Render View suddenly not loading after reorganizing files

Okay, so I moved files around (basically just created a file for finished projects and pending projects to put other files in to clean up my hard drive ) I didn't delete anything, just moved all the files and now render view is doing the "render kernels need time" thing. It wasn't doing this before I moved the files and it's doing it on every file. The shader view loaded. Any ideas as to why? V 2.93 It finally popped up but seems weird that it did that.


  • Vue Thao(euv) replied

    now render view is doing the "render kernels need time" thing

    I've experienced a similar situation. I figure a way around this:
    1. under output properties, keep the percentage scale for render resolution low at 10%
    2. under render properties, keep the samples low at 10
    3. this will help warm up the GPU, the same analogy as warming up before physical exercise and warming up the car during wintertime.
    4. once the render is done in a short amount of time, try to increase to 50% resolution and 50 samples then try another increase up to 100% resolution and 100+ samples.

    HAVE A HAPPY BLENDER HOLIDAY!! 🎄🎅🎁

  • adrian replied

    Hey Kat! cchaoslillith 

    When you render an image for the first time the GPU will store shader information in a shader cache on the drive.

    The shader cache is a collection of parsed and precompiled shaders.

    The shader cache is normally located within a file for your GPU under program files.

    When you move the .blend files (or change the file path) you effectively break the link between the .blend file and the shader info in the shader cache.

    Its hard to explain in one sentence.

    If you have gone through and rendered all the files you moved, this shouldn't happen again.

    Hope this makes sense.


    euv , if this happens to you all the time, you may have shader cache turned off or a low shader cache size (which will cause the shader cache to be constantly overwritten). You should be able to adjust this in the GPU's control panel.

  • Kat Loveland(chaoslillith) replied

    Ahh ok. I figured it had to do with moving the files. Just threw me off. Thanks!

  • Vue Thao(euv) replied

    @adrian2301 haha I was talking about the rendering part, not the missing files. Yes, it happened to me once when I moved the files somewhere and I can't open the splash screen and render the blend files too. Until now I learned I shouldn't move my blender and shader files elsewhere anymore. I leave them be in the same folder (name the folder "blender").

    Thanks for the advice on the shader cache though.