Author Topic: How IR is used to be interactive  (Read 31195 times)

2019-06-24, 11:17:47

Nigan

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ATTN: THIS THREAD WAS STARTED BY A SPAMBOT, BUT IT RESULTED IN A REASONABLE DISCUSSION, SO I WILL LEAVE IT.
ORIGINAL POST: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=18091.0
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTN.


Hello everyone,,

Since I fully switched over to Corona around 18 months ago I’ve always relied heavily on the Interactive Renderer to fine-tune materials/lighting etc etc. I’ve even used it ‘live’ in client meetings to get real-time feedback and critique. It was flawless around 1 year ago, probably around version 1.4 if I had to guess.

I’m not sure when it stopped working fluidly but IR is now becoming useless for anything but the simplest of scenes. I have plenty of RAM to handle the scale and complexity of my interiors but I find myself waiting constantly for updates and restarts when performing the simplest of changes to my scenes. Often I have to zoom in/out to keep IR ticking over, otherwise it just fails to interactively update.

I haven’t gone as far as submitting bug reports just yet but I was curious to know if any other users have noticed IR becoming slower and less interactive recently?

(Corona Camera or Camera Mod always used as I know there are issues with Physical Cam)
« Last Edit: 2019-06-28, 14:29:00 by maru »

2019-06-24, 15:02:02
Reply #1

rowmanns

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Hi,

Please can you provide some scenes/videos of the behaviour which you are describing?

Often I have to zoom in/out to keep IR ticking over, otherwise it just fails to interactively update.

For this do you have your Interactive Rendering Max passes set to something? If it is set to a non 0 number then the IR will stop rendering when it reaches that amount of passes. I'd suggest setting this to 0 if you want your IR to continiously refresh. It's found in Render setup -> Performance -> Interactive Rendering.

Thanks,

Rowan
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2019-06-24, 15:26:20
Reply #2

clemens_at

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for me ironically it was v3 when it got worse.
"Improved IR performance keeps everything smooth and snappy." was said to be one of the features which was kind of true but something else changed with it. I dont know what it is though.


2019-06-24, 16:09:42
Reply #3

Juraj

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For me it's on scene by scene basis. Imho there are a lot of 3dsMax features (modifiers,etc..) that just don't play nice, but I can't really identify which..
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2019-06-24, 17:28:08
Reply #4

Frood

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Top IR slowdowns for me so far:

- ForestPack (with referenced camera in any object and using this cam in IR of course)
- ForestPack (using point cloud display, general viewport slowdown so also affecting IR)
- ForestPack (which starts to generate meshes even when objects are hidden sometimes) Mystery SOLVED!
- GrowIvy (without EditMesh on top)
- Scene statistics (shortcut "7") in combination with Laubwerk objects
- Scene using Sun&Sky: Just setting a key (Shift-RMB on time or date, autokey on) restarts IR
- <insert_any_additional_finding_here_please!>


Good Luck



Edit: Added third ForestPack issue
Edit: Added keying restart issue, tagged FP mesh generation for hidden FP objects as "solved" :)

« Last Edit: 2019-07-10, 09:44:55 by Frood »
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2019-06-24, 17:32:50
Reply #5

Juraj

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Yeah list would be great because I for example don't use any of the above even :- )
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2019-06-24, 18:09:22
Reply #6

danio1011

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I too have noticed a big slowdown in IPR, especially with Forest Pack.  I actually thought it might have been due to Forest Pack updating, particularly the big update where they made it so you could 'live edit' during IPR.

More specifically:

I notice Forest Pack point clouds slow down IPR massively.  Changing to a pyramid proxy helps a bit.

I also notice that base surfaces that are scattered on that have modifiers like FFD can really slow things down when using Forest Pack and IPR.  Collapse the base surface to an editable poly and it speeds up some.

2019-06-24, 19:28:52
Reply #7

lupaz

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I'm not sure if there's a difference with previous Corona versions (I'm using v4), but Railclone with IR is unusable with their default suggested settings. I assumed it's a Itoosoft problem. I wrote on their forum and this is their response:

"Well, when using the Corona Renderer, in case of "Roofing styles", the Use Instancing Engine option is by default disabled because of Material / UVW XForm Operators are used and these are just partially supported (as you can see in the Feature Compatibility table) - to get these working correctly with the Corona Renderer, the Use Instancing Engine should be switched off.

Please feel free to turn the Use Instancing Engine option ON (attaching screen-shot) which will improve the performance, just take in mind that Material / UVW XForm Operators will have no effect on instanced geometry."

Even with Use Instancing Engine the performance in IR is not the same as when I convert it to geometry.

2019-06-24, 19:41:41
Reply #8

davemahi

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Sadly I feel the same. using it just now, and it does not feel very "interactive"

You need to have the most basic scene for it to really be useful.

