Rendering issue

garadir

Hi All,

I am assuming this is a memory leak issue as it appears the most logical deduction but I can't seem to find a way to get round it.... I have tolerated it for ages since changing from DS3 to DS4 this error started with DS4.5 but it is steadily getting worse and more frequent.

I am experiencing an issue that I am getting very bright couloured cross-hairs on the produced renders and it seems the only thing I can do is keep re-doing the render and monitoring task manager to see what if anything I can close down.  Most of the time I have absolutely nothing running but DAZ and have gone as far as turning my router off so I have no network and can unload the AV and firewall so it is the only thing working but still get the issue.  I have been known to have to run a single render more than ten times before it works.

I have tried reducing the amount of items in the scene - which is a pain as I am trying to produce a comic and therefore need a filled scene so I can rotate the cameras instead of having to reload and repose each item per render.  I have made sure there are no reflections, no transparencies, limited the amount of lights and shadows (another fight I am having with DS 4.7 as it doesn't seem to behave how 3 used to and not found a work around yet, meaning a good daylight is hard to get, even using the Light Dome LE plug-in I used to use).  I have tried adjusting gamma settings instead of relying on the default, but then even adjusting the shading rate in the render settings DAZ appears to lose all shadows and hair becomes like a ghost and the characters look bald.  I tend to reduce the number of images in RAM anyway as I load my own cloth textures which I apply to multiple figures as a base cloth texture. I thought it may be the case that my swap file was too large as I have a tendency to leave my PC on sleep instead of turning it off so that I can just carry on wiithout reloading the scene, but I have proven that makes no difference either.

Any tips anyone?  I can only see this as a memory leak issue but happy to bow to expertise.

I am on a phenom Quad core 2Ghz system (yes I know it's getting old, but I'm not spending money to have the same issue with a new system)

4Gb DDR2

Dual graphics (Nvidia onboard which I have allowed the RAM to be used as cache in the BIOS improving performance) and an NVidia graphics card with 512Gb VRAM.

Multi -SATA2 none-hybrid HDD - libraries on one HDD, OS on another

Windows 10 64bit (previously Win 7 Home 64bit) - i did find that changing the affinity of apps across cores could give a slight improvement but Microsoft have kindly decided that's not possible in Windows 10 - or have done a good job of hiding it.

My current scene is taking only 205Mb memory and so far I'm on render 6.  I have attached a cropped capture (yes there are reflections in this set) that is showing the issue in the centre of her forehead - (this is unusual that it is only one dot, normally there are seven or eight) and also shows the day-light issue I'm having as well (there are actually 9 distant lights on in this scene (2L, 2R, 2F, 2B 4 pointing up (no shadows), 4 pointing down (software shadow) and a sun (software shadow)) set to point at a null object at x0, y160, z0 - she is at x30, y0, z5.05) but i can fight that myself if I can get rid of the 'leak issue'.  Incidentally, after capuring this - the next render (attempt 7) worked - again with no changes to the scene.

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance

prixat

Is 'Software Shadow' the same as Deep Shadow map?

It looks like the 'bright squares' issue that is a known problem with 3Delight and Deep Shadow maps.

Richard Haseltine

Are you sure none of your lights are using Depth mapped Shadows?

garadir

Yes - my bad, i did mean Deep Shadow Map.  I tend to just think of it as software as it is not the OpenGL hardware render. 

In the current set there is some major improvement in moving and rescaling the distant lights, the issue is occuring less and needing fewer re-renders now I have a decent lighting but when it goes it really goes.  Compare these 2 shots - the fail and the immediate unchaged next re-render.

prixat

Try changing the 'Deep Shadow maps' to 'Raytracing' shadows.

garadir

I should have said earlier that as I am trying to produce a comic and not photo realistic artwork I tend not to use rayracing for anything - it is all deep shadow map as it is quicker on my system and I like the effect of it just as much.

SimonJM

Try and make the total intensity of all the DSM lights to less than, or equal 100.  That ahs been mentioned in the past as a way to either prvent or much reduce the incidence of those artefacts.

mjc1016

garadir said:

I should have said earlier that as I am trying to produce a comic and not photo realistic artwork I tend not to use rayracing for anything - it is all deep shadow map as it is quicker on my system and I like the effect of it just as much.

Doesn't matter what style you are going for, deep shadowmap IS your problem.  You can do things to minimize it, but you cannot make it go away.  It isn't as bad of a problem in animated clips, which is probably the ONLY time DSM should EVER be used,  because the constant movement and single frame nature of the glitch make it nearly not noticible.

A bit of history....

This particular 'bug' has been plaguing 3DL and almost all Renderman compliant renderers from the beginning...it is not going to be fixed...ever...it's too deep seated a problem for there to be an easy fix (if there was one, it would happened by now).  The several Pixar movies used raytraced shadows, because it seems that Pixar has given up trying to fix it in Renderman.  For 3DL, I haven't seen of any work or even requests for a fix in a few years....in fact some of the recent replies (last couple years, really) from 3DL devs...'Use raytraced shadows.', especially for stills.   What it boils down to is that the problem is a fundemental flaw or shortcoming in the DSM process itself.

Besides, the builds of 3DL since midway through the 11 releases have been even to slightly faster with raytraced shadows....and that last few builds (the one right after the build in Studio 4.8.0.59) and all the 12 builds are noticeably to significantly faster with raytraced shadows.

garadir

I just noticed I never said thank you to mjc1016.  A year late but thank you, you were spot on and switching to ray trace only resolved that issue.

mjc1016

No problem...

DSM is one of the things I wish they would finally drop from 3DL, but the problem is, that it does have some use in animation pipelines.  Beause of the moving nature of most animation, the problem showing in a frame or two isn't enough to really matter (plus it can be minimized in post).  For stills, though, it continues to be a source of frustration.

garadir

Certainly frustration for me, I've gone grey now haha.  I just wish I could stop Daz trying to Iray now - my system can't cope with it - well, it can but the system is frozen for until the render is finished - and my settings are set to use 3DL only but slowly finding work arounds, normally having to force DS3 shaders on to the tem(s) and then work back up.  The Iray engine is a nightmare for me.