Viewport 2.0, multisample AA, bug

[steve_patterson]

Hi,

Seeing a devestaging bug with viewport 2.0 and the writing out of playblasts while multisample antialiasing is enabled. The resulting files (either QT directly, image sequence, or via batch render) are all corrupted. Disabling antialiasing produces a clean blast. Anyone know how to fix this? Running Maya 2016 ext 1 sp5, OSX 10.10.5, all patches. Disabling color management, or lowering the steps of antialiasing has no effect. Disabling World Consolitation also has no effect. Late model MacPro with dual AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB.

Here's a screen recording of the issue:

https://vimeo.com/150694539 

[cornelh]

Hi emcAnimation,

I did some test on Windows and had none of those issues. I will be doing a test with our Mac test machine tomorrow, as it is offline currently, to see if I am able reproduce your same issue.  I would suggest updating any graphics drivers and re-testing in the meantime.  I will also check with the Maya Development team to see if there are any issues with this on Mac OS.  

Best Regards,

HC

[cornelh]

I just tested on Mac, and yes sir we have a problem "Houston"  I will be checking on this further via the Case which was generated from the Forum.  Thanks again for briging this to our attention!   

[steve_patterson]

Thanks again for your help, Housein. Could you please post the same resolution to this thread that you emailed to me, so that others are aware of the bug number and that it's been recognized? Thanks!

[steve_patterson]

Thanks again for your help, Housein. Could you please post the same resolution to this thread that you emailed to me, so that others are aware of the bug number and that it's been recognized? Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Is there any solution yet? I'm having the same problem here and can´t find any solution.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) 

3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5

32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC

2X AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB

[steve_patterson]

Hi Dazlop,

The tech that was on the case recoginzed them as bugs, and noted that the support engineers will add it to the next hotfix/service pack, but there was no promise of timeline.

[pshwayka]

That's wierd...I also have D700s on a late 2013 Mac Pro, but I can't reproduce the issue. I'm on El Capitan...I wonder if that makes a difference (i.e., video driver.) Does it happen on any scene where you playblast with AA enabled and set to 8?

[steve_patterson]

Hi pshwayka,

Yes, setting the sampling higher or lower still produces the same results. I can't upgrade the OS right now, as other software that i have hasn't been vetted on El Cap. 

Do you have more than one monitor connected? It does seem to be either a driver issue, or an OpenGl issue (not sure if it's driver handling or Maya/OS handling). 

[pshwayka]

Just one monitor attached. (Thunderbolt.)

[steve_patterson]

I'm not sure what the tech's setup was like, but I have 3 montiors. I don't think that's the issue, but you never know.

Separately, Maya 2016 isn't certified for El Cap. Have you run into any issues with 2016? Also, do you run VRay? Vray isn't certified for El Cap either, and that's a mainstay of my production workflow. I can' afford to break either piece of software. Curious if you've seen any issues, and whether or not you are using Vray. Any input would be appreciated.

[pshwayka]

I haven't run into any more problems than I already did with Yosemite. (For example, under OpenGL core profile, if I try to select a tangent handle on an editable motion trail, the handle disappears. I submitted a bug report last July, and was completely ignored.)

Yes, I do run V-Ray 3.1 and have not had any problems with it under El Cap.

FWIW - I also run 2016 under Bootcamp (Windows 10) and generally speaking, it's a much better experience. I checked to see if your screen corruption happened under Windows, and it did not.

Might be worth considering trying that option if you don't want to risk upgrading to El Capitan.

[steve_patterson]

Thanks, pshwayka. I had considered going the BC route, but I have a VM to handle my pc-specific tasks. It's really good to know that you're are running smoothly with both 2016 and V-ray. Are you using slaves with V-ray? I have 5 slaves set up as well (10.10). I will give the BC option more thought.

Separately, have you seen any general performance benefits from switching to El Cap? Anything significant?

[pshwayka]

I have not tried running V-Ray slaves. If that's a concern you might want to check the Chaos Group forums.

El Cap is allegedly supposed to improve general performance, although I haven't noticed anything dramatic. What I have noticed is that VRay under BC renders as fast (if not faster) than it does under OSX. (That wasn't the case before V-Ray 3.1)

[steve_patterson · Accepted solution]

Just as a follow-up here, I've updated my host machine and all slaves to El Cap. Maya 2016 works flawlessly as well as Vray 3.1 on all nodes. As an added bonus, there is no more multisample anti-alias bug. I'm guessing that there was a video driver upgrade bundled with the OS update, and perhaps there's something related to how El Cap has changed it's use (or disuse) of OpenGL for its OS components.

In any event, everything is working very well. I'm noticing much snappier performance on the lesser powered slaves for normal UI operations. The host computer seems to be running very smoothly as well. At this point, no complaints. I hope this post helps anyone else who may run across similar issues. Thanks, pshwayka for noting the OS differentiation. Even though neither Maya nor Vray are officially qualified to run on El Cap, it does seem to fix the issue.

[pshwayka]

Cool! I was wondering how you were doing with this...thanks for the epilogue.

[Anonymous]

I'm going to upgrade to ElCapitan and see if this problem is fixed with the bundle. 

Tanks a lot!