Update 1 Breaks Channels - Do Not Use (unless....)

[delineator]

Hey all, update 1 using existing files and settings causes the base channels to behave unexpectedly, almost as if the env. settings are different (see below). However, once settings are reset, some of the issues are resolved. I'm working thru various iterations right now testing and will updated this thread once I think I nailed down the issues. The channels in question are lighting, raw light, gi, raw gi, refl, raw refl, refr, raw refr, shadows and raw shadows.

Reading thru the release notes, it is not apparent to me if this is a result of the new translation settings/upgrades or if it is indeed a bug. Either way, this is a huge deal for us and our pipeline as we count on consistent and reliable results. The one scene I am testing is an exterior lit by a dome light using an hdri.

[delineator]

Confirmed - the raw reflection seems fixed, however the regular reflection, lighting, raw lighting, gi, raw gi, shadow and raw shadows are not just different, but WILDLY different. I have no idea whats going on, but I need to roll back until CG can figure out a solution. Overall - not pleased, not pleased

[konstantin_chaos]

Can you try disabling the Adaptive option of the Dome?
I'm still investigating the issue but that's what I think is causing it.

[delineator]

I suspect something with the dome as well, as the skylight cast appears to be the major difference. We have been disabling the adaptive dome by default because it causes some unwelcome issues, and I just confirmed and the dome adaptive for this scene is off (though on for another scene - when we have multiple scenes in a model, we assign the domelight components to layers and save them as on/off on a scene by scene basis. Not sure if this matters)

[konstantin_chaos]

Can you please export and share a vrscene or better yet the packed SketchUp project?

Here's what I suspect:
There is a new option in V-Ray Core called - Consistent Render Elements.
It gets automatically enabled when an adaptive dome is present in the scene.
It seems to be enabled in your scene as well - for reasons unknown.

[delineator]

BING! I'm about to test other scenes to verify and will update, but yes, the issue did appear to be the adaptive feature for the dome lights. NOTE: this was turned OFF for the dome light being used in that scene, however, it was ON for another dome in the model (even though that dome light was turned off via a layer state). So it would appear the issue is ANY dome light having that enabled calls the "consistent render elements" function to enable and results in different render channels.

My question is: what is the function of consistent render elements? is it something we should be using? I know we like to turn the "adaptive" dome option off, though I'm not 100% sure why (something with one of the channels I believe)

[delineator]

Quick update - previous to update 1, when we used adaptive dome on an exterior, the raw light and raw total light would get some weird blocky artifacts, making them unusable. I didn't know if this was an issue with adaptive domes or denoised channels (vray denoiser), so we have just been disabling adaptive domes in the time being. It would appear that update 1 fixes the adaptive dome issue, so I think that might be the way forward. The only issue we and everyone else needs to be careful about is having a mix of adaptive/non-adaptive domes in a project if you rely on render channels because the "consistent render elements" changes the output of some of the raw channels as seen above.