some trouble at the Night Bar ;-)

Masterstroke

Hi, i'm having some issues with the night bar product. https://www.daz3d.com/night-bar Some camera angles crashes the iray renderer. The render is just plain black. I figured out, that something with the ceiling mod prop causes it. Making it unvisible or removing it brings back rendering. so why does it happen and how to solve it?

Ivo Shandor

I don't know the answer to your question but I can confirm your results. I hid the ceiling prop and the bar could render again. I tried changing out the textures and I got a black render each time.

The first version of Night Bar did not have this problem. I bought it the day it was released. Everything worked fine. The product came out with its first update and I noticed that an entire block of seating, tables, and props was missing. I put in a ticket for it and was told many times that was a feature not a bug. It took some time but then they admitted that the previous version contained the block of seating. So another update was issued a few weeks later. This 2nd update had the seating but I rendered it that day and the ceiling was fine. So I think the ceiling bug came in at a later and perhaps the 3rd update. 

Come to think of it, you or I should put in a help ticket as well for this new bug. I thought it was just me or some way I set up the lighting. But now I know that it is a bug in the product likely because you are getting the same bug. I will have to do some testing later to see if the product has this bug right out of the box.

Masterstroke

My renderer is busy right now, so if you have the time, you should try to replace the ceiling from the scene with the ceiling prop. Check, if it is working now.

mtl1

Yeah, I've had issues with this item in the past, but always chalked it up to something I was doing wrong... glad to know now that I'm not the only one!

Also, this set renders ridiculously slow for some reason...

Ivo Shandor

I have had a chance to investigate this now. I have an easy fix but first let me show you what I found was wrong.

I loaded Night Bar and nothing else. I didn't adjust anything. I rendered using the cameras that come with the environment. Most of the cameras rendered just fine. But Camera 5, 7, & 8 all rendered with just a black screen. So I tried to figure out what was different about Cameras 5, 7, & 8. I never did figure that out. They seem to have nothing in common or different from the cameras that do render.

There are some other threads on here that discuss this exact same set, "Night Bar" and the black render issue.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/100326/night-bar-renders-all-black-after-shader-adjustment/p1
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/117291/sometimes-my-render-is-all-black/p1

Several suggestions were tossed out to remedy the issue. You were the first person to mention the ceiling, so the only suggestions that were pertinent was about checking the camera's headlamp settings. I did find that Cameras 1-8 all have the headlamp off. For some reason Camera 9 has the headlamp on. I tried fixing that by turning the headlamp off and I still got black renders on 5,7, & 8.

So I moved on to investigating the ceiling prop specifically, titled "CeilingMod." I looked at its texture per my previous assumption. The one thing it had that was odd was that all of the textures on it were not Iray textures. They were all 3Delight. Several other props in this scene also have 3Delight textures so I didn't think much of it. I then tried converting all of the textures to Iray textures and that worked. Now all of the cameras render.

So I decided to experiment and find the one guilty texture in the ceiling that was causing this. It was the texture for "CeilingGlass" within "CeilingMod" "CeilingGlass02" seems to work without converting to Iray. I tried copying and pasting the texture for "CeilingGlass02" to "CeilingGlass" but I achieved no result. I still had a black render in Iray. In the end, there must be a combination of the geometry of "CeilingGlass" and the associated default texture. Converting that texture to Iray seems to solve the problem easily.

 

So, to fix, you can go one of 3 ways. I will list the easiest one first but the best fix last:

1. Select the prop called "CeilingMod" in the Scene tab. Go to your Content tab and find the "!Iray Uber Base" shader under "Shader Presets > Iray > Daz Uber > !Iray Uber Base" Click on that shader while the CeilingMod is selected. That shader keeps all of the image maps and is usually a quick way to convert all of the textures over to Iray. The scene should now render in Cameras 5,7, & 8.

 

2. Select the prop called "CeilingMod" in the Scene tab. Go to your Surfaces tab and select "CeilingGlass." This is the single texture that is causing the problem. "CeilingGlass02" seems to work just fine. Select that same "!Iray Uber Base" shader and convert just this one texture. The scene should now render in Cameras 5,7, & 8.

 

3. This one seems to be the most logical way for me. Select the prop called "CeilingMod" in the Scene tab. Go to your Surfaces tab and select "CeilingGlass" and "CeilingGlass02." Go to your Content tab and find the "Glass - Thin - Clear" shader under "Shader Presets > Iray > Daz Uber > Glass - Thin - Clear." Click on that shader while the CeilingMod and those 2 textures are selected. This makes sure that both glass textures look and behave like glass in Iray to allow your HDR environment to light up the scene.

 

My takeaway is that there are 2 types of materials that you absolutely do not want to leave as 3Delight materials in an Iray render. Those are metals and glass. They usually look bad and they probably lead to problems like this. The automatic conversion to Iray for this glass material seems to be the root issue.

 

Oso3D

Aaaah. Yeah, that makes sense. Re the topic of shaders and Iray, that PA for a long time made a lot of use of 'it's 3DL but it looks ok in Iray' issue some of us have complained about. (I THINK the PA doesn't do that any more, at least some more recent items seem to be pure Iray)

 

Masterstroke

Thanks Ivo, I will try that. :)

Update: It seems to be "ceiling glass" only, that causes problems. Even not in the camera, it renders black. By following your shader advise, the problem is solved. so yes thank you again.

iTryiTry

Thanks Ivo, this was a very useful info!