Troubleshooting

Find the message you see, or the problem you have. Messages appear on the Create Splat panel’s status line or in Blender’s status bar, and Blender’s Info log keeps every outcome. If nothing here helps, see Getting help.

Before it starts

“Nothing selected”, “No collection” or “… has nothing that renders”

The subject has no objects that render, so there is nothing to splat. A line at the top of the Create Splat panel says what is wrong:

The line says	Means
“Nothing selected”	Subject: Selection with nothing selected. Select the objects first.
“The selection has nothing that renders”	The selected objects are hidden from rendering, are not geometry (cameras, lights, empties) or are splats SplatPilot made.
“No collection”	Subject: Collection with no collection picked in Collection.
“… has nothing that renders”	The collection (or the scene) has no objects that render here.

Meanwhile the estimate is greyed out, and so are Create Splat, Views, Render and Measure; their tooltips give the same reason. A run started without a subject anyway (from a script, for example) stops with “Nothing to splat”.

“No rig used” or “No perspective cameras”

Source in the Views panel is Rigs without a rig whose Use box is ticked, or Cameras without a collection of perspective cameras. The estimate’s Views row reads the same, and Create Splat, Views and Render are greyed out with this tooltip. Add a rig and tick Use, pick a camera collection, or switch Source back to Automatic.

The Views button is greyed out

With Rigs and Cameras, the views show in the viewport already, so there is nothing to place: its tooltip says “Rig views show in the viewport already” or “The collection’s cameras are the views”. Render or Create Splat renders them.

“Only N of M views found”

An environment’s views stand only where the scene camera can get to, clear of walls and furniture. Little free space within its reach gives fewer views than Count asks: move the scene camera into the space to capture, or choose a smaller subject.

“No views rendered for this subject and these settings”

Train trains on views rendered earlier, so it is never greyed out; it says this when there are none. Click Render (or Create Splat) first.

“Train uses the N views of … rendered last, not the views set now”

The settings changed since the views were rendered last, and Render shows red. Train trains on those views; Render or Create Splat renders the views set now.

Views, Render or Train is red

The step was done for other settings than the current ones; its tooltip says so, such as “The views rendered last are for other settings”. A click does it anew for the current settings. Red Views also draws the placed views faint. Train turns red only after a change to Steps, Max Splats, SH Degree, Opaque Splats, Focus Detail or the focus points. See Where each step stands.

“Scene: Workbench” under Engine

The scene renders with Workbench (or another engine than Cycles and EEVEE), so the views render with Cycles. Setting Engine sets the scene’s render engine to Cycles or EEVEE. See Engine.

“This scene is already planning, rendering or training”

One job at a time per scene. Wait for it to finish, or Pause or Cancel it. A running render measurement does not count: starting a run stops it.

“Unsaved edits of … are not rendered”

SplatPilot renders in a background Blender that reads images as they were saved. Save the edited images (Image > Save in the Image Editor), then start again.

“Image files not found: …”

Images the scene renders point to files Blender cannot find: moved, renamed, or on a drive that is not connected. They render magenta where they give colour, in the views too. File > External Data > Report Missing Files lists them in the Info editor, Find Missing Files looks for them in a folder of your choice.

“No copy of the file to render from: …”

With unsaved changes, SplatPilot renders from a copy of the file, saved next to it or else in the job’s folder, and neither could be written. The rest of the message is Blender’s reason, such as a full disk or a folder without write access. A saved file with no changes renders without a copy.

“… skipped: not a perspective camera”

With Source: Cameras, orthographic and panoramic cameras are skipped. The other cameras still render.

“No views to check”

Check Coverage found no views to measure: there is no subject, no rig with Use ticked, or no camera collection under Views.

Check Coverage is greyed out

The tooltip says why. With Rigs, at least one rig needs its Use box ticked (“No rig used”); without a subject, the tooltip gives the subject’s reason, such as “Nothing selected”. While something renders or trains, it reads “A render or training is running”.

The Coverage panel shows Check Again in red

The views or the subject changed since the last check: another selection or collection, the subject moved, a rig or camera changed, or Kind, Subject Only or Geometry Views. The Coverage panel reads “Outdated” meanwhile, with no map. The tooltip says what changed; Check Again measures the coverage of the views and subject now. A check made by alpha.39 shows it too: “the last check does not record its subject”. See Check Coverage.

“The scene’s objects changed since the geometry views were rendered: using them”

A coverage check in an environment with rigs or cameras measures against the geometry views Create Splat trains on, and does not render them again. Render or Create Splat asks whether to render them again.

