only using a 3rd the power

[gah5118]

Don't know for the low GPU power but for the alpha channel it could just be a straight alpha, I think Maya default to straight, if you want premul alpha make sure "premultiplied aplha" is enable in the camera setting.

premul.jpg

Is the slow rendering happening for every scene or just with particular scene ?

Thanks!

[calus]

Hi Gah,

I see you talking about your low GPU power issue in Octane for Maya in numerous threads all over the forum but I think you're not informative enough about this specific problem to be be solved.

Help us to help you, please !

1/ activate the verbose mode, post a maya scene where you are sure to have the problem, post also the rendering log and a screenshot of your GPU utility showing the low GPU power used rendering this scene.
Even if you think the problem is not relative to a specific scene, we have to test this, maybe it's relative to specific nodes conflicts in your scenes due to other plugins or to your specific Octane for Maya Installation.
So we need to confirm first that the problem is reproducible or not with an example scene.

2/In case we confirmed this is not a scene specific problem, uninstall octaneForMaya, install an older versions of OctaneForMaya to confirm you have the same problems with all version. Maybe we will find a not too old version where the problem doesn't exist...

3/In case you have the problem with all the plugin version, delete your maya preferences, and deactivate all your plugins except Octane (even mental-ray). Close all application on your computer. And test again. This is to check if the issue com from a plugin or a software conflict.

4/ If nothing worked, it can be due to a Cuda Error which trigger a change of p-state for yours GPUs. Activate the verbose mode and try to find in the logs a Cuda error or anything which can give us a clue of what's going on here. Also try to install an older version of your NVIDIA drivers or a more recent one.

5/Or if you are not in a hurry, don't do anything I suggest here, and just wait for the V3 beta of the plugin which is coming soon, maybe you won't have this problem in V3 plugin as the renderer has a new core.

[gah5118]

This helps to give direction as to where to start investigating since all I know are the symptoms I am experiencing.

thanks I will work through this list today if possible and report results.

[gah5118]

unfortunately, i can't post any of the scenes I am working with since they are not our property and NDA.

however, here are some of the latest finds after updating to the latest dev release.

when watching card utilization,
maya - spikes for the first minute back and forth between 35-88%
octane 2.25 and 3 alpha 6 (3a6) - right of the bat, it goes to 80-90 % and fluctuates between there


time till completion
maya - for the first minute and most of the way through until closer to the end it reports 30 minutes; however, time of completion is 2:36
octane 2.25 - 1:27
octane 3a6 - 2:24

The difference isn't much at all between 3a6 and maya, but 1 minute between 2.25 and maya adds up when doing 50-100 renders at a time.

towards the end of the render, it seems to be running at the same speed as standalone. It just has a slow start. like a large truck getting to the same speed as a sports car.


I would post log files, but cant seem to find the location for 2016's logs.

[JimStar]

Increase the "Refresh time" value in Maya's Octane global settings for final renders. The less is this time - the more interactivity but the more interruptions for Octane render core to get the intermediate results by Maya. Set it to some like 3-5 seconds for final render.

[calus]

oh Gah your situation improves a lot with the 7.24 version of the plugin, this is good news, but without a test scene I'm afraid it will be very hard to guess the problem here.
But reading your new comments I'm pretty sure now the problem is scene relative, maybe relative to your workflow.
I think in the export process to standalone it may eliminates what causes the GPU wierdness.

So i see tow way to proceed now :
1/ try to recreate a scene you can share, with the same problem.

2/ or you have to debug the scene yourself:
first check the render logs, if you're using IPR this is only in the script editor, but make sure to enable "verbose" in the render settings.
And paste from the script editor to here anything you find suspect. If nothing suspect :
- try to delete progressivly all geometry and render, if GPUs are style erratic then the problem could be with double nodes : several octaneSettings nodes or several octane sunsky nodes or something else, and maybe you can share the scene with no geometry ?
- or export all geometry as .mb, open exported scene select octane as renderer and render, are the GPU still erratics ?
...

[gah5118]

I will check that out jim. Thanks!


And will look into these other areas calus. Thanks again!

[calus]

Increase the "Refresh time" value in Maya's Octane global settings for final renders. The less is this time - the more interactivity but the more interruptions for Octane render core to get the intermediate results by Maya. Set it to some like 3-5 seconds for final render.

Oh I see, I hope this is the problem here, but Gah use one GPU for display and tow GPU for rendering, can the IPR refreshing pipe still slow down the render specific GPUs ?

[JimStar]

the more interruptions for Octane render core

This affects any GPU used for rendering.

[calus]

Thanks, it's a pretty important aspect of Octane for Maya implementation, I note it!