Animation question

[vhunter]

Hi all,

I'm running a 1500 frame animation in VIZ 4.2 rendering to separate TIFF files using just vray GI. The problem is about 50 frames into it, VIZ just disappears. There is no warning, it just disappears from the screen and 3dsviz.exe is not listed in task manager.

Can anyone help me as to why it would dump all memory and quit? The scene using only 3 simple, flat vray shaders and no lights. Rendering the the model only needs about 256 mb of ram as shown in my task manager.

Here is scene info:

Scene Totals:
Objects: 434
Shapes: 115
Cameras: 1
Lights: 0
Helpers: 35
Total: 585
Mesh Totals:
Verts: 638449
Faces: 619484
Materials:
Existing Mass ( VRayMtl )
Road ( VRayMtl )
Grass ( VRayMtl )

System specs:

Dual Xeons at 2.8, 1gb ram, nforce fx 5950, winxp pro.
Viz 4.2 with latest VRAY.

Help!

Thanks in advance, I'm kind of a viz and vray noob,

Vincent M. Hunter, AIA

[vhunter]

I really need some help, thanks.

[vhunter]

I can run the animation successfully using the VIZ default scanline renderer. It only crashes when using VRAY. Help!

Thanks,

Vince

[cocolas]

it's probably one of the shaders.....have you tried taking one by one off and render??

also mirrored instanced geometry could be a problem, vray doesn't seem to like that......

other then that, I can't think of anything else......other then a memory problem..but as you seem to say the scene uses only 256MB.........

paul.

[vlado]

You can look at the file c:/vraylog.txt *right after* the crash (don't open Viz again, as the file will be cleared) and see what vray was doing at that point. This said, it's strange that you don't get VRay's own exception dialog, but a quick exit out of Viz.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vhunter]

I changed the entire model to one single VRAY material or one single standard VIZ material, and VRAY still makes VIZ disappear and do a complete memory dump.

I can do a successful rendered animation using the default scanline renderer in VIZ. I can also render it successfully in finalRENDER. I would like to use VRAY, since I love VRAY, but it can't handle it for some reason.

Any VRAY guru's out there? I'm stumped!

Vince

[cocolas]

did you look at the vray log file, once it crashes?

[vhunter]

This is the last two frames from my vraylog.txt. Any thoughts?

Vince


Entering Render().
Setting up MAX progress callback.
Creating G-buffer channels.
Clearing previous contents of frame buffer.
Starting frame timer.
Entering RenderAtTime(t=12480, fieldMask=3)
Rendering frame at time 12480 Setting up frame data.
Extracting frame data from FrameParams.
Extracting frame data from VRender Environment params.
Extracting frame data for fields.
Extracting frame data from node (Camera01).
Rendering from camera Camera01 Calling beginFrame().
Entering beginFrame().
Setting RenderGlobalContext.
Calling update().
Evaluating render instances.
Preparing render instances.
Sampling displacement maps.
Updating render lights.
Updating atmospheric effects.
Updating render effects.
Scene setup: 0.3 s

Building raytrace accelerator
Compiling render instances geometry.
Compiling lights geometry.
Bulding static raycast accelerator.
Creating and initializing 4 thread(s).
Allocating memory for build data of 619098 faces (17334744 bytes, 16.5 MB).
Initializing face build data.
Creating 'done' event.
Starting first thread.
Waiting for thread completion.
Releasing thread resources.
Preparing faces for intersection tests.
SDTree statistics:
Total number of faces stored: 619098 Max tree depth: 32 Average tree depth: 23.5169 Number of tree nodes: 138899 Number of tree faces: 1894207 Number of tree leafs: 69412 Average faces/leaf: 27.2893 Bulding displacement raycast accelerator.
SDTree takes 49042660 bytes (46.8 MBytes)

SDTree2 takes 0 bytes (0.0 MBytes)

Accelerator(s) setup: 1.7 s

Setting up camera sampler.
Broadcasting NOTIFY_PRE_RENDERFRAME.
Computing irradiance map.
Irradiance sample size is 76 bytes

