Daily Builds 1.7

[Artisticpixel]

Hi Ryuu,

Sent a problematic scene to you yesterday. Working on another bathroom scene with no environment light and the same thing is happening. The really weird thing is that if I render normally then it uses 5% cpu. If I stick a render region on part of the view and then  the cpu jumps up to 70%-100% usage.  So I can render a scene but have to move the region around.

Also the same thing applies in interactive, 5 % normal, zoom in and it jumps up to 60-70%, then drops back down when zoomed out.

Updated: even stranger, region render at the top of the image works 100%, bottom of the screen 3%, start moving the region up the screen and watching the cpu climb back up

[Flavius]

:( I am working on a scene I created while using Corona 1.6 . Today I only needed to change a sofa.(client request)

But... I am getting artifacts from the HD cache that I didn't have in 1.6. You know what kind of artifacts...the exact ones I was running away from V-ray because of the Light cache. Really weird light leaks starting to appear in my scene.  I change the Precision parameter to 5, it is fixed in one area, appears in another area. I have to use values like 15-20 :(  I've been working with Corona for 2 years and I have never needed to change that parameter! The geometry is fine, I've checked it.

Also...I somehow feel I lost that Corona sharpness I used to love without changing any of the settings.

The reflective noise is KILLING me!  Sadly I cannot post anything because of copywright issues but it seems the problem just gets worse. Denoiser doesn't seem to clean those fireflies properly anymore, I don't know why. I had to manually clean them in photoshop using the healing brush. Again, on scenes on which I did NOT have this problem with other Corona versions.

IR is less responsive that it was before. Is it the Xeons? However, my frustration comes because all these problems were non existent previously.

I keep saying that I will upload scenes but I never seem to find the time but I hopefully these days I will be able to so you guys can look into this.

Has anyone else have problems with reflective noise that simply doesn't clear?

Thanks!!

RC7 here

[Artisticpixel]

I started a scene in 1.6 and moved it over to 1.7 and there is definitely 100% slower noise clean up in the scene. Even the initial 5 min render in 1.6 was good enough to send to a client for a very quick check. Now it needs 20 min to get even close to that initial look. I will be looking at going back to 1.6 as soon as this job is over.

[Flavius]

I started a scene in 1.6 and moved it over to 1.7 and there is definitely 100% slower noise clean up in the scene. Even the initial 5 min render in 1.6 was good enough to send to a client for a very quick check. Now it needs 20 min to get even close to that initial look. I will be looking at going back to 1.6 as soon as this job is over.

Aaa, exactly!! That is what I needed to do today, to send an updated preview to a client. Usually 10 minutes of rendering @1080 is good enough pretty much in all my scenes. I kid you not, today I at 20 minutes there was still a lot of noise. And denoiser didn't really help me that much. + Light leaks and extra reflective noise:(

[Duron]

I started a scene in 1.6 and moved it over to 1.7 and there is definitely 100% slower noise clean up in the scene. Even the initial 5 min render in 1.6 was good enough to send to a client for a very quick check. Now it needs 20 min to get even close to that initial look. I will be looking at going back to 1.6 as soon as this job is over.

+1

It's dissapointing compared to old builds.

[Dalton Watts]

I've just tested RC8 on my dual Xeon 2696 v3 workstation and rendertimes are almost the same (sometimes slightly worse) as RC7. I must say i was hoping for a bigger leap in speed since the introduction of the new adaptive direct light sampling. Does this mean i better not expect any speed improvements from now on?

Speedwise I can't see much difference between 14 September build and these newer RC7 or RC8. Granted it reaches the same noise level in less passes in the lastest Release Candidates but the difference is not night and day as i hoped it would be.

[Artisticpixel]

Have you compared 1.6 to 1.7 on your machine? Is there a speed and noise difference? I have 2 different Dual Xeons, and both seem considerably slower to render to a low quality but acceptable level, even at 100%CPU power compared to 1.6.

[Juraj]

Interesting to read that actual scenes benefit very little from all the various sampling improvements. Perhaps it's more tied to very specific scenarios.

Would be good to compare this to something like 1.4 All these things improve tiny few percentages at best on each stage, but overall it must stack up. But it will probably never make the kind of 'Night&Day' difference people hope for.

I am pretty much at ease with raytracers staying mostly slow and rather advancing into more complex feature-rich&quality-of-look packages. Hard to compete with real-time packages at their own game and rather move further into realism and features.

