bug last week and spent couple days trying to figure out what went wrong in my scene....
Will talk to IT and upgrade. Is any of the stable nightly builds good to replace the current official 3.4 build?

[leabum]

The salesteam responded that the nightly builds are not for use with academic licenses. Still I need a fix of any kind. Are there workarounds, any informations about the next official release fixing that problem?!!! If it does not arrive in the upcoming 1 to 2 weeks it not going to be finished before deadline. Thanks

[vlado]

The salesteam responded that the nightly builds are not for use with academic licenses. Still I need a fix of any kind. Are there workarounds, any informations about the next official release fixing that problem?!!! If it does not arrive in the upcoming 1 to 2 weeks it not going to be finished before deadline. Thanks

Ok, I guess we can make you a build. Can you or a supervisor from your school email me to vlado@chaosgroup.com with information about which Maya version and which OS you are using so that I can get you a fixed build?

Best regards,
Vlado

[leabum]

just as an update for everyone. The newest build fixes the lighting AOV to 90% and the reflection AOV.
Spec AOV produces errors around opacitymapped objects and lighting AOV gets blownout with backlit 2sided MTL.
Attached image of rebuild beauty.

[vlado]

Well, almost there... I will send you an email in a few minutes...

Best regards,
Vlado

[jasonhuang1115]

In my tests, the missing Lighting Render Element doesn't happen on all scenes.

I open a production scene that only has geometry and materials, no lights. Created a new dome light. Create a sphere with one of the materials from the produciton assets assigned to the sphere. The Lighting Render Element is missing for everything in the scene. However, when I hide the production assets and only render the newly created sphere (with production material assigned), the Lighting Render Element is correctly rendered??

I have tested this with same results:
Maya 2014 SP3, Vray 3.40.03 official build Jul 20 2016
Maya 2016 SP6, Vray 3.40.03, nighly stable build 26949 Sep 17 2016
Maya 2017, Vray 3.40.03, nightly stable build 26995 Oct 18 2016

Then I open another production scene of a different project. The Lighting RE renders normally and correctly.

[leabum]

Did't have the problem in build 3.40.02. Maybe try going back to that one, if it doesn't cause other bugs in your scenes. Also a Raw lighting pass can always be rendered by assigning a white lambert to everything in your scene on a seperate render layer as far as I know. My problem really is the spec, which can't be rendered easely without
access to AOVs as far as I know.

[vlado]

In my tests, the missing Lighting Render Element doesn't happen on all scenes.

Yes, we've already identified why it happens and as I mentioned a number of times, it's already fixed in the nightlies; please let me continue this discussion with Leander about his specific issues.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jasonhuang1115]

Sorry about that, Vlado. I did read your comment about that and was testing with latest stable nightly I can find for Maya 2017. Will send you a separate email to discuss.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Sorry about that, Vlado. I did read your comment about that and was testing with latest stable nightly I can find for Maya 2017. Will send you a separate email to discuss.

Does the issue still exist with the latest stable build or not?
If it is would it be possible to attach or send the scene for investigation?