Arch's packaging of blender can't render volume grids in cycles

sfn · 2025-12-23 17:04:53

Running into a very odd issue:

When using blender from the Arch package, Cycles renders volume grids as completely transparent/invisible objects. It works normally when using the build available off the blender.org website. GPU (OptiX on RTX 3060) or CPU rendering equally fail to work, and OSL makes no difference.

Volume materials on mesh objects are unaffected, and EEVEE works as normal.

Others not using Arch Linux haven't been able to reproduce.

See also: https://blenderartists.org/t/cycles-can … s/1624066/

Any help/advice appreciated!

$ pacman -Qi blender
Name            : blender
Version         : 17:5.0.1-1
Description     : A fully integrated 3D graphics creation suite
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.blender.org
Licenses        : Apache-2.0  BSD-2-Clause  BSD-3-Clause
                  GPL-2.0-or-later  GPL-3.0-or-later  LGPL-2.1-or-later
                  MIT  MPL-2.0  Zlib
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : alembic  bash  boost-libs  draco  embree  expat  ffmpeg
                  fftw  freetype2  gcc-libs  glew  glibc  gmp
                  hicolor-icon-theme  imath
                  intel-oneapi-compiler-dpcpp-cpp-runtime-libs
                  intel-oneapi-compiler-shared-runtime-libs  jack
                  jemalloc  level-zero-loader  libepoxy  libharu
                  libjpeg-turbo  libpng  libsndfile  libspnav  libtiff
                  libwebp  libx11  libxfixes  libxi  libxkbcommon
                  libxml2  libxrender  libxxf86vm  llvm-libs  manifold
                  materialx  onetbb  openal  opencolorio  openexr
                  openimagedenoise  openimageio  openjpeg2  openpgl
                  openshadinglanguage  opensubdiv  openvdb  openxr
                  potrace  pugixml  pystring  python  python-numpy
                  python-requests  sdl2  shared-mime-info  usd  xdg-utils
                  yaml-cpp  zlib  zstd
Optional Deps   : cuda: Cycles renderer CUDA support [installed]
                  intel-compute-runtime: Cycles renderer Intel OneAPI
                  support
                  hip-runtime-amd: Cycles renderer AMD ROCm support
                  hiprt: Ray tracing AMD ROCm support
                  libdecor: wayland support [installed]
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 360.01 MiB
Packager        : Sven-Hendrik Haase <svenstaro@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Tue 16 Dec 2025 15:27:02 CET
Install Date    : Tue 23 Dec 2025 17:48:21 CET
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

Last edited by sfn (2025-12-23 17:05:56)

seth · 2025-12-23 22:12:09

x-ref, https://bbs.archlinux.org/post.php?tid=311138
Do you get any llvm errors and/or have a weird cuda library around?

Though

CPU rendering equally fail to work

if actually rendering in software causes this …
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Blender#Intel_Arc_GPUs (ignore the context) and do you maybe need intel-compute-runtime ?

sfn · 2025-12-24 09:29:00

Thank you for the reply!

No llvm errors, in fact I get exactly the same logs between the two builds, even with the --debug-cycles option.

CUDA version is just latest available from the Arch repos, 13.1.0-1 at time of writing. I've always used Arch packages both for CUDA and for nvidia drivers (nvidia-open-dkms 590.48.01-1). Also, the issue occurs with pure software rendering.

Installing intel-compute-runtime and enabling CYCLES_ONEAPI_ALL_DEVICES=1 didn't have any effect, unfortunately.

seth · 2025-12-24 16:18:17

I think the other thread might be down to the upstream binary not using opencl, see over there on how to remove the icd what will hopefully make blender ignore it.

sfn · 2025-12-25 15:05:02

No joy, unfortunately. I even completely uninstalled CUDA, but the issue persisted with CPU rendering (and when I re-installed CUDA GPU rendering was unchanged).

seth · 2025-12-26 22:39:11

Do you have https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/libdecor/
Is blender running as native wayland client or via xwayland?
Can you reproduce this in an X11 session ?

Arch Linux

#1 2025-12-23 17:04:53

Arch's packaging of blender can't render volume grids in cycles

#2 2025-12-23 22:12:09

Re: Arch's packaging of blender can't render volume grids in cycles

#3 2025-12-24 09:29:00

Re: Arch's packaging of blender can't render volume grids in cycles

#4 2025-12-24 16:18:17

Re: Arch's packaging of blender can't render volume grids in cycles

#5 2025-12-25 15:05:02

Re: Arch's packaging of blender can't render volume grids in cycles

#6 2025-12-26 22:39:11

Re: Arch's packaging of blender can't render volume grids in cycles

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