Well, just got 2012 installed and decided to render a scene with ice particles that have instanced geometry (rendered on 2011 but with big memory leak). It seemed this was to be fixed in MR 3.9.

Results: Ka-Pow! Instant crash. Not a great start.

I'll try a few things later to see if I can figure out what's happening.

Anyone else have some early reports?

Fantastic indeed.
There is a similar discussion on xsimailing list

quote from there

"Can I get a silver medal? Mine crashed on the very first scene I
tried to render! Mental Ray, nothing special, just some instanced
objects. Grrrrrrrrrrr. "

it appears to be a problem with Mental Ray and instances, wonder how they didnt notice that if its the first thing people noticed as soon as it came out.

That was me

I guess I'm the only one so far.

I'm going to try re-simulating and re-saving the cache, maybe it's different somehow.

Well, I re-simulated the scene and re-wrote the cache files and now it works fine.

I guess it didn't like my old cache files for some reason.

I spoke too soon. It rendered 1 frame and then crashed on the second.

Makes me wonder if this version was tested AT ALL. If can find major bugs in the first couple hours of testing what were they doing in Beta?

So far, NOT impressed with 2012. Don't rush to download

Not speaking for all the beta testers, but it's a fine line between dedicating time spend on the beta and it's new features, and getting actual work done

Most of crashes in any new versions comes from some settings not entirely coming across properly. We have a new mental ray, new ICE stuff, new caching system etc., al this can affect a scene set up in a previous version of SI.

The more complex the scene, the more stuff can go wrong opening it up in a new version of SI..... Not saying it should crash on you straight away

I haven't seen the Known Bugs list yet, so I don't know what was fixed in the last weeks before release....

rob

Well cant really say anything about stability jet.. works fine so far.

Just 2 things I quickly noticed..

Unified sampling does not work with satellite rendering. (maybe a technical limitation?)

and motion vector output pass shader is always displayed as main channel in the Render Region even if set into a different channel. (dont happen in SI2011.5)

Fixes:
http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/index.php/Autodesk_Softimage_2012

Moderator edit: please use the URL tags - HB

ok i have a big issue here..
I've opened an old scene its nothing big, is an exterior house, whole scene is 97796 triangles.
Drag a render region and Softimage went in halt for like 10 seconds then it started rendering, no final gather, no lights except 1 point light, architectural material, i have absolutely nothing in the scene.

I've did the same test with 2011 and it just instantly start the render, it seems 2012 hangs on geometry loading?!
Also i've exported the model as obj to test into a new fresh scene, maybe the old scene cause some kind of problem with 2012, well imported the model, all default settings 1 infintie light, render -> same things, Softimage hangs for seconds then start the render wich is kinda instand since the scene has nothing. The render takes 1 second in wallclock, but it passes like 5/6 seconds before it starts rendering..

Any clue? I'm running further tests but so far i didnt manage to have the same responsiveness and quick render start like in 2011..

Well unfornately i can confirm this, i've just tried with a cube with a bit of subdivision, duplicated it couple of times, grab all cubes and duplicate them again, now i have in scene 112 cubes, and 70336 triangles, wich is just nothing, 2012 render hangs before start. 2011 is just instant.
It seems there is a problem here, can someone double check?

Thanks

edit: well triplechecked and sadly i have insane pre calc times on somthing like 150.000 triangles...200 cubes takes 20 seconds before it starts the render.. its someting regarding mental ray geometry cache or something?