Maya V-Ray IPR file textures render black

[bkirch]

I'm having an issue where Maya V-Ray IPR is rendering file textures as black. In the simplest of scenes (sphere, V-Ray Rect Light) this is occurring when file textures are connected to a VRay Mtl and also when connected to the Rect Tex channel of a V-Ray Light Rect. I could connect procedurals, like a ramp or noise, and it works. But file tex, no. The file texture(s) in question are stored and referenced from the active Maya project.

Using Maya 2016 Ext SP6
V-Ray for Maya 3.40.04
Windows 10 Pro

I could upload the scene is that is helpful.


Thanks,
-Brian

[bkirch]

Correction, I am using Maya 2016 Ext 1 SP6

Also, attached is a very simple example scene that was exhibiting this behavior.


Thanks for any help!

[Morbid Angel]

Hi Brian,

I've checked your scene, I don't have maya 2016 ext1, but I have 2016.5 ext2 and 2016 sp6. In both cases I get texture working in ipr. Do you get any error/warning messages in the vray console while rendering? Do you start maya using custom user environment?

[bkirch]

Dmitry, thank you for taking a look at the scene. I get the usual error message "// Warning: line 1: V-Ray : [SettingsTGA] No image writer specified." which shows up even when IPR is working. And yes, we do use a custom python script to launch Maya in order to load custom pipeline tools. Interesting that it works on your end. I had a co-worker try it on a different machine (with same launch environment) with the same bad result.

[Morbid Angel]

yeah I had this issue before. Most likely you have a mistake in your custom environment declaration, so RT is not fully initialized. Do check that the paths to standalone are properly setup in your environment.

[ydm]

The scene works for me too.

Dmitry may be right, what happens if you just launch Maya (without using your Python scripts) and load the scene you provided?

[bkirch]

Interesting enough, when I launch Maya without the scripts the scene does not render in IPR at all. Meaning, it won't even render with the ramp texture applied. In the viewport IPR it says "loading scene..." and will not render anything, just keeps showing the V-Ray logo like it is pre-calculating. In V-Ray Frame Buffer it is black and with no alpha present.

[ydm]

Did you used the zip installation to install V-Ray?

Just to make sure there are no broken V-Ray files, can you please try reinstalling it?

Also, since the IPR spawns another process and loads the scene using a socket, can you make sure the port is free by restarting your computer?

Are there any V-Ray environment variables set?

[bkirch]

Good news. We found that after disabling the VRayMayaSpawner services the IPR would work correctly. We don't need this service since we would not be using our own workstations as DR nodes. Kind of annoying to have to go into the Windows Services to disable it when working with IPR.

[ydm]

It's great you fixed it! Thanks for letting us know of the solution!