3D viewer jpg export distorted

I just upgraded to 5.1.9 on Debian testing (Bullseye) and see that the bug reported in this thread is still there. I looked around on GitLab (am I right that that’s where bugs are reported now?) but I kinda got lost and couldn’t tell if this bug has been reported there or not. Does anyone know?

I’d say the image in that thread looked like Raytracing render mode, not regular OpenGL 3d view.

I get the same distortion whether it’s the regular view or raytraced and whether I export a png or jpg.

Can you post screenshot?
I don’t get floor shadows in regular 3D view at all.
Can you rotate the board in real time?

My screenshots aren’t all that different from the original poster of that earlier thread but sure. First, this is what I see in the 3d viewer.


Then, if I export that as a jpg, I get this clipped and distorted output.

Not sure what you mean about rotate in real time. Is this just rotating the board around in the 3d viewer? Yup, that works fine. I can spin it all around, look at the back of the board, zoom in and out, all the fun stuff. It’s just when I export the image as a jpg or png that it messes up.

OK so your 3d view looks just like normal 3d view, not the raytraced one.
The linked thread showed the fuzzy shadows typical for raytracing.
I’d think it’s a driver issue, but can’t help as I use windows.

Right, I didn’t turn on ray-tracing as that slows it way down. Oh, maybe that’s what you meant when asking about rotating in real-time. No, I can’t rotate in real-time if ray-tracing is turned on as it takes several seconds to render after any changes. So I typically leave that turned off unless and until I want to generate a nice image.

The distortion of the exported image happens the same whether I’m using ray-tracing or not.

Did you try the suggested solution by Seth ?

Hello, I had the same problem and I posted it in this forum but nobody could give me an explanation. It vanished after one of the last updates and I thought it is gone for good.

Seems it is still around. Unfortunately I can not offer a Solution, sorry !

I found my old post: Problem saving 3D as picture

Hi @chris9 as far as I know, nothing was fixed.
so it makes me think that it was due to some OS update
@David_Bridgham would you like to share your GPU and drivers version details? and check if something simular to Chris?

My video card is a GeForce GTX 1050 and I’m using the nouveau driver version 1:1.0.16-1. I haven’t tried using the non-free driver as I’m a bit skittish about touching the X configuration. I’ve found that’s a really easy way to make a machine non-bootable. Still, it’s a reasonable thing to try that might narrow down where the problem is.

As for checking for something similar to Chris, I’m not sure what you’re asking. He updated his OS at one point and it started working for him. I update my OS regularly and have been seeing this problem for over a year now. I assumed that this would have gotten into the bug tracker back when that original thread was posted back in 2019 but with 5.1.9 still showing it I figured I’d follow up and make sure it had been reported.

I managed to switch over to the nvidia driver instead of nouveau (without rendering my machine unbootable even) and that does indeed work around the problem. So I guess the bug is either in the nouveau driver or some interaction between the 3d viewer and the nouveau driver. If the former, it’s rather outside the scope of the KiCad programmers and maybe I shouldn’t report it as a bug after all.

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Nice that workaround!
If I could get that GPU and try to reproduce it, I could investigate the problem.
As far as I know there are no other reports like this on other configurations. It may be that 3D Viewer is doing something that this driver doesn’t like.

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Hi David,

with Updates I meant KiCad 5.x Versions not my MINT. But now that you mention it I will switch between NUVEAU and NVIDIA to be sure…

So kammutierspule, you think the problem is specific to the GPU I have and not the nouveau driver in general? Could be, I have no other Nvidia graphics card to test with. It certainly seems there ought to be plenty of other people running the nouveau driver out there with a variety of different Nvidia cards.

The problem can be anywhere.
Sometimes, applications are doing things that may be not correct from the OpenGL standard, but the driver application “accepts” it.
Or it can be something not correctly implemented in the driver.
The OpenGL legacy has more and more issue as the new drivers and GPUs are not putting so much effort to do a correct implementation… because… it is legacy and discontinued.

I made the test:

NOUVEAU 1:1.0.15-2 = clipped &distorted
NVIDIA 340.108-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 = OK

Seems I had forgotten I changed the driver at some time …

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