vrscene gui

[s_gru]

having some issues with vrscenegui, trying to use multiple GPU's to render an animation test file. i tried it a while ago (last year?) and it worked. but now having a couple issues.

1st, the rendered images/saved out as jpg or as openexr, are completely black.
2nd, i saw the following messages in the log of the IPR window:

[15:53:07.151] Warning : Num samples per thread reduced to 39619, rendering might be slower
[15:53:07.157] Warning : Num samples per thread reduced to 36276, rendering might be slower
[15:53:07.165] Warning : Num samples per thread reduced to 32768, rendering might be slower
[15:53:07.181] Warning : Num samples per thread reduced to 32768, rendering might be slower

attached is a screen shot of my settings in vrscene gui

i don't have facebook or reddit accounts so thought i would post it here as i've seen it talked about before.

my max scene has 1 animated camera in it. vray seems to launch just fine (4 total as i have multiple gpu selected). i save the bat files from the vrscene gui and just double-click to launch. that all seems to work ok as well.

thanks

[hermit.crab]

I'm not familiar with this third-party plugin. Does it happen in regular Standalone rendering? The warning message is for developer use, ignore it.

[s_gru]

i modified one of the bat files (which had a lot more things in it, like frame range, rt options, etc... to be the below still renders black. also attached another image that shows the progress, and it keeps repeating rendering pass 0.

is that set vray opencl incorrect?

this is the code generated by vrscenegui, but like i said i modified it to see if i could simplify it.

SET VRAY_OPENCL_PLATFORMS_x64=index0

"C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\VRay3d sMax2022\bin\vray.exe" -sceneFile="C:\Users\xxxxxxx\Desktop\POP\PrinceO fPeace-CompactB.vrscene" -imgFile="video01.jpg" -rtEngine=5

[s_gru]

i just tried this from vray standalone prompt:

vray -sceneFile="C:\Users\xxxxxxx\Desktop\POP\PrinceOfPe ace-CompactB.vrscene -rtEngine=5

same thing - black IPR window and that screen shot above rendering pass 0

ok so the scene has cosmos objects in it, forestpro objects, 1 camera which is animated, the render viewport is locked to the camera quad (if that matters), vray sun with clouds on. the drivers for my video cards are the latest recommended from choas 512.xx and i have the latest hotfix of version 6.

[hermit.crab]

The variable seems correct. Does it happen without it? Maybe index0 is not the right card - try another way to tag it (see this post).

[s_gru]

nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index0 #cuda_api;
nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index1 #cuda_api;
nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index2 #cuda_api;
nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index3 #cuda_api;
nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index2 #rtx_api;
nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index3 #rtx_api;
nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index2 #opencl_api;
nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index3 #opencl_api;

yeah here's my EVs. i'm going to try some other basic test scenes with standalone and see what happens. looks like there is a switch for setting which camera it renders. i'll add that and see if it works.

[s_gru]

same thing happens with this scene (attached). just black screen. this scene is not GPU.. just regular. hm. i looked at environment variables other than the ones above - do i need all of them listed?

[hermit.crab]

The scene renders fine on my end. There's no need to set all the environment variables (if they are already set in the Windows Environment Variable Options). By the way, I mislead you. That device select environment variable is deprecated and replaced with:

 VRAY_GPU_PLATFORMS

Though, I doubt it is part of the issue. What happens if you use the Export and Render option (.vrscene exporter) within 3ds Max? Is it still black?

[s_gru]

wow ok. i tried with a completely different scene (export and render) and take a look at this result.

on the left is the frame buffer and right pass 0 pass 0 pass o etc... the scene is an aerial spin around of a site with massing buildings on it. not complicated at all, low poly etc.

[s_gru]

i switched off my cuda cards and tried rendering with just the cpu (in vray gpu 6.xx) and got a render, but no black circle. then i tried using just 1 of the cards - they are GTX1080ti's and got the same result as pictured. here's some log info until it starts show "rendering image (pass 0)

10:38:08.090] V-Ray Frame Buffer message log initialized

[10:38:08.338] Using normal thread priority.

