Memory Loss, Crash

[cmejia]

I'm Having a serious problem at the office: We have a night shot render (3000x3000) and unfortunatelly, my client wants a lot of detail on it, so we had to place lights and furniture inside the model in a way that it looks the most accurate as possible. The model was so heavy that we had to convert to proxies most of the elements at the office, but once we hit the render button the computer suddenly started to consume a lot of ram (between 2 to 2.9 Gb,) and started to crash a lot of times even we have a farm.
We've been pulling our hair trying to optimize this render and we've been searching the forum for possibles solutions, but the most we could fix so far is the RAM usage (1.6Gb and steady,) and once the image finishes the render process, the image is not saved and an error pops up terminating the application.

If someone can help us, we will be eternally appreciate it.

Some of our settings are:
QMC=8
LC=200
Ddaptive rQMC image sampler=0/3
We are using Max8 with Vray 1.5 R3

Thank you

[Morbid Angel]

You may have a number of problems:
1 - check to see that your memory is set to dynamic memory with a limit which should be about 80% of your system ram, in the vray system rollout. This ensures that the rendering will flush memory.
2 - render to vrimg format, it is vray native format and use the converter at the end to convert it to whatever format you need.
3 - use 3gb switch if you have not done so yet.

[cmejia]

memory loss response

Morbid Angel,

All of your suggestion worked. I already had applied the 3gb switch to my system.

The vrimg format worked like a charm.

I tried changing the memory to dynamic with no success. What I was able to do was render the image using static memory and increasing the dynamic limit. The computer was able to conserve the memory usage, allowing us to successfully render the image at a resolution of 3,000 x3,000.

Just a note: for users not familiar with vrimg, it is a great tool but a little confusing at first. The conversion from vrimg to exr was the most confusing. If anyone has questions I would be more then happy to answer them.

Thank you,

Carlos

[Repenseks]

Re: memory loss response

Morbid Angel,

All of your suggestion worked. I already had applied the 3gb switch to my system.

The vrimg format worked like a charm.

I tried changing the memory to dynamic with no success. What I was able to do was render the image using static memory and increasing the dynamic limit. The computer was able to conserve the memory usage, allowing us to successfully render the image at a resolution of 3,000 x3,000.

Just a note: for users not familiar with vrimg, it is a great tool but a little confusing at first. The conversion from vrimg to exr was the most confusing. If anyone has questions I would be more then happy to answer them.

Thank you,

Carlos

Hello Carlos,

If you don't mind, can you explain please, because I also have memory problem. I don't have a farm, I work on Intel 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, with 2Gb Ram, Windows XP 32bit. I don't know if that is enough for scenes with high poly count, 0.5-1 million polys ?

Regards
Srdjan

[cmejia]

look at using vraymesh for parts of your scene. This helps when rendering large scenes.

C

[Repenseks]

Hi cmejia,

I used Vray proxy, for the plants, who are using a lot of poly's, increased dynamic limit to 1600Mb, used static, rendered to vrimg, and file chrashes after few seconds at resolution 2000x1500. My scene is about 0.5 million polys, plus couple of million polys as proxy's.
If I leave dynamic limit at 400 Mb, crashes only later.

If I delete proxys from the scene it renders without the problem. If I render only proxys still fine.

Has anybody got any idea what can be done?

Regards
Srdjan

[MoonDoggie]

does your scene crash if you put a material override on it to a gray vrymtl?

You need to give us more information about the scene, when exactly it's crashing, how your mem usage is at the time of the crash and we'll be better able to help out.

[vlado]

If you have lots of textures, you can try turning on the 3dsmax Bitmap pager.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Repenseks]

Hello MoonDoggie,
Hello Vlado,

for some reason, after few attempts started to work 100%. Before that max was crashing as soon as light cache started calculation, and at that moment RAM usage was about 1.62Gb. Sometimes RAM usage can go over 3Gb without crashing. I dont know what is the reason for that. I got 2Gb of RAM, to repeat again.

MoonDoggie, I am not sure what were you talking about by saying "put a material override on it to a gray vrymtl".

Vlado, do I have to change any settings after I enable Bitmap pager, any suggestions?

Regards
Srdjan

[DaForce]

Srdjan:
He means in the Vray: global switches rollout there is an override material there.. tick the box and drag a standard gray vraymaterial onto that slot. Then render.

[Repenseks]

Hello DaForce,

thanks for the reply

I am going to ask you silly question, is material override used to test if you have a problem with some of the materials or mapping, to exclude those possibilities, to make certain, that your geometry is wrong or right?

Regards
Srdjan

[DaForce]

Thats one of its uses, yes

[Repenseks]

Thank you DaForce

You are DaMan

Regards
Srdjan