Crashes during Lightcache on lots of geometry

[MoonDoggie]

Hey vrayers,
Quick question, I'm at work and I'm braindead at the moment. Why would our scene be crashing with alot of poly geometry (vrayproxied, instanced) during light cache with almost no memory usage (1.6gb).

Trying an override material now, but the scene renders fine with like 25% of the plants turned on.

quick ideas? Thanks,
Colin

[MoonDoggie]

override material worked fine, checking materials, didn't find any architectural materials/raytrace materials. What other types does vray not like?

[MoonDoggie]

FIGURED It out!

Check this out: We have alot of alpha mapped plants in our scene. Each leaf is a different alpha. I heard from someone that if a map is very small (64x64px) then (the chances are small) but it's possible for the lightcache ray to miss one, and travel infinitely and finally crashing.

Multiply the small map on each leaf 64x64px and the sheer number of leaves, I have no doubt in my mind, by upping the resolution of each leaf to a safer size, we'll be able to circumvent the raytracer missing a map!

Is this the reason mr. vlado? Is this even the possible reason?

-Colin

[MoonDoggie]

yes that was the problem. The size of the maps (64px square) on opacity trees was the deal. Evidently the light cache was missing one, shooting forever and eventually crashing. Be warned.

-Colin

[vlado]

Ideally this should not be happening; V-Ray has a limit on the ray depth even when calculating the light cache, so that would kick in sooner or later. If you have a scene that you can send me to vlado@chaosgroup.com, it will be helpful to figure out what may be wrong.

Best regards,
Vlado