Horizontal bands and lines - iray rendering artifacts with HDRI
Recently I've noticed strange bands and lines appearing in my iray renders. This has never happened before. The boundaries seem to be on and around the HDRI horizon where the sky otherwise meets the ground. The bands themselves appear as differences in shades. One regoin is slightly darker than the other.
This happens using the iray spot renderer in viewport, and performing an actual 'final' render.
I also tried rendering a scene I had rendered before where I never experienced this issue, and the bands now appear with that scene too.
It is very strange.
I was only using a single HDRI, no other lights. And the autolamp for the camera set to 'never' in my render settings. I tend to do that while creating new characters and scene props. The HDRI is one I usually default to because it provides a fairly even distribution of light with little to no shadows.
I also tried other HDRIs and saw the same effect. The boundary between the bands is always on the horizon.
I am using Daz Studio 4.19 with an Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB GPU. So far as I am aware, I've kept the same driver for the last year as that works for me. I also have not updated Daz Studio since version 4.19 because it's always worked and I have no reason to update. Updates in my experience only result in something breaking. I believe if it works, do not fix it.
So unless Windows 10 has installed something without my knowing which has caused this, I really do not understand how this is suddenly happening since I've not updated Daz Studio or the studio driver - especially on scenes that previously did not show these rendering artifacts.
Anyone else experiencing these rendering artifacts? Did you find a solution?
Comments
Without a picture I can't be sure but this sounds like an issue between older Iray and newer drivers that has been seen quite often. Check which driver version you are using (you can right-click on the Desktop andselect nVidai Control Panel).
Hi Richard,
Forgive me for not getting back to you sooner. I checked the driver on my RTX 3060 rendering computer, and saw Windows had "updated" it to the Microsoft version without my permission. Typical.
I can't seem to roll back the driver to the previous one installed too (which worked flawlessly). I signed into the Nvidia experience app, with hope of installing the driver I had before from there, but now it's changed to 'game ready' drivers and there's no option to switch back to installing Studio Drivers. The three little dots on the top right corner beside 'search for updates' has vanished.
I'll try and see if I can sort this out as it's Nvidia driver related rather than Daz Studio.
It would be great if we can tell Microsoft to please-stop-updating-drivers-without-my-permission, but no is not an answer for them. It's stuff like this which only pushes me further to switching to Mac OS. Though I have no idea how Daz Studio runs on a Mac.
Thank you for your help anyway. I'll have to search for a solution to the game ready vs studio driver issue when I can find the time.
It's not a huge balagan though as I'm using this driver mishap to build indoor scenes and explore further scene lighting options.
@amysparkles - Hello. Try the Nvidia Drivers Download page at https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us .
Go here and download the driver you need. Be it studio or game drivers, your choice. Then, when running the driver software, click on custom and check the box for a clean install.
Official Drivers | NVIDIA