Vray Exception help

[tatr salad]

Hi all,

Whenever I try to render my scene I get this error dialog. The scene is rather large. I have 3 gigs of ram on a dual xeon. The scene seems to render fine when I turn some geometry off. But when I turn everything on it keeps giving me this error. Unfortuantely the client wants to see everything at the same time.

Has anyone experienced this, and if so do you have any suggetions or solutions?

Thanks in advance for any help.

ken

[percydaman]

are you using displacement? I have that issue alot if Im using displacement. Netrendering renders it fine though.

[tatr salad]

Percy,

There is no displacement anywhere in the scene. It seems like it's an issue with the amount of geometry. There's a lot. I just tried the 3GB switch and now my video card is not being acknowledged.

I'm just trying to render out a still for test. Eventually I'll render an anim. But I just want to render a damn image!

Oh, here's a new error message! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!

Thanks for any help

ken

[tatr salad]

Surely someone must have had this problem before, right?

[Morbid Angel]

several issues...looks like you are eather:
1 - running out of memory (if you have 3gb ram you need 3 gb switch to be active to use all 3 gb)
2- you have booleaned meshes or non standart meshes which vray doesnt recognize
3- the shaders you have are not recognized by vray.
But i think its eather memory or bad geometry, vray will always give exeption if there is booleaned "bad" mesh

[tatr salad]

Dmitry,

Thanks for your response. How do I figure out which geometry is bad? And is there a way to fix the geometry without rebuilding it?

I tried the 3GB switch, but windows wouldn't recognize my video card after I made the switch. So I'm back in regular mode now. Any suggestions?

Thanks

ken

[Morbid Angel]

Well i dont know what you have in the scene and how you made it, i'd try to narrow down to what geometry exectly causes to give exeption then select the vertexes in subobject and weld them with 0.001 radius this way all vertex data that floats in 0.0 space is illiminated...that can help. Also if you have holes in you mesh that can cause same thing.
As to 3gb switch...if you have 3 gb of ram without 3g switch then you only have 1 gb of ram and 700 mb of swap for one of every program that you are currently running. That the way windows works, so when you send the render whats you task manager for memory overload.
When we switched to 3gb i couldnt restart to make my video card work eather i think if you turn off you computer then turn it back on it will work...it did for us.
You said that most of the stuff renders with out other objects which are hidden but when you unhide them it gives the exeption, try reverse, hide everthing else expet those objects and render if there is no problem then its defenently memory issue.

[tatr salad]

Dmitry,

I did boolean a couple of objects in my scene, but they've been converted to editable meshs. ....

As far as the 3GB swith goes, i've turned computer off then back on, I've restarted it, defragged it, updated the video drivers (before and after the 3GB switch). It still won't acknowledge my video card.

Thanks for any help

ken

[tatr salad]

Is there a ultility in max that will let check whether geometry is bad or not?

the tatr

[Morbid Angel]

yeah editable mesh or not it doesnt really matter as long as there is bad geometry...well try to fix those thats all i can say

[paulison]

ive had this problem when exporting a site mesh from ArchiCAD before...had to fix it in the modeller and re-export because i didnt know how to fiz it in viz.

another thing that sort of worked for me was to select the mesh, optimise it, then meshsmooth, then convert to poly mesh..something like that

[tatr salad]

Paulison,

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a go.

But the scene seems to render sometimes and sometimes not. I'm pulling my hair out over here.

The client's gonna pull the job if I can't solve this issue and finish the anim.

ken

[paulison]

i suggest emailing vlado or tisho. those guys are very helpfull

we can only really guess at the problem....

another guess is to change the default geometry from static to dynamic and increase the memory limit. I really dont know what this does, but in the past ive changed this and it solved my crash problem (i think)

good luck!

[tatr salad]

Unfortunately this is a setting in 1.4 and I'm still using 1.09.

I emailed Vlado yesterday. Haven't heard back yet.

ken

[Sushidelic]

You can easily check if it is a memory issue - just open task manager and check the amount of ram used for the 3dsmax.exe process. If it increases over 1.4 GB while rendering / preparing the scene you'll get the exeption. Just hit render and watch .

If it is a memory issue, some points to start from / optimize:
- collapse every geometry possible down to editable meshes
- check your scene for oversized bitmaps (4k mappings on distant objects etc) and downscale everything - or as a test just apply a plain white material to everything and watch the ram again, or collect your bitmaps to one single folder and have a look at them
- check your lights and look for huge shadow map sizes (try to convert them to vray shadows although it will most likely increase rendertimes it decreases ram on render preparation)
- open scene summary and check for huge polycounts on individual objects - maybe you'll have some polygon monsters somewhere in the back of your scene
- change the raycaster parameters, especially upping the face/level quotient may help

Best regards,
Michael