One thought I already have.
It looks as it is not the Octane plugin crash, but another thing - windows just stopped the application that has blocked the graphic card for a long (long from the point of view of windows) amount of time (some seconds). I'm trying to remember where was the setting to change in windows, but I remember that I have already seen the similar issue, and already knew where was that setting to disable that check in windows... Perhaps some setting in GPU drivers... perhaps version of drivers itself... Don't remember at the time... I will search that info...
Maya crashes when I try to view material preview
Moderator: JimStar
i have been getting the same problem but not all the time. sometimes when i open a scene that was saved with the hypershade window left open it will hang maya unless if i can close the hypershade before the shader orbs start rendering. also it does seem like when the shader icons start rendering or when creating octane nodes in the hypershade maya comes to a crawl for about 30secs.
2x xeon5650 | 3 x titan | Win7 64 | maya2014x64 | mountain mods
nick
Thanks for info!
More and more I'm starting to think that this problem is bound to the graphic card capabilities and windows system settings. As what nick wrote - is normal for the way Maya works with material previews: Maya gets them from shaders syncronous way. Instead of giving the asyncronous callback to the shader which the shader can invoke asyncronously after the preview ball will be ready, Maya invokes syncronous function (in wich the shader must generate the preview), and waits, blocking main thread before the preview will be returned, then starts the next preview function, then the next, etc (if you open Hypershader with a lot of shader balls visible)...
And here goes to the scene the way how Octane engine makes these previews. In contrast to most shaders that generate these balls "fake way" by means of OpenGL (or DirectX), Octane generates these balls honestly, using its rendering engine with some "samples per pixel" value. E.g. when you open Hypershader, Maya calls each preview function twice - first to get the low-res image (and I see theat here the skywxp3d's GPU copes with it and these low-res balls are set to nodes preview), and second with hi-res (64x64 or 128x128) image, and here skywxp3d's GPU goes to block the Maya's main thread, as it syncronously renders the 128x128 image with 128 samples (that I've set as default) while Maya waits for it will be ready blocking itself... With most modern GPU's these 128 samples for 128x128 image are fast enough, but it turns out that for some it is the high value and the Maya hangs for some amount of time...
I think here may be two ways to workaround it: hack the windows settings to not kill the proccesses that have blocked for some time, and make the additional setting in Octane render settings "Swatch samples per pixel" to user can lower this setting if Octane swatches take a big time to generate... I will add this setting I think.
Only thing that does not fit into this theory - what skywxp3d wrote about the Octane settings window that opens weird way sometimes on his system... But it may be just another problem, not bound to the swatches one...
skywxp3d, can you please post the screenshots of how this weird opened settings window looks like?..
Thanks for info!
More and more I'm starting to think that this problem is bound to the graphic card capabilities and windows system settings. As what nick wrote - is normal for the way Maya works with material previews: Maya gets them from shaders syncronous way. Instead of giving the asyncronous callback to the shader which the shader can invoke asyncronously after the preview ball will be ready, Maya invokes syncronous function (in wich the shader must generate the preview), and waits, blocking main thread before the preview will be returned, then starts the next preview function, then the next, etc (if you open Hypershader with a lot of shader balls visible)...
And here goes to the scene the way how Octane engine makes these previews. In contrast to most shaders that generate these balls "fake way" by means of OpenGL (or DirectX), Octane generates these balls honestly, using its rendering engine with some "samples per pixel" value. E.g. when you open Hypershader, Maya calls each preview function twice - first to get the low-res image (and I see theat here the skywxp3d's GPU copes with it and these low-res balls are set to nodes preview), and second with hi-res (64x64 or 128x128) image, and here skywxp3d's GPU goes to block the Maya's main thread, as it syncronously renders the 128x128 image with 128 samples (that I've set as default) while Maya waits for it will be ready blocking itself... With most modern GPU's these 128 samples for 128x128 image are fast enough, but it turns out that for some it is the high value and the Maya hangs for some amount of time...
I think here may be two ways to workaround it: hack the windows settings to not kill the proccesses that have blocked for some time, and make the additional setting in Octane render settings "Swatch samples per pixel" to user can lower this setting if Octane swatches take a big time to generate... I will add this setting I think.
Only thing that does not fit into this theory - what skywxp3d wrote about the Octane settings window that opens weird way sometimes on his system... But it may be just another problem, not bound to the swatches one...
skywxp3d, can you please post the screenshots of how this weird opened settings window looks like?..
Man Im pretty crushed right now, I just completely uninstalled all 3d software and all Maya and autodesk folders, cleaned my registry and re-installed 2013 - and re-installed Octane for Maya, and SAME PROBLEM!! Im screwed... 
Update - just thought Id try it one more time, this time I switched from Direct Light to Path trace and it seems to be working now, although the render balls are just black... hmm
Update - this didnt seem to solve the issue, Maya shows the material shader ball once in a while, but it just crashes like crazy, Ill keep looking into it, Im pretty much out of options though
thanks,
Sky
Update - just thought Id try it one more time, this time I switched from Direct Light to Path trace and it seems to be working now, although the render balls are just black... hmm
Update - this didnt seem to solve the issue, Maya shows the material shader ball once in a while, but it just crashes like crazy, Ill keep looking into it, Im pretty much out of options though
thanks,
Sky
Sky Kensok
I hadnt read your previous post Jim, It seems the rendering settings window is working properly now since I re-installed everything.
Also wanted to update you that switching to path trace really didnt solve the problem, it seems to work to a point, but soon enough it will crash. I also noticed that if I have both of my cards checked to be used, it renders the shader ball a bit more before crashing... interesting based on your theory.
Let me know if you find a workaround on the settings, Id really like to start to render this scene!
thanks!
Sky
Also wanted to update you that switching to path trace really didnt solve the problem, it seems to work to a point, but soon enough it will crash. I also noticed that if I have both of my cards checked to be used, it renders the shader ball a bit more before crashing... interesting based on your theory.
Let me know if you find a workaround on the settings, Id really like to start to render this scene!
thanks!
Sky
Sky Kensok
