Vray Proxies rendering checkerboard style

[Terri Brown]

hi guys,

 

I was wondering if anyone had this happen to them when rendering vray proxies of grass? Seems to only happen on my grass as the trees are proxies too.

 

Bizarre.

 

I'm using Itoo Forest Pro - I'm wondering if it's a setting in there.

Anyway, here's the test render and some of my settings (3Ds Max 2011 64bit with VRay 2.4)

 

 

thanks for any feedback,

T

[cg_Butler]

Odd considering you're not distributed rendering...... It looks like a material problem. I assume the darker buckets are correct and not the lighter ones?

[Corey Beaulieu]

Are you drawing those maps from a network? I have run across this, but as Andy said only while DR-ing, and the solve was to Resolve UNC Paths in the asset manager.

 

It's worth a try: Shift+T to open your manager, select all maps and all proxies, Right+Click and choose Resolve UNC Path.

 

It won't harm anything if it is not the answer, but it's a quick thing to try.

[Terri Brown]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

 

Andy - Yip the darker buckets are correct.

 

Corey - Yes all maps are on our network. Thanks for the advice - will give it a go and let you know what happens.

[Terri Brown]

Hi guys,

 

So I never got round to testing Corey's solution as the next render I did rendered fine. The only change in my settings was that I pumped up the light cache passes and subdivisions, and increased my ADMC settings slightly. I'm still not certain what the cause was.

 

Here's the render:

 

[cg_Butler]

In my opinion there is nothing worse than not finding out why these things happen! It's frustrating! But on the flip side i'm so glad that whatever you did, your problem went away.

 

Nice render too by the way.

[Terri Brown]

thanks

 

It's not the final one, just one the architects can work with in the meantime - when i get a chance i'll go back and work on it a bit more. Will hopefully remember to post the updated version!

 

Thanks for all the help

[Terri Brown]

Hi guys I'm back.

 

Bad news - the checkerboard is back too. I have a feeling it's a render setting as it's a totally different material to my grass. And bizarre that it always seems to happen at the bottom of the render. See attached water:

 

some settings:

 

i'd love to get to the source of this. All suggestions welcome...

[Arnold Sher]

okay...we had this issue before... Frustrating indeed, we tried everything and we could not come right till we reset vray. We went and chose scanline then chose vray back again and the problem was gone... Hopefully that helps...

[Terri Brown]

Thanks Arnold i'll give that a try.

 

it's strange that i only ever get it on that particular camera view though and not the others in my scene.

[Chris MacDonald]

Try checking "check for missing maps" in the system rollout. It's solved a few issues for me before, though not all.

[cg_Butler]

We'll get to the bottom of this! Does it happen when you override everything with a white Vray material? This will test if it is a material problem or not.

[Devin Johnston]

This happens to me occasionally, I usually restart the nodes and my main machine and it goes away. I tend to think one or more of the nodes isn't calculating the lighting properly, wish I knew why.

[Terri Brown]

Hi guys,

 

sorry but i had a deadline so didn't have time to reply. But guess what? The checkerboard has reared it's ugly head again in another image...and once more on the grass only. I think i'll try each suggestion one at a time so i know the solution if anything works!

 

PS Devin : when you say 'restart the nodes', what do you mean exactly? Sorry but i'm not a super techie gal.

 

Gotta love problem solving.

[cg_Butler]

I just read back through this, as I was having a problem myself with buckets not rendering properly. We've not asked how you are rendering this image.

 

Are you sending it to a network render? Or is it just your machine rendering it on it's own? If it is a network render, are you sending it in strips?

 

By "nodes" Devin means any other computers you are using on a network, if you are. Hence my question.

[Terri Brown]

Hi Andy,

 

I'm rendering on my own machine, but it's accessing all the files and textures on the network. Proxies are saved onto my machine.

 

So no other nodes then.

[tonyo_d]

First merge xrefs in your scene if you have any. I've seen irradiance maps go nuts because of xrefs.

 

Then make sure that the "check for missing files" option is checked.

 

Then i'd try to send the job to backburner manager, with the option "include maps" on. That will pack every file including proxies in the same zip (backburner job). Then run the backburner server on your computer. All files will be seen as local by max. If there are missing maps, backburner server will tell you.

 

ALSO If you made your grass with forest pack pro, make sure that you update to the latest version. Older versions have problems with some non-english or special characters in proxy names.

 

One last thing: 4000MB dynamic memory seems a little low for that much polys. If your system can afford it, I would upgrade to at least 6000.

 

That should do the trick.

Edited August 3, 2013 by tonyo_d

[Terri Brown]

Thanks Vincent,

 

Any idea though as to why the water would render that way if it's not a proxy? And if i merge all my proxies won't it make the file super heavy?

[Terri Brown]

ok, so wierdly i re-rendered this over the wknd - the same image, no adjustments as you had all suggested as of yet, and the water came out fine. I didn't change the material...nudda.

 

here it is and my render settings too. i'm going to do a white override and see what happens. have attached the other image that was giving hassles too.

 

[tonyo_d]

Hi Terri.

I was talking about merging xrefs, not proxies.

Personally, as your problem is happening randomly, I think your main issue could be the lack of dynamic memory. Your scene contains a whole lot of polys.

[Terri Brown]

ah ok, sorry Vincent i mis-read your post. The only kind of xref i have is a file reference of the ACAD plan. i'll delete it.

 

Is dynamic memory different to installed memory (RAM)? I have 12 GB of RAM, which i thought was pretty sufficient. Is it a case of freeing up memory in the actual file?

 

Oof and I've never used backburner. We had a render guy in my old job that took care of all this stuff - i could just concentrate on the fun part. Now i'm The All-In-One, so i haven't got round to tackling everything yet. It's always a good chance to learn. I just zone out when it comes to techie stuff...similar to filling in tax forms and remembering how to change a car tyre.

Edited August 6, 2013 by terribrown

[Terri Brown]

ok, so...

 

I checked for missing files and corrected all lost links.

I reset Vary to scanline and back

I deleted all file references (don't have any xrefs)

And there are no non-english/special characters in my proxy names

 

nothing worked.

 

only thing left to do is Corey's suggestion:

 

"It's worth a try: Shift+T to open your manager, select all maps and all proxies, Right+Click and choose Resolve UNC Path.

 

It won't harm anything if it is not the answer, but it's a quick thing to try."

 

and look into dynamic memory...which i tried to research but am not really understanding at the moment!

 

Here's another camera rendering checkerboard on my GRASS AGAIN. (Excuse the disasters happening on the rest of the image;)

 

help!

Edited August 8, 2013 by terribrown

[Terri Brown]

and here's the info on my scene - the memory stats look ok to me. But i could be wrong, as i often am...

[cg_Butler]

I think we need to cencentrate on your grass. How is the grass made and rendered?

 

I do notice though that your virtual memory is 24GB and your machine only has 12GB. I think I'm right in saying that when you are rendering, your machine is needing 24GB or memory to render the image. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. So your machine will use your 12GB of RAM up, then create a page file on your hard drive and use that as "virtual RAM"

 

Lets focus on your grass.......can you explain what is is, how it's made, show the material and any plugins you are using.

[Terri Brown]

ok thanks Andy i'll get on that.

 

the only thing that puzzles me and seems to point to insufficient memory is that it happened on the water too.