X6 Problem with 3d "Final view with Shadows"

[Doug Maddox]

Been trying things out and found a problem with 3d - Rendering Techniques - final view w/shadows. Exterior overall view in standard, then try "final view w/shadows" - screen view area goes black.

anyone see this?

Doug

[perryh]

With that ATI card try turning off "Hardware edge smoothing" in preferences at the Render tab, just a stab at it but sometimes it works

[evergreen]

yes, I am getting same results...works fine in X5 for same project...tried what Perry suggested...no difference

[perryh]

Have you updated your video card drivers?

[evergreen]

Just tried that Perry...no change...hmmm

[perryh]

If you post the plan here one of us can try it to see if its a setting or a corrupt plan. Your sig. says you are using X5 beta, is that true?

[Doug Maddox]

Perry,

This was just a quicky test house which I used to experiment with X6. Tried your suggestion and no luck. Everything still fine with X5. Yes, am using X6 but forgot to change my "signature".

Here is Test1.zip

Thanks,

Doug

[perryh]

It seems to work fine on my system. Here are my rendering settings

[Doug Park]

Updating drivers is often a good thing, but it comes with the risk that the new driver will cause more problems.

We have seen black screens in X6 from time to time. Sometimes changing the setting for Hardware Edge Smoothing helps.

Also, unchecking Optimizations On in the Troubleshooting area may help, but will probably make renders a lot slower.

You may also want to try the Rarely or Frequently options of Command Flushing. These can be loosely translated to slower and really slow in terms of their affect in general.

Perry, for your Nvidia GTX 780 card I would try dropping Command Flushing to None as that will likely make things noticeably faster. Frequent flushing tends to slow down NVIDIA cards a very significantly.

For X6 we have changed fundamentally how we use the video card. This should give better performance in many cases, but also can push the limits of some cards so differences between X5 and X6 are not surprising.

It is likely that we will run across a number of video cards that don't work as well for X6 as they did for X5. My guess is that most of them will be older cards, but brand new cards tend to have a short period where the drivers often don't work right as well.

[perryh]

Thanks Doug, I will turn that off. I really wasn't sure what it did anyway.

[Doug Park]

It was originally added to deal with problems with some really old video cards. Effectively what it does is to tell the video card to stop collecting commands and finish off what it was doing before going on. This works around what are apparently driver bugs, but it means that certain opportunities for the card to optimize what it does are lost.

We added the rarely option to support a problem on the iMac that one of our beta testers had. It does a flush far less frequently, so isn't as big of a performance hit. One should only choose something other than None if they are experiencing problems and one of the settings corrects the problem.

[evergreen]

Updating drivers is often a good thing, but it comes with the risk that the new driver will cause more problems.

We have seen black screens in X6 from time to time. Sometimes changing the setting for Hardware Edge Smoothing helps.

Also, unchecking Optimizations On in the Troubleshooting area may help, but will probably make renders a lot slower.

You may also want to try the Rarely or Frequently options of Command Flushing. These can be loosely translated to slower and really slow in terms of their affect in general.

Perry, for your Nvidia GTX 780 card I would try dropping Command Flushing to None as that will likely make things noticeably faster. Frequent flushing tends to slow down NVIDIA cards a very significantly.

For X6 we have changed fundamentally how we use the video card. This should give better performance in many cases, but also can push the limits of some cards so differences between X5 and X6 are not surprising.

It is likely that we will run across a number of video cards that don't work as well for X6 as they did for X5. My guess is that most of them will be older cards, but brand new cards tend to have a short period where the drivers often don't work right as well.

Hi Doug,
I was having the same issue. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions you & Perry offered worked. Just by chance, however, I unchecked "Used Enhanced Lighting" in troubleshooting and that did the trick.
Doug, I would like to take advantage of the upgrades...do you think (if compatible) Nvidia is the way to go?

[evergreen]

Hi Doug, experienced the same issue with "Final View with Shadows". The suggestions from Perry, and Doug Park unfortunately did not work . By chance, I unchecked "Used Enhanced Lighting" and bingo I've got shadows.
Good luck - Mike

[William H Lynch]

I've been using CA since about around 1998 and ATI graphics cards have always been less than desirable when working with CA (black screens were common)... I finally switched to NVidia around 2004 and 99% of my problems with graphics and CA disappeared like magic...

BTW, testing X6 Beta on a Surface Pro 2, running like greased lightning... For a ten inch screen the graphics are amazing and working flawlessly...

[evergreen]

Yeah, I'm not surprised, system is about 4-5 years old. Can I just swap out cards that easy? Don't want to get myself in a jam...