How to open irridiance file ?

[bernhard]

Hello friends !

For some reason my computer always crashed while calculating the irridiance map for an animation.

I didn't use the backburner, because I started the irridiance map on my local machine.
But I do have a saved Irridiance map on my local computer.

Now I would like to know, at which frame it crashed.

Can I open the saved Irridiance map in any text editor and get the information about the frame ?

thx for every little help,
bernhard

[Aldaryn]

I suppose you ran the irradiance map in an incremental add to mode. In that case, I don't think there will be any information in the saved map itself about the "frames" it holds. For the irradiance map itself it makes little sense from how many, or from which frames was it constructed. The precess is simply a 3D append to the existing samples stored in the map.

Anyway, don't you have the VRay logs from the time your machine crashed? If anywhere, than there should be the clue on which frame was the bad guy.

Best regards,

A.

[bernhard]

hmmm.

Thank you for your fast reply.

Yes, sorry, I forgot to tell I use the in an incremental add to mode.

let me say, I've calculated every 25th frame an irridiance map.
starting from frame 0. and it was calculating until frame 100. so I do have 4 frames calculated and saved.

and now, let's say, I don't know anymore, if the last frame was calculated and saved, so I start over again let's say at frame 50, so I can get sure I will get the last two frames again and overwrite with incremental add mode the saved irridiance map on my harddrive.

will it work ? or will it bring me render issues ?

vraylog:
to bad, I can't find any information about my last frame .....
and of course, it would be great to find out what causes that crashing all the time..

thx for every little help,
bernhard

[Aldaryn]

You can add the missing frames later to the irradiance map, you've already got without any trouble. Just load it, and use the incremental add to mode.

If you assume that it crashed after the first two, just render the last two and add them, even if there was information in the irradiance map from those frames as well, it won't cause you any trouble. The worst thing you can get is increased sample density in some cases.

But: but I suggest you investigate the frames causing the crash first. You said that somewhere in your frameset there is at least one always generating a crash, and that is no good news.

Best regards,

A.

[bernhard]

hmmm

ok, thank you very much for your suggestions.

By loading the irridiance map you mean, selecting again the same path and overwrite with incremental add mode, or ?

I could figure out, that the crash is not from one frame - I don't know why it crashes, maybea RAM issue - but don't know yet.

ok, so far so good,
than you very much for your help,

appreciate that,
bernhard

[Aldaryn]

Hmm, I needed to this a long time ago, but several versions before you needed to load the irradiance map into the memory first, because the incremental add to adds samples to the map currently in the memory, and only outputs it to a file afterward. (If save at render end is checked). So first do a blank render with from file mode, so the desired irradiance map gets loaded ino memory.

I seldom need this, but if anyone knows a better and more convenient way, please tell.

You really should look for a crashing frame, and examine the cause. If it's memory related, than usually some clever tweaking can help, and you'll be able to render further sequences without crashes making your life harder.

Best regards,

A.

[bernhard]

loading into the memory ?

Hmm, well that's very interesting, we still use RC3 because we didnt' have time to install the last version.

How do you load the irridiance map into the memory ?

Well, I also made a second calculation on a different computer.
This is more crazy now, because if I want to use that calculated irridaince map from file, I get the error: Can't load the map

Does anyone know what could cause that issue ?
I calculated the Irridiance map on one computer - dont' really know why, didn't have something before, but it seems to be the Irridiance map can't be calculated and rendered in that scene file.

thx for every little help,
bernhard

[bernhard]

2 irridiance maps - making one ?

hmm, also is it possible, if I do have 2 irridiance maps calculated, to attach both togehter, so that I do have one ?

thx,
bernhard

[Aldaryn]

Merging maps can be don with the irradiance map viewer tool. You can find it in the Chaos install folder under tools. Generally it's a real good tool to have.

For the can't load map issue, well, sound a bit odd. I would check if it's not just a network path issue, than would try to load the map into the scene from it was calculated. But I really don't see why an irradiance map calculated in a different scene can't be loaded into another, or on a different computer.

Best regards,

A.

[bernhard]

really strange

until today I couldn't find out what happened.
My guess: I think the computer didn't have enough RAM, so the error message came in the backburner: unexpected error

but what me shocked was the following issue:
once I coudl read the error from the backburner, the vray server started that job again - of course.

I didn't really think that this should be an issue, because it will automaticly incremental add.
But that was a mistake.

The irridiance map was completly destroyed, and couldn't be used for the entire animation.

I made a new calaculation on a different computer, with enough RAM this time.
I didn't get any error, and the final Irridiance map was about 250MB.

The crashed one, about 30MB.

So you can see, if for some reason there is an error while calcualting the irridiance map, and you start from the frame the computer crashed, it will not work anymore.

That's what I could find out, very interesting and very important to know.
Let me know your experience and what you think about.

thx and take care,
bernhard

[Aldaryn]

Yup, this is what you get if the crash occurs while calculating the map. The irradiance data is not streamed to the file, but added when the calculation is completed. So, if you've got an error during that, consider that frame lost.

Best regards,

A.