Prepass 1 of 4 Setting up 4 thread(s) Threads completed Prepass 2 of 4 Setting up 4 thread(s) Threads completed Prepass 3 of 4 Setting up 4 thread(s) Threads completed Prepass 4 of 4 Setting up 4 thread(s) Threads completed Irradiance map building: 26.4 s

beginFrame() done.
Setting up frame region.
Setting up DoneCallback.
Rendering frame region (0,0)-(640,480).
Setting up 4 thread(s) Threads completed Calling endFrame().
Entering endFrame().
Broadcasting NOTIFY_POST_RENDERFRAME.
Applying render effects.
Clearing camera sampler.
Calling frameEnd() on render instances.
Clearing accelerator.
Region rendering: 1.7 s
Approximate static raycasts: 10196406
endFrame() done

Updating irradinace map info.
RenderAtTime() done.
Stopping frame timer.
Total frame time: 30.1 s Render() done.
Entering Render().
Setting up MAX progress callback.
Creating G-buffer channels.
Clearing previous contents of frame buffer.
Starting frame timer.
Entering RenderAtTime(t=12640, fieldMask=3)
Rendering frame at time 12640 Setting up frame data.
Extracting frame data from FrameParams.
Extracting frame data from VRender Environment params.
Extracting frame data for fields.
Extracting frame data from node (Camera01).
Rendering from camera Camera01 Calling beginFrame().
Entering beginFrame().
Setting RenderGlobalContext.
Calling update().
Evaluating render instances.
Preparing render instances.
Sampling displacement maps.
Updating render lights.
Updating atmospheric effects.
Updating render effects.
Scene setup: 0.3 s

Building raytrace accelerator
Compiling render instances geometry.
Compiling lights geometry.
Bulding static raycast accelerator.
Creating and initializing 4 thread(s).
Allocating memory for build data of 619098 faces (17334744 bytes, 16.5 MB).
Initializing face build data.
Creating 'done' event.
Starting first thread.
Waiting for thread completion.

[vhunter]

Here's my hunch - but I'm a licensed architect not a pc wizard, so bear with me.

I have a new dual xeon at 2.8 gh with hyperthreading enabled, so there are 4 buckets rendering a single frame. I set the bucket size at 64 (default) I am thinking that if I disable hyperthreading perhaps the program will not do a memory dump and disapear. Or should I change the bucket size and configuration? I am rendering frames at 640 x 480.

It seems to be strange it just quits with no warning at all. Anyone think I'm on to something? Is hyperthreading allowed with VRAY?

I'll never give up until I solve this... oh, and this forum is great.

Vince

[vhunter]

Anyone see anything strange in my vray log file?

Vince

[Junglejuz]

I had a similar problem a while ago and when I disabled hyper-threading it seemed to solve the problem. I don't know why but since then I havent been game enough to re-enable it. If anyone knows what causes this I would be interested to hear it too.
In the mean time I suggest just do as I did and disabe HT. I don't know how much performance you actually lose but at least you can render

[cpnichols]

Are you doing a multiframe incrimental, or incrimental add to current map? if so, the answer is obvious... you are running out of ram. When using these modes, you first need to collect your samples, then render your animation from a saved cache file. I suggest you read more about this rendering method. I will not outline myself, since it has been discussed many of times on this and other forums. Just do a search on the subject on the forum and see what you can find.

[vhunter]

I disabled the Hyper threading and it seems to actually be rendering now without dumping the program from memory. But, I just reopened the file and it now renders some faces pure black for some reason. This is too frustrating.

Vince

[cmejia]

in my experience Viz 4 is very unstable. i always had viz crash on me. i finally made the leap to max 6 and it is very stable. if you can make the investment, it is well worth it. if you can't , i am sure viz 6 will be alot more stable.... i heard that it was suppose to come out some time in april....

[cmejia]

and the hyper threading also works on max 6 and it is very stable....