vRay demo 14715 crashes max on render finish

[kimgar]

hi all!

i've been using vRay free for some time now. it's been working like a dream, and i've almost convinced my boss to purchase vRay advanced.
i've had occasional crashes with vRay free when aborting a render, but most of the time it's been stable.

i've just installed vRay demo v.14715 and now max always crashes when a render is finished or if i cancel a render. i am running max 7 sp1 on XP.

has anyone else had this problem, or do i really have to reinstall my whole system? is there anything i might try to fix this?

[jmpreston]

Same problem - DEMO crashes Max 7.5 every render!

I've only been playing around with Vray today but it crashes Max every time at the last of the render. I've tried using different GI engines, photons on or off, and it just crashes Max. This worse than the early DOS days a quarter century ago!

So my evaluation of Vray needs to end soon. Maybe I'll stick with mental ray and radiosity...

Vray Demo 1.47.15
Dell P4 3.2 ghz / 2 GB RAM
Max 7.5
Win XP sp2

- jim

[jmpreston]

More info

After more hours of reading through the forums and tutorials I'm still crashing at the end of the render. It would be impossible to show all the different settings and the model, but the model is only a simple room with one Vray light and a bitmap floor with a couple of primitives and a model of a table. It is identical to the model I'm using to experiment with mental ray and GI / FG except I've changed the light source from photometric to Vray. I have no problems and I'm getting good results in MR.

For the Vray settings I've kept everything at default except turned on GI and droped the Max Tree Depth to 20. However, I monitored the RAM in XP Task Manager and I seem to be doing fine. CPU is at 100% of course. I also crash without GI turned on.

I am not using Vray materials but it is my understanding that I don't need to unless I want to optimize the scene.

- jim

[RErender]

V-Ray can render a scene without crashing, we render 1000's of frames of complex scenes every day.

Maybe you could post your test scene to see what is going wrong. If not when you say memory is doing fine, how many megs is that?

[Da_elf]

why did you alter your max tree depth?

[jmpreston]

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by posting the file in the forum. I doubt the rendered image is useful.

There are a variety of metrics available in the Performance section of Task Manager. Which would you consider the most relevant?

The model is very simple, just primatives for the walls and ceiling and a bitmap floor texture. No bump maps, displacement, and such. The floor does have reflection. With MR GI and Final Gathering it takes 14 minutes to render.

- jim

[jmpreston]

I alterned the max tree depth because in some Vray tutorial it was suggeested to drop it from the default of 60 to 20. This didn't have an effect though.

- jim

[Da_elf]

can you post some settings? what material are you using? standard max? or are you using max's architectural materials, or raytrace?

[jmpreston]

In Task Manager probably the most relevant number is Commit Charge Peak, which was 711,000 rounded. I have 2GB of RAM and the Available is 1.4 GB during processing.

Interesting, but when I open the Materials Editor with the Vray file open then Max crashes. I'm not having that problem with the MR file, which is identical to the Vray file except for the renderer and the light, or the other tutorial files I'm working on.

The walls, etc. are just primitives with no materials. The floor is just a primitive with a jpeg on it with max standard material. There is a table in the scene that is made like the floor, a chrome ball for seeing the light positioning, and a white box primitive so I can see the effect of color with reflected light in GI. Nothing very interesting.

This computer is pretty much dedicated to CG so other than antivirus and a firewall not much else is happening on it. Oh, SQL server is running but not serving at the moment. Just for testing software apps.

- jim

[jmpreston]

I just thought of changing the renderer to MR from Vray and now the Material Editor opens without crashing Max. Vray is the problem, but I sure don't understand why.

Another thing I noticed, when I change a few parameters in Vray it will reset to the defaults after about five minutes. I think spirits live in this software

I had the free version installed but used Add/Remove before I installed the Demo. I never tried the free version.

- jim

[jmpreston]

I uninstalled Vray, rebooted, shut down everything such as McAfee and my firewall and SQL Server, then reinstalled but it still freezes Max, not the system, on the very last part of the render. I have a new Max 7.5, sp1, so there is no problem with older Max versions.

- jim

[Da_elf]

the resetting of your settings is due to it being a demo. you cant save your settings so when max does an autosave, poof. settings reset. as for the crashing. i believe that in some of the older demos when they have expired that its possible it crashes. vlado should do a simple "This demo is expired" message, when vray is selected as renderer.

[jmpreston]

I just downloaded and installed Vray Demo two days ago. That would be a short trial period

I typically work with about 30 - 40 programs on my computers at any one time since 1982. The particular programs depends on the trade I am in at the time but I've actively worked in probably 300 programs and evaluated more than a thousand. I program, set up a variety of servers, and have been involved in software develpment for over twenty years. This problem with Vray shouldn't be happening on a clean computer that is rather new.

The variable may be the ATI Radeon 9250 video card with 128 meg. It seems this popular card should work with Vray.

- jim

[Bassaidai]

Well, as posted on a the Vray FREE section, the very same thing happens here on the PC as well:

- Vray Demo 1.47.15
- default setting
- default (max) materials
- no objects at all (empty scene warning ok)

Renders up to the last two buckets (AMD MP here), then freezes.

Any ideas? Somehwat hard to evalute a DEMO with this kinda behaviour

Cheers
Bassu

[Da_elf]

I just downloaded and installed Vray Demo two days ago. That would be a short trial period

that would be good if the demo was set to a 30 day trial from the date you load it on. however its not. its a 30 day trial from the day it was created. so if vlado makes it on the 1st of the month, you can say bye bye to it at the end of the month reguardless if you loaded it on on the 20th or so. you will only get about 10 days trial. and if you try to load it on after its expired. there is no warning message, it just crashes