Rendering gets stuck on Building static raycast accelerator step

[chico]

Hi guys,

Our scenes don't render any more on some of the backburner servers. All renders get stuck on Building raycast accelerator step and that causes backburner to stuck and loose connection to manager.
The only thing that helps is to switch from Auto to Dynamic in Vray memory settings.

I've attached complete log to the post, but here's beginning and the end of file:

[2014/Aug/1|11:54:24] ============================================================
[2014/Aug/1|11:54:24] Console created, V-Ray Adv 2.40.03 for x64 from Feb 15 2013, 17:54:54
[2014/Aug/1|11:54:24] ============================================================
[2014/Aug/1|11:54:24] Compiled with Intel C++ compiler, version 12.1
[2014/Aug/1|11:54:24] Host is 3dsmax, version 14
[2014/Aug/1|11:54:24] V-Ray DLL version is 2.00.01
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] [VRender] Constructor entered (loading from file).
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50]   Setting default filter kernel.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] [VRender] Constructor done.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] Loading from file.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50]   Loading filter parameters.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] Loading done.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] [VRender] Constructor entered (loading from file).
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50]   Setting default filter kernel.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] [VRender] Constructor done.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] Loading from file.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50]   Loading filter parameters.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] Loading done.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] [VRender] Constructor entered.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50]   Setting default filter kernel.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] [VRender] Constructor done.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:50] VRenderer destructor entered.
[2014/Aug/1|11:55:51] VRenderer destructor done.
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:06] Disabling autobackup (autobackup was 0).
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:06] Disabling scene redraw.
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:06] Entering Open()
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:06]   Scene name is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\Backburner\Network\ServerJob\UPFIT_RC_01.max"
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:06]   Performing sanity check on parameters.



[2014/Aug/1|11:56:20]           Updating object FC4B_16D
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:20]           Validity for node "FC4B_16D" is [forever], node handle is 2
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:20]           Updating object SD_1510_
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:20]           Validity for node "SD_1510_" is [forever], node handle is 1
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:20]           Preparing instances
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:26]           Bounding box for "__SHELL" is [718.082,-484.124,1623.78]-[793.417,484.124,2125.9]
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:27]           Sampling displacement maps.
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:27]           Setting up 8 thread(s)
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:30]           Threads completed
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:41]           Setting up 8 thread(s)
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:44]           Threads completed
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:47]           Updating render lights
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:49]           Setting up 8 thread(s)
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:49]           Threads completed
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:49]           Setting up 8 thread(s)
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]           Threads completed
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]           Setting up 8 thread(s)
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]           Threads completed
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]           Setting up 8 thread(s)
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]           Threads completed
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]           Updating atmospheric effects.
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]           Updating render effects.
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]         Scene setup: 40.6 s
[2014/Aug/1|11:56:50]         Compiling render instances geometry.
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:00]         Compiling lights geometry.
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:01]         Preparing ray server.
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:02]           Creating and initializing 8 thread(s).
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:02]           Allocating memory for build data of 6669382 faces (53355056 bytes, 50.9 MB).
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:02]           Initializing face build data.
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:42]           Creating 'done' event.
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:43]           Starting first thread.
[2014/Aug/1|11:57:43]           Waiting for thread completion.

[tashko.zashev]

Hi,

Unfortunately the log file doesn't have any useful information for this issue.
How complex is this scene? Does it require a lot of memory ?
Do you have same amount of memory on all render nodes?

Are there any dynamic geometries in the scene, like displacement, fur, proxy, e.t.c?

[vlado]

It would be best to get us a scene for this; sometimes there may be corrupt geometry that would cause V-Ray to never stop subdividing the acceleration structure.

Best regards,
Vlado

[chico]

Thanks for reply, Vlado.
Scene is not that complex actually. It has some small displacement. Actually now I have two different scenes with same problem. There are totally different, one is architectural and other is more like product rendering. One has GI and other doesn't. They both get rendered on machines with 8gb without any problem and get stuck on 4gb machines. Building accelerator step takes some time on faster machines, but slower machines are stuck completely.
Unfortunately I don't think I can share the scenes, but thanks for the geometry tip. I will make more tests and hopefully will find the faulty object(s).
I was thinking about other memory parameters, tree depth and leaf sizes. Do you think it might help?

[vlado]

Yes, you can try reducing the tree depth f.e. to 60 and set the face/level coefficient to 2.0 and the leaf size to some small value like 0.001 or something.

Also, is it possible that you have a lot of overlapping faces on your objects?

Best regards,
Vlado