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 ?

sfn · 2025-12-31 10:20:02

Libdecor is installed, and blender is running as a native wayland client. Forcing it to run under xwayland doesn't solve anything, even headless CLI rendering presents the same issue. Also, it's only volume grids that fail to render, volume materials on meshes and anything else seems to work fine.

At this point, thank you very much for the help, but I've resigned myself to using the website download when I need to render volume grids. It doesn't feel productive to just keep replying "no, this doesn't work", especially when I've ran out of ideas myself.

Obviously still willing to provide info for anyone trying to debug this issue themselves. I'm beginning to suspect subtle library inconsistencies, given the only difference I could find between the two versions is the libraries they were built against.

seth · 2025-12-31 15:43:18

Understandable.
You might want to subscribe to the other thread where the issue seems to be an incompatibility w/ the system ffmepg (wich is also a major difference) and ffmpeg drags in A LOT of libraries, notably OCL or glslang might be relevant here (though that requires detailed knowledge of the affected code in blender)

Also at some point the packager needs to be made aware of these issues - do you have a gitlab.archlinux.org account?

sfn · 2026-01-01 10:00:31

I don't have a gitlab.archlinux.org account yet, but I think that before submitting a bug report I will wait to see if 5.1 solves the issue, as the new version will introduce new (major) versions of a bunch of libraries, closer to what Arch packages provides: https://projects.blender.org/blender/bl … ues/147201

Zi7ar21 · 2026-01-09 02:34:17

I'm having the same problem. Using the same file with a volume grid or importing an OpenVDB file and rendering with Cycles, the Arch Linux version renders nothing (the samples are rendered really fast, which implies it's likely not doing any shading calculations at all), while the Steam version (also 5.0.1) works fine, and renders the volume as expected.

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 07:27:02 AM MST
Install Date    : Tue 23 Dec 2025 12:46:24 AM MST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

This is one weird bug, no matter what I do (deleting .config/blender and .cache/blender, switching between CPU and GPU compute, etc.) seems to work on the Arch Linux version of Blender. Oddly enough, the viewport renderer and EEVEE render volume grids fine.

I swear I had this same issue a few months ago, and it was resolved on it's own...

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

#7 2025-12-31 10:20:02

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

#8 2025-12-31 15:43:18

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

#9 2026-01-01 10:00:31

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

#10 2026-01-09 02:34:17

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

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