2019-06-24, 23:35:34
Reply #9

Bormax

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I have problem with parsing time in scenes with proxies and animation. In this case parsing time takes muuuch longer time and slows down IR really much.

I've posted about that in 2017

Hi

It looks like I found the problem point. Quite often I have simple animation for the sun for different cameras, and I've noticed that if I don't change frame number I get few second of parsing, if I change frame, parsing time grows. Finally I found that the problem is in proxies, actually in Enable animation of them. Even if the proxy was created as not animated, this checkbox has influence on parsing time.

Example file uploaded with private uploader 1486622037_box-proxy.zip

Simple scene with only one proxy - box, subdivided to rise polycount. Open it and start render - parsing time is 0, change frame - parsing time 2 sec. Check Enable animation on, don't change frame - parsing time 0 sec, change frame - parsing time 2 sec again.
In big scenes it's also dramatically slows down feedback time of IR

I made the same tests with proxies of trees, there I've got difference like 2 sec - 21 sec (worst result). Probably more proxies in the scene - bigger difference of parsing time.
Is it a bug, or some problems on my side?

Just opened the same box scene, tried it now and got 4 sec parsing time instead of 2 sec which I had 2 years ago.

If you have the same problem, please check this topic where iancamarillo shared his script which is disabling animation of selected proxies, maybe it could help you
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,14716.msg94544.html#msg94544

2019-06-26, 01:34:59
Reply #10

danio1011

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Is this something where some (or all) of us experiencing a slowdown with iToo software and IPR should file bug reports?  Or is this thread enough for it to get the attention of the Corona team?  I feel like this has been mentioned a number of times on the forum but never gets any traction, maybe because they need specific scenes to test.  That said, I'm finding IPR to be slow with forest pack on most\all scenes these days so I can't imagine user provided scenes really help. 

Anyway, just hoping that this issue gets some love and wondering what needs to be done to make that happen...

2019-06-26, 15:02:17
Reply #11

Frood

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What should happen is: Bug report, yes. Personally I'm quite bored about FP + Corona issues because they exist and mutate since ever. 1 bug fixed, 1 new surfacing. And I sometimes don't get who's QA is doing what exactly.

I can only guess that "processing hidden FP objects" is an Itoo issue, maybe even a 3ds Max one. But I'm not going to report it because I'm not using the newest plugin version (which would cost me a lot of time to update because of that crazy deployment procedure for a centralized, network based FP version), I'm not using the current 3ds Max version and I don't want to report to Itoo, Render Legion and Autodesk at once just to read from everybody that they are sorry but it's the fault of someone else (if I ever get some feedback from certain you-know-who-companies that is.).

And the issue with referenced cameras: This is not directly solvable anyway imho because it works like it should: changing the view rebuilds and optimizes the FP objects or rotates billboards. In case of IR I cannot say if the Corona team is even able to block those. It may also be unwanted in many cases that you do not get in IR what you would see in the final render and who can/should/has to react to, say a "freeze all Forest objects" or "Disable object" option inside FP?

The whole thing takes place in a triangle with complex software involved, so it's not exactly easy :) Anyway, you can have amazingly fast IR scenes full of (FP) vegetation currently with an even more amazing IR recover time if you don't fall in any of those traps.


Good Luck
« Last Edit: 2019-06-26, 15:43:18 by Frood »
Never underestimate the power of a well placed level one spell.

2019-06-26, 17:11:35
Reply #12

rowmanns

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Hi,

We certainly want to address these issues.

I am aware of previous reports of slowdowns with some third party plugins including Forest Pack Pro. I'd like to ask if these issues are still present with the latest version of FP and Corona? If they are then I'd definately like a copy of the scene so I can investigate. If not then it is possible that they were resolved along the way.

So from here, if possible could you either report the bugs to support (with one bug report per ticket) or here on the forum (again with one bug per report) and we will investigate them. It would also be of a great help if you could provide scenes of where you are experiencing the issues

Thanks,

Rowan

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2019-06-26, 17:26:40
Reply #13

lupaz

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Since this thread isn't exclusively about FP...:

Please, take a look at how IR was working here:

Go to minute 6:30 for example.

It used to show some pixels first and gradually increment the amount. But the first appearance of pixels was rally fast.

Now, If I turn IR Subsampling to 0 the first pixels take a couple of seconds to show up in a, say, 1 million poly scene. Yes, the image has more pixels than on the video above, but I don't think it helps at all.

(Why IR subsampling at zero? I hate those huge pixels that delete the previous image. Anyone likes it?)

2019-06-26, 18:39:21
Reply #14

PROH

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I hate them too, and often sets Subsampling to 0 like you describe.