Activeshade freezing.

[wyszolmirski]

Hi,

Very annoying issue started happening to me, and I'm trying to figure it out. Seems like there is something wrong with my configuration.

Lately very often 3ds Max freezes while rendering with RT CUDA + Active Shade. It basically hangs until RT finishes it's job by hitting max samples or max time, when there is no limit I have to kill the process, otherwise it will go forever. It's not really any particular scene so I can't provide anything that could help with reproduction. But I hope that maybe someone had this happening and there is easy solution.

I tried reinstalling drivers, going back to older ones. Unplugging monitors my GTX 970 and using another card, but that's not it... It happens also while rendering via distributed (without local slave). Sometimes after restarting my machine it works for one or 2 renders correctly, sometimes not.

I'm using 3ds Max 2015 + latest nighly build from 30th of April.

[vlado]

You mean it no longer updates on scene changes, but continues to render the image?

Best regards,
Vlado

[wyszolmirski]

I mean that it continues to render the image but does not update frame buffer and doesn't let me do any changes in max.

So it will just freeze max and framebuffer for the time of rendering in Active Shade. If rendering finishes than framebuffer is updated with finished image and max unfreezes.

Best,

[vlado]

I see. Which 3ds Max version? Are you running it in a viewport or in the V-Ray VFB?

Can you get me a mini dump of 3dsmax.exe to vlado@chaosgroup.com when this happens again? Using Process Explorer for example. It will tell me exactly where things are stuck.

Best regards,
Vlado

[wyszolmirski]

Hi,

I sent the minidump.

The issue went away for a while. But keeps coming back at random (at least I don't see any pattern) and it's very annoying. Working with activeshade is basically impossible when this happens.

Best,

[vlado]

Thanks; did you send the dump to the support guys (just so as I know where to look for it)?

Best regards,
Vlado

[wyszolmirski]

I did send it directly to you, probably get lost somewhere or maybe got to spam ?

Just resend it.

Best,

[tashko.zashev]

I did send it directly to you, probably get lost somewhere or maybe got to spam ?

Just resend it.

Best,

If there are any problems, you can send a copy of the mail to our support system as well and we will forward it to Vlado.

[vlado]

I got it, thanks!

Best regards,
Vlado

[wyszolmirski]

I downgraded today to 3ds Max 2015 SP2 instead of SP3. Maybe it's just coincidence but for now it seems to be OK.

Best,

[vlado]

You are not using the V-Ray VFB for this, correct? Is the ActiveShade in a viewport, or it's the 3ds Max VFB in a floating ActiveShade window?

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Hm, but on the other hand, in the video I see the V-Ray VFB... odd. Anyways, thanks a lot for the dump!

Best regards,
Vlado

[wyszolmirski]

Yes, VFB only. For now all works well with Max SP2. But others reported that occasionally it freezes like this on SP2 as well. Not sure whats the issue.

The only other thing that I changed yesterday was switching all the Windows localization to English(US) as I had some issues with Max and it's interpretation of "." and "," for float values.

Best,

[vlado]

Ok. For some reason, we are still dumping stuff into the Max window and I think this is the problem. Will try to fix that.

Best regards,
Vlado

[wyszolmirski]

Thanks Vlado. Hope it's easy fix.

Best,