Scene not progressing pass Prepass phase

[WWX]

Hi,

I am trying to render a scene. The light cache phase runs successfully, then onto the Prepass phase (of which there is only one, using DR) it goes all the way through (filling all the blue blocks) but then it does not switch over to the actual rendering of the scene. The computer is not frozen. The estimated time of completion just keep on adding up.

Any ideas as to what can cause this?

Thanks

[vlado]

Does it render normally without DR?

Best regards,
Vlado

[WimOos]

I've seen this too in the past and from what I could figure out it was either onyx trees, cars or people (all proxies) or a material on these.
If you just leave it long enough it will eventually finish. What I have done in the past is if you can't wait any longer - stop it, render out and some area will have strange artefacts and then you just rerender that portion.

[WWX]

Vlado I haven't had time to check without DR and will only be able to do so much later.

It does seem to be something along the line of what WimOos experienced, so I think its a map/material causing the problem.

[WWX]

Okay here is the updated info with some images

[img=http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/29/livingroom2gb0.th.jpg]

[img=http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/9152/livingroomxz3.th.jpg]

Please don't look at the colours, its still a WIP
But the carpet, which I think is the source of my problems - also related to my other post but this scene crashing - can be seen. The carpet is a Xref, if turned on and I increase my LC and IR settings to anything acceptable for a final rendering, the scene either crashes while busy with the prepass phase or simply don't seem to get past this phase. I cancelled it after 24h and still climing in the estimated time of completion.

There are some other issues I also have in this scene and thought it best to discuss them here instead of a new thread.
The white spots on the floor. I have, Clamp output, Affect background and Don't affect colours all switch on. Why would I still have this problem?
Look at the antialiasing in the upper lefthand area. The balustrade members in the sunlight is bad and nothing like the rest of the image, why would this be?
Looking at the image, Living_Room, what can be the cause(s) from some of the elements being so noisy/spotty while the other elemts looks pretty clean?

Thanks

[vlado]

If you are using VRayFur for the carpet, you can try to tesselate the carpet geometry a little bit and increase the dynamic memory limit for the raycaster.

For the spots, it is also essential that you have the "subpixel mapping" on.

Best regards,
Vlado

[WWX]

Thanks Vlado,

As a non-Max modeller, does tesselate = giving the plave more length and width segments? (At present it already has a very large number.)

What sets the limit for increasing of the dynamic memory, i.e. is there a formula in which it's related to the physical memory installed? Also what would the downside be of increasing this setting in general?

[vlado]

Well, if there are already a lot of segments, then leave it alone and just try to increase the dynamic memory limit. Obviously, if you increase it, you will need more memory, but this will potentially make the rendering faster.

Best regards,
Vlado