Planning takes a long time

In a heavy environment, planning the views can take a while. The panel shows a progress bar such as “Planning views 12 / 32” (or “Planning geometry views …”), and Blender’s status bar says “Esc: cancel planning”. The viewport can be orbited meanwhile; Esc cancels.

The VRAM row is red: “Over the … GB VRAM limit”

The training would need more GPU memory than your VRAM limit. Click the “Use … k Splats” button below it to lower Max Splats to a budget that fits, or lower the view Count or the image size.

“Not enough memory: about N GB needed, M GB free”

SplatPilot renders the views in a background copy of Blender, which opens your file again: a heavy scene is then in memory twice, and Cycles keeps its own copy of the geometry on top. When that will likely need more than your computer has free, the panel says so before you start. Check Coverage, whose own renders use Cycles, reports the same as a warning when it starts. Close other programs, or lower Subdivision levels (or use Simplify in the Render Properties) and texture sizes. Running out of memory can make other programs fail too.

“Not enough disk space: about N GB needed, M GB free”

The drive that holds SplatPilot’s storage folder has less free space than the views of these settings need, and they are not rendered yet. Free space on that drive (Clean Up… in the Storage panel deletes what no splat in this file needs), or lower the view Count or the Image Size.

Check Before Rendering: “Mirror-like: …”

The subject has mirror-like materials and Min Roughness is 0. Sharp reflections come out blotchy in a splat. Set Min Roughness to 0.3 in the popover renders them clean but softer. See Shiny surfaces.

Check Before Rendering: “Cycles on the CPU”

The scene’s Render Properties > Device is CPU, and SplatPilot renders the views with the scene’s device, as F12 does. Your preferences have a GPU set up, so the popover’s Device box reads “Cycles on the CPU · GPU Compute renders several times faster”. Switch Render Properties > Device to GPU Compute.

While it renders

“Rendering failed: …”

The background Blender stopped with an error; the message says why when it can (“no reason given” when it said nothing). Every error line in the panel ends in Open Log: it opens Blender’s crash report if there is one, or else the run’s error output, in your system’s text editor. Check that the file renders in Blender itself.

“Rendering failed: out of memory: …”

The background copy of the scene did not fit in memory: see “Not enough memory” above.

“Rendering failed: the render copy of Blender crashed”

The background Blender crashed while rendering. Open Log opens Blender’s crash report, which says where it crashed: worth sending with a bug report. Common causes are running out of memory (see above) and a scene that crashes Blender’s own renders too: try F12 on the file.

When Blender wrote no report, the line gives the exit code instead, such as “Rendering failed: the render copy of Blender stopped (exit code 0xC0000005)”, and Open Log opens the run’s error output.

“Paused after N of M views”

The views rendered so far are kept. Resume renders the rest; Start Over drops the paused run and starts Create Splat again. “Stopped after N of M views” means the same for a run that stopped without Pause.

“Coverage check paused after N of M views”

Resume Check in the Create Splat panel goes on with the check.

“Rendering cancelled” or “Coverage check cancelled”

The views rendered so far are kept: a new Create Splat or Render renders only the missing views.

While it trains

“…: paused at N of M steps”

The training was paused. The splat so far is in Results; Resume trains on to the planned steps.

It waits at “Preparing the engine…”

The first training on a machine compiles the engine’s shaders, which takes a minute or two. It happens once. Test GPU in the preferences does it ahead of time.

“Engine missing (slangpy): reinstall SplatPilot to train”

The training engine’s GPU library is missing; the preferences say the same. Install the SplatPilot .zip again (see Installation). Rendering and dataset export work without it.

“Training failed: not enough memory (GPU or system): …”

The GPU or the computer ran out of memory. Lower Max Splats, the view Count or the image size, or close other programs while it trains. If the message ends in “· checkpoint at step N”, a checkpoint was saved: Resume continues from there.

“Training failed: … no rendered surface to start from (every pixel is transparent)”

The views show nothing: the subject is hidden from rendering, or outside every view. Check the subject’s visibility in renders, and with rigs or cameras, that they look at it.

“Training failed: … · checkpoint at step N”

The training stopped with an error (a GPU reset, for example) after saving a checkpoint. Click Resume to go on from that step. If the engine stopped without saying why, the message gives its exit code (“the engine stopped (exit code …)”), or “the engine crashed”; Open Log at the end of the line opens its error output.

“… does not read back as the engine wrote it: update SplatPilot”

After importing a splat, SplatPilot reads part of it back to check it. This message means Blender stores splats differently than this version of SplatPilot expects. Update SplatPilot. Until then, Improve is greyed for that splat.