[10:38:09.178] Max ray intensity is enabled: rendered result may have incorrect brightness.

[10:38:09.181] ========================

[10:38:09.183] Starting frame 0.

[10:38:09.208] Estimated progressive buffer memory usage of 2325 MB is over the limit of 2048 MB. Falling back to per-pixel filtering.

[10:38:09.310] Adaptive dome light disabled for light "VRayLight001@light_13769" because light doesn't cast shadows

[10:38:09.314] Preparing scene for frame...: done [00:00:00.1] (100.0%)

[10:38:12.201] Compiling geometry...: done [00:00:02.9] (100.0%)

[10:38:12.206] Using Embree ray tracing.

[10:38:12.320] Building Embree static accelerator...: done [00:00:00.1] (100.0%)

[10:38:12.323] Building Embree static trees took 115 milliseconds, memory used 115.61 MB

[10:38:12.374] Scanning scene for light plugins.

[10:38:12.377] 2 lights found.

[10:38:12.379] Using probabilistic light evaluation with 8 lights.

[10:38:12.387] nVidia driver version: 512.59

[10:38:12.402] Querying for CUDA devices...

[10:38:13.263] Device[0]: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (WDDM mode) has compute capability 6.1. PCI Bus ID: 0000:0A:00.0

[10:38:13.399] Using 5 threads per GPU device

[10:38:13.776] Building dynamic meshes trees: done [00:00:00.0] (100.0%)

[10:38:13.788] BUILDING Embree dynamic geometry tree for GPU

[10:38:13.790] Embree dynamic geometry tree contains 704 primitives.

[10:38:13.793] Embree dynamic geometry tree built in 0.71 ms.

[10:38:13.808] Uploading GPU nodes buffers...: done [00:00:00.0] (100.0%)

[10:38:13.817] Building GPU dynamic nodes...: done [00:00:00.0] (100.0%)

[10:38:13.827] Scene contains 2 lights

[10:38:13.928] PTX file generated with CUDA Toolkit v10.0 for CUDA compute capability 3.0.

[10:38:14.210] Compiling kernels for device NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti: done [00:00:00.3] (100.0%)

[10:38:14.213] Maximum kernel work group size: 1024

[10:38:14.219] Running RTEngine

[10:38:14.245] Using adaptive lights ver2

[10:38:14.455] Rendering image (pass 0) [00:00:00.2] [00:00:00.0 est] (0.0%)

[10:38:14.656] Rendering image (pass 0) [00:00:00.4] [00:00:00.0 est] (0.0%)

[10:38:14.861] Rendering image (pass 0) [00:00:00.6] [00:00:00.0 est] (0.0%)

[10:38:15.062] Rendering image (pass 0) [00:00:00.8] [00:00:00.0 est] (0.0%)

[10:38:15.251] Rendering image (pass 0) [00:00:01.0] [00:00:00.0 est] (0.0%)

[10:38:15.454] Rendering image (pass 0) [00:00:01.2] [00:00:00.0 est] (0.0%)

[s_gru]

under Render Setup > Perf. tab > V-Ray GPU Render Devices Select here's what in the "log" there when i added back all the gpus

Successfuly updated user environment variable to: nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index0 #cuda_api;nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index1 #cuda_api;nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index2 #cuda_api;nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index3 #cuda_api;nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index2 #rtx_api;nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index3 #rtx_api;nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index2 #opencl_api;nvidia cuda nvidia geforce gtx 1080 ti gpu index3 #opencl_api;

[hermit.crab]

Quite odd. Does the vrscenegui mess around with Environment Variables? Check for something out of the ordinary. Otherwise, it would be best to arrange a remote session and try troubleshooting directly on the workstation. Use the contact form and mention this thread.

[s_gru]

i don't see that it does mess with the Env Vars. It does create batch files, so cmd prompt, and i can't see anything in there.

also the last couple of test scene's i've done was just from the vrscene exporter, bypassing the vrscene gui app. i've also tried command line from vray standalone without success.

thanks,