[dj_buckley]

Feels like each RC release is getting worse - just went to 1.7 - my scene randomly started rendering black, was fine in IR, upgraded to 1.8, my scene light came back (didn't change anything) - but now i have a load of random black artifacts anywhere - which is most the stable RC?

[vkiuru]

Having problems with a 32 core Xeon as well and of course the scenes are such that I can't share them.

Maybe there is a chance to share a scene, or at least a part of it, where the problem would be present? If so, please upload it using https://corona-renderer.com/upload
It will not be shared anywhere, and it will be used only for debugging.
We have also received some other reports about Xeon issues, and the first build with some improvements included should be out soon.

Thanks for the reply maru, I'll do my best but hngh these deadlines - won't be today, that's for sure. I'll try to strip a scene down tomorrow if I get an hour. Anyways good to hear it's been noticed but would be more than happy to help hasten search for a solution :)

Also, maybe it's just me but I just seem to find the images are more.. blurry? lately. I'm using pretty much standard settings, only displacement precision changed to 1. Also tried with adaptivity on/off, no difference. 2 light layers, sun and sky. Haven't touched the  reduce noise filtering, either.

Yes, it's not only you. I just noticed that as well. Also the reflective noise issue is becoming unbearable:( Problem is, denoiser doesn't seem to clear these fireflies as well as it did before. Something changed in this regard?

thanks

Well thanks for confirming - I guess.. On one hand maybe it's not just me going crazy but on the other, blurrier renders.. that's a bit troublesome, too :D

[ihabkal]

I've just tested RC8 on my dual Xeon 2696 v3 workstation and rendertimes are almost the same (sometimes slightly worse) as RC7. I must say i was hoping for a bigger leap in speed since the introduction of the new adaptive direct light sampling. Does this mean i better not expect any speed improvements from now on?

Speedwise I can't see much difference between 14 September build and these newer RC7 or RC8. Granted it reaches the same noise level in less passes in the lastest Release Candidates but the difference is not night and day as i hoped it would be.

I noticed is light flickering in animations in the new adaptative light system which used to happen in Vray.

[snakebox]

Does anyone remember the smoothing bug that happens when you add a bump map to an object, suddenly all the facets show up in render instead of being smooth?

Did corona ever fix that?  I know vray solved it years ago, Fstorm also fixed it months ago, and I know there was a lot of talk about it here too, and I feel like it was meant to be part of 1.7 ? 

Reason I am asking is because I am pretty sure I just had that error in 1.7 RC5, and now I can't remember if it was fixed? or if the problem is back?

[Christa Noel]

Does anyone remember the smoothing bug that happens when you add a bump map to an object, suddenly all the facets show up in render instead of being smooth?

Did corona ever fix that?  I know vray solved it years ago, Fstorm also fixed it months ago, and I know there was a lot of talk about it here too, and I feel like it was meant to be part of 1.7 ? 

Reason I am asking is because I am pretty sure I just had that error in 1.7 RC5, and now I can't remember if it was fixed? or if the problem is back?

shadow terminator? never experience it since 1.7 RCs

[snakebox]

Does anyone remember the smoothing bug that happens when you add a bump map to an object, suddenly all the facets show up in render instead of being smooth?

Did corona ever fix that?  I know vray solved it years ago, Fstorm also fixed it months ago, and I know there was a lot of talk about it here too, and I feel like it was meant to be part of 1.7 ? 

Reason I am asking is because I am pretty sure I just had that error in 1.7 RC5, and now I can't remember if it was fixed? or if the problem is back?

shadow terminator? never experience it since 1.7 RCs

Yeah, that.  okay?  I will have to do some basic tests again to make sure then, it could also just be shitty geometry causing it, but I just wanted to check if was actually ticked off the list.

[Flavius]

So I just went back to 1.6 and I have no more light leaks with the standard settings and IR is more responsive as well. I had light leaks from the HD cache on RC7. I see someone complaining about FLICKERING in animations...and every time I hear flickering I remember V-ray. Every time I hear light leaks, I also remember V-ray. It is beyond me why would someone take tech from a render from which we all(or most of us) ran away to the welcoming arms of Corona.

I know 1.7 is not finished..but a release candidate should be close to the final product. We are at RC8 still with some serious issues. Dump the V-ray tech and stick to your own goodness :D

About the terminator artefact, make sure your UV coordonates are ok for the normal map, in case you have one. Tiling of normal maps are almost identical to the terminator fix.