“Training cancelled”

Cancel discarded the training’s splat; a splat being improved stays as it was. The rendered views are kept, so a new Create Splat starts training right away. After 5 minutes of training or more, Cancel asks first (“Discard the training?”); Pause keeps the splat instead.

Results

A button or menu entry is greyed out

Hover over it: the tooltip says why.

Control	Tooltip	What to do
Improve…, Train Again	“A render or training is running”	Wait, or pause or cancel the run.
Improve…	“Its checkpoint was removed” (by Clean Up or Delete)	Train Again in the splat’s menu makes a new splat from its views; or create a new splat.
Improve…, Export Training Dataset…	“Its rendered views were removed”	Create a new splat.
− (Delete Splat)	“Not trained by SplatPilot”	Delete the object in the Outliner.
Use Its Settings	“Trained before SplatPilot recorded its settings”	Set the quality by hand.
Open Run Folder	“Its run folder was removed (Clean Up or Delete)”	Nothing to open: the log and checkpoint are gone.
File > Export > Gaussian Splat (.ply/.sog)	“No active splat object”	Click a splat object, or use Export… in Results.
File > Export > Splat Training Dataset (COLMAP/nerfstudio)	“No rendered views”	Click Render or Create Splat.

In Improve’s dialog, Add Views is greyed with “Add Views needs Views > Source: Automatic”: set Source in the Views panel to Automatic, or, to use more rigs or cameras, create a new splat with them. More Steps works with any source.

“The splat has these views already”

The planned views are the same ones the splat already has. Raise the Add Views count in Improve’s dialog.

“… cannot be exported: …”

Export… takes the splat as it sits in the scene, which works for moves, rotations and uniform scaling. Make the object’s scale the same on all three axes (and remove any shear from its parents), then export again.

“A render or training is running: it may use these files”

Delete Splat was refused: a running job may use the same files. Wait, or pause or cancel the job, then delete.

The splat looks wrong

Soft or blurry

Add views: Improve… in Results, with Add Views, renders more views and trains the splat on, the best way to improve it. A higher quality, a larger image size or more splats help once there are plenty of views. The Coverage panel tells whether more views would help (for rigs, cameras and objects after Check Coverage).

Holes, haze or floaters in a room

Keep Geometry Views on (the default): they make holes and floaters rare. Add views where the room is seen from few places, or add a focus point over what matters most.

Flares or wrong colours from new angles

The splat made up colour for directions no view saw. Lower SH Degree in the Training panel (with Advanced Settings), or add views from those angles.

Blotchy mirrors, chrome or metal

Sharp reflections come out blotchy in a splat. Raise Min Roughness in the Rendering panel (0.3 gives a clean satin look). See Shiny surfaces.

Glass, mirrors and fog look soft

They train, but less well than solid surfaces.

The brightest highlights are clipped

Splats keep colours up to four times brighter than white, which covers sunlit and lamp-lit surfaces under AgX and Filmic. Brighter glints, like the sun in chrome, are clipped.

The sky or background is missing

SplatPilot renders the views with a transparent background, so the world (a sky, an HDRI) is not part of the splat. It still lights the surfaces as in your renders.

Objects around the subject are missing

With Subject Only (Rendering panel, on by default for an object chosen by selection or collection), the views show only the subject; other objects light it and show in its reflections but are not in the splat. Add them to the subject, or turn Subject Only off.

Huge scenes look thin, film sets look odd

A building with a large backdrop spreads its views thin: choose the part you care about as a collection, or add views. In a film set with walls only where the shot needs them, views facing the open side see nothing and views behind the set see the backs of walls.

Files and disk

The disk is filling up

Rendered views take the most space; the Storage panel’s Views, Runs and Splats rows show how much each kind takes. Clean Up… in the Storage panel deletes only what no splat in this file needs. You can also delete the storage folder’s datasets/ by hand: views render again when needed, but until then your splats cannot be improved or trained again. See Storage and Blender Projects.

The Storage panel reads “Counting…”

SplatPilot counts the storage folder’s disk use in the background: once a session, after every job, after Clean Up and on the refresh button. A large folder takes a while.

Clean Up is greyed out

Its tooltip says “Nothing to clean up: every run and view here is in use”: this file’s splats, running or paused jobs, other files sharing the folder or trainings waiting to be imported use everything in the storage folder.

The EXR files open black in Blender

Blender 5.3 cannot open SplatPilot’s multi-part EXR files. Other EXR viewers show their rgba layer; the images/ folder next to them has the views as pictures.

Measure or Test GPU is greyed out

Both time your machine, so they are not available while something else renders or trains: their tooltips say “A render or training is running: it would time both”. Starting a run stops a running Measure Render. With nothing to splat, Measure is greyed out with the rest of the estimate.