System freezes/locks up at render end

[OPEN_RANGE]

i have a scene that I rendered at 3000 x 2000. Rendered fine. Saved fine. Now, without making any changes, it renders and gets all the way thru the process and the render progress box closes.... and the whole computer freezes and I have to do a restart. Render is not saved to directory. Tried leaving save to file box un checked, system still freezes. Not just max, whole computer freeze.

If I render at 1500 it seems to work. Update, now it hangs even at 1500

wtf? This is frickin killing me. Any advice on What can/ should I do? I am desperate

[Alex_M]

Does it happen in this particular scene only? You can try to merge the contents of that scene in a completely new and see if this fixes it. Do you have a Denoiser or lens FX turned on? Try turning them off.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thank you Alex. That sounded like good advice. I merged everything into a new scene. Renders at lower setting using progressive ok. Rendering at 3k with buckets = full system lock up at render end. This is really causing me some very severe trouble and distress... out of nowhere this has started.

Confirmed no render elements or lens effects active

[OPEN_RANGE]

I have an exterior template scene with vray sun/ sky and physical camera. I can render a box at 3k, buckets and same settings as the scene that is causing the trouble. Rendering the box in that simple template,scene works

[Alex_M]

What if you merge the objects in groups and render them one group at a time? With this technique you can pinpoint the potential culprit. Sometimes objects would just break and go "defective" and cause weird stuff to happen during rendering, potentially crashing it or freezing your PC. You might have such objects in your scene.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Alex, thank you so much for your help. I am trying a variety of trouble shooting including loading older,versions of the scene. And maybe an autobak file or two.

I will I'll try your suggestion as well. Of,course it's very time consuming because I have to render at 3k and wait till completion to see if problem remains. Sheeeeesh x 1k

[OPEN_RANGE]

I'm finding that even rendering older iterations of the scene from yesterday are hanging at render end and causing system freeze. It was rendering fine but now....not.

[Morbid Angel]

is your system overclocked by any chance?

[OPEN_RANGE]

No sir. Not overclocked. I am trying to merge parts of the scene into new file part by part. Still getting lockups after seemingly imported ok amounts of he scene.

this was working just fine this afternoon. I have gone past deperate and I'm now entering into permanent drain bamage with this. Of course worst possible timing with backed up overlapping projects and client expectations/ needs.

[OPEN_RANGE]

I'm at my wits end. I have very little of the original scene in a new file. It will render once or twice. Save file. After performing some basic action like un hide one spline or move two vertices up then save file. it will freeze the system on next render end.

then, after freeze up, re start computer, re start max, re render scene it renders to completion without freeze up. Save file, do a few minor things, save, render, freeze up. Restart, repeat, same thing.


I am dead in the water with three projects in process.

[Alex_M]

Does it still freeze with clay materials applied to all objects? Did you try older version of Vray like 3.5? I see you use Max 2018. Maybe if you try to render it on 2016? If these still don't help do you have another PC that you can open the scene on and render it in order to rule out problems with the hardware and installation on that PC? Maybe there are missing plugins or other junk that you can try to clean with these tools:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/sc...cleaner?page=1
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/sc...missingplugins

Other than this I'm running out of ideas.

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Try Alex_M suggestions if they don't help you can send us the scene to support and we will have a look. Also you can use resumable rendering option (https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...able+Rendering) or render to vrimg which saves the output during rendering. This way even if your max crashes you will still have the output saved.

[OPEN_RANGE]

Thank you both for your efforts to help me, I really need it.

1) By clay materials do you mean using an overide vray material of simple gray?

I do not have Max 2016 installed. Only 2017 and 2018. I do not have a second computer.

2) My understanding is I can only have one vray on my computer so not sure how to go back and forth with various versions and etc?

I have now managed to get the complete scene to render using progressive set for 10 minutes. I do not have the save file checked. I save as .exr from the frame buffer. Still flaky and undependable. one attempt at this resulted in freeze up. I have successfully saved this way twice.

I have noticed that the autobak is not working. It is set to autobak every 10 minutes but it's not doing that. It was as of yesterday but it's not anymore. Last apparently good autobak was yesterday at 2:35 PM and the file is 542 MB. (At 1142 PM last night it saved an autobak of 3MB That is probably when I was testing a nearly empty scene and trying to merge stuff in. The project file was still set to the project with the scene I'm having such trouble with.

So very odd that autobak is not working. My intuitiin is that something is wrong with the system or the max install or something. I don't think it's a conflict with something in the scene. BUT.. I do not know that, or anything else for sure.

I'm considering re-install Max and vray as a next step.

[Alex_M]

1) Yes, I mean a default grey Vray material. I would install Max 2016 with Vray 3.5 and test the scene with them. You can install them both along your Max 2018 and Vray 3.6 installations without issues and conflicts.
2) You can have only one Vray installed per each Max installation. So if you've got Max 2017 installed, you can install Vray 3.6 or Vray 3.5 for that version without any conflicts with Vray for Max 2018.

If none of these work, you should send the scene to Chaosgroup to look at.

[Syclone1]

I know this may be a dumb question but it has tripped me up a couple times, where are you trying to save the file(s) do you have adaquate disk space to save the rendering? One other thing that has got me before is in the VFB History settings do you have auto save turned on? I make sure that is off as it has caused havoc for me before.

I would also try what Alex mentioned that to put a v-ray material in the override slot in the render settings and see if that makes a difference.

And you can run different v-ray versions on different versions of max on the same box, Im running 2016 and 2018 and have no problems at all, even using DR if its setup correctly.