V8 vs V7 render / materials / sun

Rendering
1

A couple of discrepancies / bugs..

  1. The material thumbnails all appeared black after I had changed them to a plane..

They weren’t black, they were just not lit.

The solution is to set them in the properties pop up dialog of the thumbnails to scene / studio / studio / sky lighting & rotate camera.

In V8 this had me stuffed for a long time because the default size of the preview properties box is of a size that gave no clue the OK & CANCEL buttons even exist.

(In V7 this dialog cannot be closed to a point where these buttons are obscured).

  1. The Sun:

I copied and pasted a simple exterior model of a house from V7, (where the location and orientation was set to an actual property, using the built in “here” and “now” buttons in the Sun dialog, so the sun tracking was correct), to V8.

In V8, despite matching the location using “here” and “now” the sun did not match at all.

Troubleshooting this was difficult because the Azimuth and Altitude reference boxes in V8 in the default dark mode have grey text on a grey background.

By choosing “manual control” the dialog changes, so I was able to set the sun position by copying the values from V7, after which the sun / shadows matched perfectly.

This is not a solution however, because I can’t use the sliders to change month or time of day for shadow studies…

  1. In V7 I can rotate this exact same model in render view, on the same computer, however I want in real time, but in V8 & V9 as soon as I move the mouse it breaks into wireframe, which I find very disconcerting.

This is with all three models open at the same time in the three different rhino versions.

Rebooting the computer, and just opening the rendered model in V8, it breaks into wireframe after about 1 second, and stays that way whenever its not at rest.

How can this be so inferior to V7?

Is the some setting added to V8 / V9 here I can adjust..?

cheers
rabbit

2

This sounds like your hardware can’t keep up with the set goal for dynamic redraw, which by default is 5FPS. If the refresh rate is below that it will do the downgrade during viewport manipulation.

You can change this value to say 0.1 in Tools > Options > View, look for Dynamic Redraw. So only when the refresh rate goes below 0.1 frames per second you’ll see the wireframes. This means that if you do see the wireframes appear your hardware can’t cope with the redrawing - 10 seconds for a frame is a pretty long time… It will feel horrible and non-responsive.

It may be that you have this setting set in Rhino 7 already to a lower value.

image
image1278×950 159 KB

There is a bug for that already: RH-86536 Sun settings broken for time/date. I’ve added this topic to the issue.

When I change to Plane with the context menu it all renders just fine. You must have changed preview settings already earlier before this happened.

The minimum size of the dialog shows all elements. I can only make the dialog larger, not smaller than the default size:

image
image722×522 61.2 KB

It’d be useful if you gave more context, like for instance the unedited output of the Rhino command _SystemInfo from your system.

3

Thanks Nathan - Yep, the dynamic redraw was set to 1.0 in V7, and to 5.0 in the others.
I’m not sure why it was set like that in V7, but i was using rhino a lot more than I am now back then and before that back to V1 - use it or lose it I guess..

Here is a screen shot of the minimum size of the dialog on V8 vs V7 - you can see that its not perhaps stunningly obvious the first time you come across it that the V8 dialog has further information.

material_preview_properties_V7
material_preview_properties_V7587×397 113 KB

material_preview_properties_V8
material_preview_properties_V8778×463 72.7 KB

It probably doesn’t matter now, but here’s my system info:
Thanks again.

Rhino 8 SR18 2025-3-17 (Rhino 8, 8.18.25076.15001, Git hash:master @ 49582fe32924623e5c8212768d1f6acbffaa7123)
License type: Commercial, build 2025-03-17
License details: Stand-Alone

Windows 11 (10.0.26100 SR0.0) or greater (Physical RAM: 32GB)
.NET 7.0.20

Computer platform: LAPTOP - Plugged in [100% battery remaining]

Hybrid graphics configuration.
Primary display: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (Intel) Memory: 1GB, Driver date: 11-13-2023 (M-D-Y).
> Integrated graphics device with 3 adapter port(s)
- Windows Main Display is laptop’s integrated screen or built-in port
Primary OpenGL: NVIDIA Quadro P3200 (NVidia) Memory: 6GB, Driver date: 1-26-2025 (M-D-Y). OpenGL Ver: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 572.16
> Integrated accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)
- Video pass-through to primary display device

OpenGL Settings
Safe mode: Off
Use accelerated hardware modes: On
GPU Tessellation is: On
Redraw scene when viewports are exposed: On
Graphics level being used: OpenGL 4.6 (primary GPU’s maximum)

Anti-alias mode: 4x
Mip Map Filtering: Linear
Anisotropic Filtering Mode: High

Vendor Name: NVIDIA Corporation
Render version: 4.6
Shading Language: 4.60 NVIDIA
Driver Date: 1-26-2025
Driver Version: 32.0.15.7216
Maximum Texture size: 32768 x 32768
Z-Buffer depth: 24 bits
Maximum Viewport size: 32768 x 32768
Total Video Memory: 6 GB

Rhino plugins that do not ship with Rhino

Rhino plugins that ship with Rhino
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Commands.rhp “Commands” 8.18.25076.15001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk.rhp “Renderer Development Kit”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoScript.rhp “RhinoScript”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoRenderCycles.rhp “Rhino Render” 8.18.25076.15001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoRender.rhp “Legacy Rhino Render”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk_etoui.rhp “RDK_EtoUI” 8.18.25076.15001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\NamedSnapshots.rhp “Snapshots”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\MeshCommands.rhp “MeshCommands” 8.18.25076.15001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoCycles.rhp “RhinoCycles” 8.18.25076.15001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Toolbars\Toolbars.rhp “Toolbars” 8.18.25076.15001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\3dxrhino.rhp “3Dconnexion 3D Mouse”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Displacement.rhp “Displacement”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Calc.rhp “Calc”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\SectionTools.rhp “SectionTools”

4

@maxsoder have you seen cases where the preview settings dialog is too small and cuts off parts of the widgets?

@rabbit I suppose it could be down to display settings? What resolution and scale are you using for your display?

5

Yes it is possible to drag and minimise the dialog so that parts of the lower buttons get clipped. The min size for the dialog should be a bit bigger.