Restart Render bug(s) ?

[cedric_nivoliez]

Hi,

I have an issue with arnold and/or solaris when I restart a render.

This issue appears when I want to visualize the Pref AOV, when I work with multiple uv sets (when I restart, Arnold maps all my image on the first/default uv set), etc.. I guess the same problem can be found somewhere else.

In my Houdini Console I have this kind of warnings

I don't have any problems when rendering with kick, only inside Solaris.

Is this a known issue ?

I'm using Houdini 19.5.682 with HtoA 6.2.3.1 (Arnold 7.2.3.1)

Thanks

[cedric_nivoliez]

Any insight on this ?

I'm the only one to have this problem ?

To the Autodesk support team, the set-up is super simple, it should be easy to reproduce, test it and give me a feedback (even a small one)...

[Stephen.Blair]

Works fine for me with the latest HtoA.
Of course, your super-simple setup could be different than mine, since there's always different ways to do things in Houdini. But I've got a Pref attribute and two UV sets.

PS This is a peer-to-peer forum, not an official support forum. 

[cedric_nivoliez]

Thanks for the reply Stephen !

I'll try to update our arnold version and see how it goes.

[Stephen.Blair]

Or post your test scene and I'll try it here...

[cedric_nivoliez]

There it is.

So, when I start rendering and watch my Pref AOV I see the result as expected but when I restart the render the AOV goes black. If I enable the rendergeometrysettings1 and restart the render I see the Pref again, until I re-restart the render.

The solution I found is to had a render geometry settings and switch ON/OFF everytime I need to restart the render.

Yeah... this is weird !

Houdini FX Version 19.5.682

HtoA 6.2.3.1

Arnold 7.2.3.1

Thanks again

[peterDTE7K]

Solaris viewport is quite troubling:

1. I also often have this bug that render is just black in solaris.

2. Also sometimes the resolution is suddenly lower than it should be - render settings set to 1920x1920 but it renders in 655x655.

3. In the latest htoa in the Arnold "Image viewport" the render region tool is now fixed to render resolution aspect ratio, so if you have 1200x1200 render the render region tool is fixed to 1:1 square. Normal render region tool works, this only applies to the one in the Image viewport.

4. The viewport is still often crashing with error "SymInitialize returned error: 87" which has been already reported by quite a few people https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/arnold-for-houdini-forum/arnold-keeps-crashing-with-error-message-quo... and https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/arnold-for-houdini-forum/houdini-19-5-493-wih-htoa-6-1-4-2-syminitial... 

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

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@cedric_nivoliez wrote:

There it is.

So, when I start rendering and watch my Pref AOV I see the result as expected but when I restart the render the AOV goes black. If I enable the rendergeometrysettings1 and restart the render I see the Pref again, until I re-restart the render.

The solution I found is to had a render geometry settings and switch ON/OFF everytime I need to restart the render.

Yeah... this is weird !

Houdini FX Version 19.5.682

HtoA 6.2.3.1

Arnold 7.2.3.1

Thanks again

---

Sorry, I did not repro (reproduce the problem).

I restarted the render 10 times and it worked every time

Houdini 19.5.752

HtoA 6.2.4

Windows

Arnold 7.2.3.2 did have this fix, which kinda sounds relevant to your problem:

• usd#1625 - Fix issue where user-defined primvars were reset

[Stephen.Blair]

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@peterDTE7K wrote:

Solaris viewport is quite troubling:

1. I also often have this bug that render is just black in solaris.

2. Also sometimes the resolution is suddenly lower than it should be - render settings set to 1920x1920 but it renders in 655x655.

3. In the latest htoa in the Arnold "Image viewport" the render region tool is now fixed to render resolution aspect ratio, so if you have 1200x1200 render the render region tool is fixed to 1:1 square. Normal render region tool works, this only applies to the one in the Image viewport.

4. The viewport is still often crashing with error "SymInitialize returned error: 87" which has been already reported by quite a few people https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/arnold-for-houdini-forum/arnold-keeps-crashing-with-error-message-quo... and https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/arnold-for-houdini-forum/houdini-19-5-493-wih-htoa-6-1-4-2-syminitial... 

---

"SymInitialize returned error: 87" itself just means it crashed. I don't think there's any special meaning to the message itself, the crashes are all too different. The two linked reports may not even be in Solaris.

So what is important is what causes the crash...and if you have scene that reproduces the crash and that you can share. Or specific repro steps...

[peterDTE7K]

On latest htoa version I also could not reproduce Cedric's error.

SymInitialize error is kind of random and happens less often with this htoa version. The black screen error affects the view #5 Image viewport which is the most useful view for rendering. I use 2 viewports like in other DCCs - one to control the scene another one with Arnold for preview. I am attaching video which will reproduce the error but this black screen will happen also in other scenarios. Maybe it might be related to error which appears on 00:18.

Also in the video the Perspective viewport outputs correct 1920x1080 resolution but when I switch it to Image viewport it switches to 960x540 at 00:17

[cedric_nivoliez]

Updating Arnold to the last version (6.2.4) solved our problem.

Thanks again !