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Render and GPU troubleshooting

Most rendering complaints come from one of: wrong backend, broken driver, color-management mismatch, or low VRAM.

Identify the backend

Help > About > GPU shows the active wgpu backend:

Backend: Metal (Apple M2)

The Designer's default backend picker prefers, in order: Metal (macOS), DX12 (Windows), Vulkan (Linux), then OpenGL, then CPU.

Force a different backend

ELYSIUM_GPU_BACKEND=vulkan elysium-designer

Values: metal, dx12, vulkan, gl, cpu.

Useful when:

  • The default backend has a driver bug on your machine.
  • You want to benchmark.
  • You are debugging an OS-specific rendering issue.

Flicker / corruption

Symptoms: brief black flashes, garbled text, incorrect colors.

Try:

  1. Update graphics drivers (NVIDIA / AMD / Intel).
  2. Switch backend (force Vulkan on Linux if Wayland's compositor is buggy; force DX12 on Windows if Vulkan is misbehaving).
  3. Disable HDR on the active display.
  4. Lower the active monitor refresh rate temporarily.

Slow renders

If Production or Final quality presets take dramatically longer than the render quality table predicts:

  • Confirm GPU compute path is active (elysium doctor shows "GPU compute: yes").
  • Reduce IBL resolution (Preferences > Rendering > IBL Resolution).
  • Disable adaptive sampling if your scene has very stable variance.

Color looks wrong

The most common color complaints:

Symptom Fix
Textures look washed out Verify their Input Space in the Properties pane (should be sRGB for albedos)
Iridescence flat / dim Switch to Textured + Lit (7) and add a directional light
Output on web looks different than Designer The Designer's output color space is sRGB by default; verify in Rendering > Color Space

See Color management.

Out of memory

Symptom Fix
"Texture allocation failed" toast Lower Preferences > Rendering > Texture Budget
Crash after long brushing session View > Flatten Brush History
Renders fail above 2K resolution The GPU compute path needs ~4 * w * h * 4 bytes free VRAM; CPU path tracer takes about half

Tablet pressure not registering

See Touch and pen input.

Quick checks:

  1. Help > Tablet Diagnostics: does pressure show?
  2. macOS: System Settings > Privacy > Accessibility: is the Designer in the list?
  3. Windows: latest driver from the tablet vendor's site (not just Windows Update).
  4. Linux: libinput list-devices | grep -A20 tablet shows the axes.

Linux Wayland

Wayland support is solid on KDE Plasma 6 and GNOME 46+. Older Sway and Hyprland builds may not honor hit-test paths or window-move correctly. Workarounds:

  • Run under XWayland (WAYLAND_DISPLAY= elysium-designer).
  • Update to the latest compositor.

See also