2.25 models being dropped, badly Tweet

[protovu]

Hi Sighman,
Model dropping during renders is something that presented in 2.24, and quickly drove me back to 2.17. Now it is happening again in 2.25. I cannot upload proprietary files, but when I get caught up on deadlines, I will try to make a file that emulates the failure here. I suspect that something in compilation is broken.

Notes - If a model is showing during the initial frames of the render, it will make it through, it seems. But, I am not positive, if this is the case completely. If, during the render, a new model is supposed to appear, it will not. My last render dropped about 8 models. Some of these were very simple meshes. Some were very simple spline models. Some had very basic materials. Some more complex materials and meshes. My file is large, 200 mb. By far, 2.17 is better at not dropping models.

One work around for this: Start renders at transition points (model appearance points). This would be fine if I could schedule renders in segments that correspond to model appearances. Absent batch queue, this work around basically disables production time, forcing me to babysit renders on a computer that should be used for animating, etc. But, I suspect that even this strategy might fail, because even with 2.17, shut downs and re-launches were required for better model appearance, and fewer crashes.

Thank you in advance for your help,
Rick
win 7 64
dual xeon
32 GB ram
2 titanX
1 GeForce970

[Sighman]

All models must be loaded into the scene prior to rendering but their visibility can be toggled on and off during an animation. I assume this is what you are doing. My guess is that something is going wrong when visibility gets toggled. I will need to setup a series of tests to try to reproduce this issue. I am away this week so you will have to wait until April.

One possible workaround would be to enable the Octane object layer on the models you want to hide and use the object layer settings to toggle visibility instead of the general visibility setting. This will cause all models to be loaded on each frame which may avoid the dropped model issue.

[protovu]

Thank you for your response, Sighman.
Yes, I am toggling visibility within scenes, but sometimes models are pre-visible, but out of the render field. These fly in. They effectively are toggled visible to prior to entering the render field. If I start the render with say, just the tip of an instrument peeking on the edge of the render field, it will render, it seems. Without the peeking, doesn't want to appear.

So in summation, visibility toggling has been done, and failed 3 ways to date:
1. using the "Visible" check box under the General Tab.
2. flying in from off screen
3. using the opacity channel of the material as a toggle

Thank you for the Octane object layer tip. Looking forward to trying, and will keep you posted.
Best,
Rick

[protovu]

Hi Sighman,
Quick question on object layers:
Is there a best practices method? I am looking, but not seeing if each object should have its own layer. Can a grouping share an object layer?
Should layers be foreground to background?
Thanks,
Rick

[protovu]

Hi Sighman,
Unfortunately, every variation of objects layers is proving even less consistent in model rendering, requiring scene rebuilds for toggling between a model being either visible or not. Looks like it will be a terrific feature downstream, but not helpful now. I know you are taking off, but anything you can offer on this before I go back to 2.17 again is appreciated.

[Sighman]

Thank you for your response, Sighman.
Yes, I am toggling visibility within scenes, but sometimes models are pre-visible, but out of the render field. These fly in. They effectively are toggled visible to prior to entering the render field. If I start the render with say, just the tip of an instrument peeking on the edge of the render field, it will render, it seems. Without the peeking, doesn't want to appear.

So in summation, visibility toggling has been done, and failed 3 ways to date:
1. using the "Visible" check box under the General Tab.
2. flying in from off screen
3. using the opacity channel of the material as a toggle

Thank you for the Octane object layer tip. Looking forward to trying, and will keep you posted.
Best,
Rick

I find it odd that objects off screen don't render when they come into view. This is a definite indicator of a more serious issue. It would really help to have a scene that demonstrates these issues. I'm sorry the object layers aren't working either. This is definitely something that is going to take some time to diagnose. I don't have any other suggestions at this time.

[protovu]

Hi Sighman,
Perhaps this is some indicator:
I just rendered the file in 2.17. Nothing was dropped, all models present, no problems for 1488 frames. No object layers were used. Quite a relief, given deadline issues.

I am attaching a test file that I used to try to get object layers to work with in 2.25. The objects in it failed to show prior to the experimentation in the larger file, unless as mentioned,
they were present prior to starting the animation render. With this file, "-object layers.car", just toggling between frames caused object "disappearance". I did not include the fly in failure here.
Sorry, should have.

One more clue, but probably irrelevant: Working in 2.25, not animating, is good. No crashes. Working in 2.17, crashes when navigating once some rendering is done. Example: edit scene, frame 200. Render a frame or 2.
If I navigate to frame 140, crash/hang, sometimes a runtime error.

Thank you for your help,
Rick

[Sighman]

Hi Sighman,
Perhaps this is some indicator:
I just rendered the file in 2.17. Nothing was dropped, all models present, no problems for 1488 frames. No object layers were used. Quite a relief, given deadline issues.

I am attaching a test file that I used to try to get object layers to work with in 2.25. The objects in it failed to show prior to the experimentation in the larger file, unless as mentioned,
they were present prior to starting the animation render. With this file, "-object layers.car", just toggling between frames caused object "disappearance". I did not include the fly in failure here.
Sorry, should have.

One more clue, but probably irrelevant: Working in 2.25, not animating, is good. No crashes. Working in 2.17, crashes when navigating once some rendering is done. Example: edit scene, frame 200. Render a frame or 2.
If I navigate to frame 140, crash/hang, sometimes a runtime error.

Thank you for your help,
Rick

With regards to -object layers.car:
This seems to be a bug in Octane and not the plugin. The two 'blanket' objects are two instances of the same mesh and are in exactly the same position. Only the first instance gets rendered in this case. I can only submit this as a bug to the Octane team as there is nothing I can do to work around this particular issue. I tried offsetting one of the meshes by a miniscule amount and it then rendered properly.

[Sighman]

I'm afraid this is a limitation of octane. According to the developers:

object visibility is decided during render time and we don't allow multiple intersections at the same point in space. As a consequence, one of the two surfaces is picked during ray tracing (more or less randomly) and the other is ignored. The object visibility is checked after ray-tracing and therefore the other surface is lost even if the picked surface is actually not visible.

This basically means that you cannot use object layers to hide objects that occupy the same space. You have to use general visibility. I need a scene that demonstrates your issues that does not use object layers.

[protovu]

Hi Sighman,
I may have messed up our control group.
Re-addressing:
the new attached file uses object layers, and they work like a charm, in 2.17. With the previously uploaded file, I may have
misled, as I did not want both objects to render simultaneously in the same space, but simply to toggle.

So, back to the original issue: models not showing up in 2.25, with or without object layers is the real problem. This is a major problem, shutting me out of 2.25.

Thank you for your help,
Rick