3ds Max crashes when rendering Animation

[narmer_visual]

I have a 900 frame animation with moving objects. I want to render it with Irradiance map + Light Cache combo.

I already rendered the Animation (Prepass) pass with 900 frames, and saved these frames.

I started to run the Animation (Render) pass, with interpolation value 5. It rendered 750 frames with no problem, the rendered frames are looking fine. After this I had to restart the computer, so I tried to continue rendering this second pass from frame 750, with the already saved Irradiandce Map frames loaded.
Now when I try to start the rendering pass, the program crashes every time. In some cases, the render manages to start, but the rendered frames have no Irradiance map on them, as if the program wouldn't load them correctly (however, the log states, that the frames which would be interpolated, have been loaded successfully). I could say, it looks like the program is always using 1st frame of the Irradiance map, although it should be using frames n-5 to n+5 frames. (I recon this, because the first frame looks OK, the rest of them only have the irradiance of the first frame).

I also checked the Irradiance map frames with "Irradiance map viewer", they look OK, they are not empty.

Additional info:
- I have XRef files loaded into the main MAX file, which I'm rendering from.
- I resaved the file with an other filename since the restarting of the render. Does this affect the usage of the already rendered Irradiance map?

Help me, I have a deadline coming up!

Regards,
Gabor

[narmer_visual]

Additional info:
- I have XRef files loaded into the main MAX file, which I'm rendering from.
- I resaved the file with an other filename since the restarting of the render. Does this affect the usage of the already rendered Irradiance map?

[jacksc02]

Gabor, if you have moving objects it would be best to render them with BF/LC.
PM me if you would like to use my render farm at no cost

[narmer_visual]

Dear Chris,
thanks for your kindness. Yesterday I managed to render it out with brute force. I have no idea what causes the crash though, which is kind of disturbing.
But thanks anyway!

[svetlozar.draganov]

IM+LC for animations with moving object is indeed outdated approach. This of course doesn't mean that crash is normal behaviour with this approach.
Re-saving the file with another name shouldn't affect the rendering in any way.
In order to provide a more in depth opinion please pack the entire scene, including IM cache files and send us the files.
Let us also know what we need to do in order to replicate the issue, what frames we should render, what camera, should we use DR or not etc.

If you need access to our FTP server please contact us at support@chaosgroup.com along a link to this thread.

[narmer_visual]

Hello Svetlozar,
Thanks for your help. Unfortunately I can't upload share the model due to legal reasons. But whenever I manage to reproduce the error, I'll let you know.

[svetlozar.draganov]

I understand. Just let us know when it happens again.

[Frieder]

Hello,
I found this thread when I was looking for solving exact the same problem. I rendered 250 prepass frames (IM+LC). After all I rendered from frame 0 to 100. It works perfect. When I was try to continue the render process max crash. It seems that we could only render the animation from frame 0. Everytime when I tried to render a range or a single frame - max crash. using Max 2016 vray 3.50.04.

Additional Info: Later I tried to make a new prepass solution from frame 50 - Max crash.

Every tip to solve this problem is very welcome.

Thank you and Best Regards

[svetlozar.draganov]

I missed that for whatever reason.
Did you already finished the project or figured out the issue?
If you keep an archive of the project in the crashing state I am interested to look at it.