Parallel Evaluation and Gpu Override stability

[EnriqueOneAnimation]

Myself and many other TD's at other studios are running into fairly frequent issues with scenes behaving strangely for no apparent reason.

Over time we have learned that it is usually fixed by either disabling GPU Override or switching from Parallel evaluation over to DG.

Of course this is not ideal as then we lose the speed gain that we get from these features.

At our studio our rigs are made very thread friendly, we follow all of the guidelines that are in the Evaluation Manual.  

It's pretty clear that there are still stability issues with these 2 features.   

Making these 2 features as bullet-proof as possible should be a high priority. Everything else is built on-top of this.

[kimonmatara]

My clients and I have had similar experiences. Quite spectacular crashes on trivial actions (e.g. scrubbing the timeline on a scene with rigs but no animation) that are resolved by switching off GPU override.

[medryks]

Hey @EnriqueOneAnimation, thanks for sharing this idea for submission. For 2018 and it's updates, we have been working hard on making sure performance features in are Maya robust and stable. I was wondering if you could provide some more information on what version of Maya you're running into trouble with, and some more info on some of the common issues you're finding. I can let you know if these bugs are known and being tracked/fixed, or if we have fixed it already. Else, it'd be great to get some more details so we can log and fix the bugs you're running into.

Thanks and best regards!   

[EnriqueOneAnimation]

 Hey @medryks,

We are currently working with Maya 2018.2   I will get us upgraded to the latest one soon.

I have sent several example files and descriptions to Martin de Lasa  already,  he already has all of the info that I have.  Hopefully they will help.

[medryks]

Hey @EnriqueOneAnimation thanks for replying :)! That's great to hear that you've reached out to Martin about this and provided him with example files. I'll check in with him about this and let you know if there's any fixes in the updates!

Best regards! 

[medryks]

Hey all, just an update to this post - the team has been working with @EnriqueOneAnimation and the issues he has mentioned have all been fixed for 2018.3! @kimonmatara, please let me know if we can reach out to you about the issues you've been facing, and if you are still seeing them in any of the recent updates. Thanks!

[EnriqueOneAnimation]

Yep! Everyone has been very helpful, thank you! 

[trevor.adams]

We're marking this one as "Implemented" as Maya 2018.3 has been available for some time now, and it contains fixes for the issues brought up here.  Thanks for helping us make Maya better with regards to parallel evaluation and GPU override stability ... and for reaching out to us directly, @EnriqueOneAnimation.  If you're still running into issues in this area, please let us know.  Thanks for the votes everyone!

[psajmon]

Hi guys it's 2019 and it's still an issue.

[brentonf]

Hello-

Feb 8 2019, running 2018.5, still happening - animation works fine in viewport, will not update in render view. 

Any idea when this will be resolved?

ps - Just updated to Maya 2019, problem persists, switching to DG evaluation does NOT fix problem, this was our workaround before. Any news?

[medryks]

Hey @psajmon & @brentonf , thanks for reaching out. I'm going to need some more info from you guys - have you been in touch with anyone on the Maya side about the issues that you've been facing, so I can track it down? Otherwise, I'll need some more context about what exactly is going wrong in each of your situations so we can figure out how to best address it. @psajmon, what's happening on your end? Crashes? @brentonf , which renderer are you using? 

[brentonf]

hi @medryks !

Sorry, my apologies if I'm not using the correct terminology. In the camera window, what I was calling the Viewport, the animation runs fine. I suppose this would be the hardware renderer? Bringing up the Arnold render view, or the regular render view, with Arnold renderer selected, the animation is not updating.

After quitting Maya and deleting the preferences, we tried again with Maya 2018.5 with DG evaluation selected, and it worked! Once we deliver this project, I will try rendering with parallel evaluation turned on, and also in Maya 2019 to see if that works. Any additional advice or instructions always appreciated.

Thank you 

[godoybryan07]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to point out it is now April 2019 and unfortunately, this is still an issue. I've just installed the latest version of Maya and as others have reported, every time I add animation to a control and scrub the Timeline, things unexpectedly crash without warning. Luckily switching from "Parallel Evaluation" to "DG" seems to fix the problem.

Although this appears to be a "fixed" issue for Maya 2019 (Maya 2019 Fixed Issues), I'm sorry to report this issue still persists. Obviously, it would be great if the issue was fully resolved so us TDs could lessen the computational load... any help / advice or updates would be immensely appreciated.

-B

[godoybryan07]

After doing more research I finally managed to fix the problem... Apparently I needed to update my graphics drivers and also connect my monitors directly to my GPUs. Happy to report Maya no longer hangs or crashes! If anyone else is having trouble, (as others pointed out) try switching to "DG" until you are sure all graphics drivers are fully up to date.  In my case, Maya was initially using an Intel Display Device (Intel UHD Graphics 630) but now that I've reconnected my monitors, I finally have both displays running on my NVIDIA cards.

Quick tip: Helps to check Maya's Output Window to see which GPU device is actually being used. Near the bottom of the window it should read "Choosing OpenCL Device GeForce RTX 2080..." or whichever card you are making use of.

Apologies, Autodesk staff--looks like the issue was on my end! Thanks for all your hard work.

-B

[ray]

Just installed Maya 2019.2 and instantly crashed during an animation playback, exactly like Maya 2018 and previous versions. Set DG instead of parallel and it's very stable. Gpu drivers (Nvidia GTX1080) are updated,