Latest Vray causing my mouse and keyboard to freak out

[fbb]

I recently posted the following on the Autodesk forum. As you'll see near the end, I discovered that Vray seems to be responsible for this issue:

"I'm having problems with my mouse and keyboard as described below:


The left mouse button will suddenly become the right mouse button, and then I have to use the middle mouse button in order to complete tasks. I've found that freezing transforms on the object I'm working on often clears this issue up, but only temporarily. It can come back at any time. I've been experiencing this particular issue for quite a while.


More recently, within the last week or two, my keyboard has started misbehaving as well, and this is accompanied by new strange behavior from my mouse: The cursor starts flickering, hopping from one spot to another (a short distance), and going back and forth between the arrow and the "working" circle animation. It also leaves a streak on the screen sometimes while I'm moving it. Meanwhile, the keyboard will not work within some Maya dialogue windows, such as the render settings window, where I can no longer type in new values, such as for the render image dimensions, but it seems to work fine in the save-as dialogue window. Also, during these times, I've noticed that Maya is using for more cpu cycles than it should. Around 24% while idle (my cpu is an Intel, i7 950).


I tried an experiment using the windows on-screen keyboard, and the same behavior occurred there. Also, I don't experience these problems with any other programs on my computer, and I've checked my computer for virus's and malware and it's clean. so I don't think the problem is with either my mouse, keyboard, or a virus.


UPDATE: I've discovered that the last of the two problems I mentioned (paragraph 2), is related to Vray. It only occurs when the renderer is set to Vray. I just recently upgraded to v3.40.06 so it makes sense that I've been experiencing it recently."

It seems to me that if Vray is somehow causing the second problem, it may have also caused the first. Does anybody have a clue about what's going on here?

UPDATE: I just opened a scene and was having the second problem right out of the gate, but it went away as soon as I saved the scene again under a new name.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Regarding the locked image dimensions I believe someone already reported that but I am unable to find it right now - from what I know this issue stays in the scene until it is re-saved to a new one so my questions is do you have a scene that reproduces that issue which we could use for investigation?

Regarding the strange mouse behavior, does it happen with earlier V-Ray versions like 3.40.05 , 3.40.04 etc?
Can you give us more information about the hardware and software configuration of the machine, what are the Maya and OS versions etc?
Do you have another machine into your environment where you can try to replicate the issue?

[fbb]

The strange mouse behavior that I described in my first paragraph has been going on for at least a year. So yeah, I've experienced that with previous versions of Vray, though I can't say for certain which ones, except that they are all in the version 3 series. During much of that time, Vray has been set as my default renderer.


In relation the second set of problems I've been having with my mouse and keyboard, its worth noting that the scene I've been working on since installing the latest version within the last week or so, is one that was originally created in Maya 2013 using Vray 2. I simply opened it in Maya 2016 under Vray 3 and saved it as a new scene. Perhaps this move between software versions could be responsible somehow. Also, the bounding box of the scene is quite large. I keep getting a warning to that effect from Vray, though as yet I haven't seen any problems in the renders. the camera culling settings have been set to reflect the size of the scene. Something else I've noticed is that this problem seems most likely to occur when I am currently looking through one of my custom cameras (it may do so exclusively under these conditions).


This is a project for a client, so I can't send the full scene, but I've created a version of it that is suitably stripped down and I've confirmed that the problem still occurs in it. It is attached.

To reproduce the problem:

1. In the perspective viewport, switch to viewing from the camera: RenderCam03
2. Open the render settings dialogue
3. try typing new values for the render resolution

If you experience the problem I am having, you should be unable to enter a new value, the mouse will start flickering, and your cpu cycles should shoot up for no apparent reason.


My system stats are below:


Maya: 2016 Extension 1 + SP 6
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64bit


CPU: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07GHz Bloomfield 45nm Technology
RAM: 24.0GB Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 534MHz (8-8-8-20)
Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P6X58D-E (LGA1366)
GPU: 4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X (EVGA)
Monitors: HDMI (1920x1080@60Hz); BenQ EW2420 (1920x1080@60Hz); BenQ EW2420 (1920x1080@60Hz)
Storage:
111GB INTEL SSDSC2CW120A (SSD)
223GB SanDisk SDSSDXPS240G (SSD) 32 °C
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (SATA) 29 °C
1397GB Seagate ST31500341AS (SATA) 37 °C
0B Seagate ST2000DM001-1CH164 (SATA) 29 °C
2794GB Seagate ST3000DM001-9YN166 (SATA) 35 °C

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Thanks for the scene and the steps-to-reproduce the issue, we managed to replicate the issue and will try to sort it out for the next official 3.50.01.
Until then you may use the following mel to "fix" the issue when it arises but please be informed that you are using it at your own risk, we do not take any responsibility if it breaks the scene.

//get all registered scriptJobs
string $allJobs[] = `scriptJob -listJobs`;

//some string to work with
string $toSeek = "vrayRenderableCamerasLayout";
string $toMatch = ("*" + $toSeek + "*");

//Declare empty variables
int $size = size($allJobs);
int $isMatched = 0;
int $indexMatched = 0;
int $jobID = 0;
string $jobIDBuffer[] = {};

//iterate through scriptJob list
for ($i=0; $i<size($allJobs); ++$i) {
    $isMatched = `gmatch $allJobs[$i] $toMatch`;
    $indexMatched = $i;

    //break when match is found
    if ($isMatched==1) {
        break;
    }

}

//obtain the ID to kill
if ($isMatched==1) {
    string $matchedJob = $allJobs[$indexMatched];
    tokenize $matchedJob ":" $jobIDBuffer;
    $jobID = $jobIDBuffer[0];
    scriptJob -kill $jobID;
    print ("Killed scriptJob ID " + $jobID);
}

[fbb]

That works. Thanks!

Can you quickly explain to me what that script is doing so I can use it with some ability to assess the potential risks?

[Svetlozar Draganov]

When the issue occurs the same actions loop in the script editor over and over again, if you open it you'll see what I am talking about.
What script does is to find which job triggers those loop and then kills it.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

One more thing, the issue only appears when some Maya windows are open.
In your scene for example if you open it and then close all the windows like Outliner, HyperShader and etc you won't be able to replicate the issue!
Same workflow might be used to terminate the issue if it is already there, just close all Maya windows and it should disappears.

[fbb]

Thanks for the extra info!

[Svetlozar Draganov]

This issue has been fixed for the next official version.
Thank you very much for your collaboration.