crashtastic

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Hi all,

Anyone else finding Vantage latest build 2.3.0 to be very unstable? I'm finding it's binning it through livelink and failing standalone with animated cameras. The file I'm working with is about half the size of my last project which worked fine under special circumstances. That old project had about 200 moving anima people in as well, this new one has none.

Cheers,

Jason

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting.
Have you done any other software or hardware changes to your system? What is your GPU driver version and GPU model? Are you sure you are testing exactly the same scene that worked with Vantage 2.3?
Could you download and install the older version that worked and test again with your scene? Are you having issues with only one scene or multiple scenes or probably every scene even a new simple scene?

[npg]

If Vantage crashes it usually creates a file %TEMP%/Vantage_****.dmp Please send us the dump file if it exists so we can investigate. There is also a log file that might be helpful, at %APPDATA%/Chaos Group/Vantage/debug_log.txt Note that the log file is overwritten every time so you need to copy it after the crash.

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Hi vladimir_krastev, thanks for replying, I'm using Nvidia RTX A6000 with 64gb ram, 128gb ram, AMD 3990x 64 cores, no GPU updates this week, it was working ok at the start of the week. I'm just trying a merge into fresh scene and will test it again.

On a side note why does the creating frame component take so long, this seems to take 3-4 hours on a 3600 frame camera? The core scene get's transferred in about 10 minutes and then we have to wait for what seems like the animated camera to load in incredibly slowly, it's always been this way when we had animated meshes (slow) but I'm concerned with this scene as there aren't any animated meshes.

Bringing all the geometry into Vantage is super quick and as you would expect but alas there is a huge bottleneck with the simple flythrough camera...

Thanks,

Jason

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

npg vantage debug file & 3dsmax log file attached, thanks for looking.

Jason

[npg]

Can't tell why it crashed from the log, but I see there is displacement in the scene. Try disabling the new option Preferences->Render defaults->"Per-triangle tessellation level". This is just a random guess - it was added in 2.3.0.

Are these crashes random, i.e. at a different point in the animation every time?

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Thanks for the reply,

Livelink has been crashing recently, it's most times you try to interact with it, not straight away but, it's feeling like the crash will happen any moment. I've got to be honest when rendering animations recently I've tried it three times and it's crashed before setting the animation off at different stages every time.

From my experience livelink will crash 10-25% of the times during animations and it will also introduce noise issues through about 2-5% of the frames.

I only send jobs via sending as a standalone as that's been rock solid, only downside is animated meshes makes enormous file sizes, not a big problem. I've been sending this job for the last two weeks with this method and it's been fine but I have started noticing unusual behaviour this week. I'm testing a 10 second sequence and it appears to send the first 1.5 seconds of the camera and then it stops and misses the other 8.5 seconds. I will try creating a new camera and see if that irons out the camera problem. The only other thing I can think of is a new Railclone object and also there was a Railclone update this week. I'll test and get back to you.

Could I get you to check why the animated camera part takes so long to transfer? The scene itself transferred in about 5 minutes and the camera took for 50 frames...

Thanks for your help as always.

Jason

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi you could send us the scene trough the ticketing system for review if you wish.

Could I get you to check why the animated camera part takes so long to transfer?

If you have a Forest Pack that is using the animated camera for something (FOV clipping lets say) the scene will transfer as a animated mesh scene.

The only other thing I can think of is a new Railclone object and also there was a Railclone update this week

This could be a valid reason for your issues. It deserves checking at least.

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

I've got it working now, something worked in this combination of downgrading to Vantage 2.3.0, then upgrading back to Vantage 2.3.3, installing the latest Nvidia driver (538.49), restarting my PC, deleting the Railclone object and then bringing that back again.

Aside from this, the methodology of sending the 3dsmax file to the standalone vantage version still takes an age when sending the animated camera (no displacements, no animated meshes), it's only a moving camera through a static scene, so I wonder why it's taking 3-5 seconds per frame?

I'll send a small file to the links above so hopefully you can test the camera problem?

Many thanks for your help as always.

Jason

[Luma3d]

So is 2.3 more stable than 2.3.3? I haven't upgraded yet, but it seems like I should wait.

[vladimir.nedev]

So is 2.3 more stable than 2.3.3? I haven't upgraded yet, but it seems like I should wait.

There is no 2.3.3 build. The last build we have is 2.3.0.
I guess he meant 2.2.3 which is an older build.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Luma3d]

Oh...ok. What the stability of 2.3. Should I wait?

[glorybound]

When I launch Vantage live link, there is a 50/50 chance it'll work. Vantage launches, but nothing loads. Reboot MAX and it'll work.

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

I got it working under Vantage Livelink, works pretty well now, I'm not sure what caused the crashes before but from reimporting the scene into a fresh scene, doing a couple of Vantage re-installs and Nvidia driver update all is working.

Only small thing that bugs is the animation will pause after about 1000 frames, it did this over the weekend but it looks like last nights re-run hasn't had any problems, so fingers crossed the gremlins have gone into hibernation. If it's ok, could I send a simple scene and get you to look at the other method of sending as a standalone? I'll only inlcude the camera, sun & ground plane objects, would be good to know why the camera takes 5-10 secs per frame to send.

Thanks for your help as always, truly appreciated.

Jason