Please help! Urgent!

[Helldoor]

Hi there!


It's me again, rendering my final image due to wednesday morning. And I have a huge problem:


I'm not getting it rendered. I need a Resolution of approx. 3000x1800 pix. When I render small (640x400 - see image attached), it takes about 18 minutes, and the Light Cache Map alone takes about half of this time.
However, when I try to render bigger - approx. 2600x1700, the Light Cache map takes about an hour for the first 5%. I don't know what to do.

Please, help.

Do you think it's the materials? Or the lights? The whole model is 1.6 GB big, although I'm using some proxisies!


My settings are also attached.


Thanks in advance!

teo
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Software:
Rhino 5.0 (64-bit)
VRay 1.5 (64-bit)
Windows 7 (64-bit)

Hardware:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz
RAM 16GB (2x 8GB SODIMM 1333MHz)
AMD Radeon HD 6700M Series
Intel(R) HD Graphics Family

[mcvltd]

Are you using any displacement? If so, have you increased the edge length as you increase the render resolution? This is the only thing I can think of that would cause a render to virtually stand still.

[Helldoor]

Hi mcvltd,

thanks for the answer. I'm using displacement on some textures. But I've switched off the Default Displacement. Should I turn it back on? An where can I increse the edge lenght? And at which value?


Thanks in advance!
Greetz
teo

[Helldoor]

So.. update:

Now I'm working with proxies. The size of the file (using proxies) is now shrunk to 500 mb. I'm using the services of a render farm with 32 GB Ram and 16 core prozessor.
Calculating the Irradiance Map under these circumstances lasts for 6-7 hours in a resolution of 2400x1700.

How long do you think is the final render than goin to last for? Or do you think, that the rhino model has some error? (It's purged) And rendering a 640pix image is no
problem, making the bigger ones makes the problem. Why??


Greetz
teo

[mcvltd]

In your materials, under 'maps' heading you'll find displacement settings. Turn off 'Use globals'. Then have a look at the value for 'edge length'. By default this is 4 which is fine for low res renders. Try increasing this to 20 or 30 for high res. The best way to find the optimum value is to start with a high number and then start the render off - if it starts rendering really quickly then just reduce the edge length until the rendering starts to get slower and slower. You can then choose what value works for your scene. It may also be a good idea to do a region render (at the high resolution) of a local area containing the displacement materials just to check that the higher edge length number hasn't made your displacement look bad.

[mcvltd]

As a quick test to see if it's displacement or not just remove all displacement from the materials?

[Micha]

Looks like a standard exterior scene. Should be fast rendered. Do you really need displacement? Do you have the global option to disable displacement for quick test?

Also, you use a much to strong noise threshold. I use 0.015 daily, some times 0.02 for high res images. A light noise is visible,but it's not a problem most. A change from noise threshold 0.02 to 0.01 double the render times. You are using 0.001, more than ten times to strong.

Best you keep your eyes open for the render times if you render your small versions. If you need 18min for 256k image, than you need a 21 times longer render time for a 5400k image. OK, it should be a little bit better because the LC is independent from the output size.

If you like you could use IM max rate -2 for the high res version too.

[Helldoor]

Thanks mcvltd, thanks Micha,


I'll try reducing the Noise and enlargening the Edge Lenght. However, I have no idea, why this moderately simple model should be 1.5 GB in size? But I have an assumption - I'm working in a 'Big Objects - Meter' template, and all the windows I have are 0,003 m thick. Could it be, that Rhino has a somehow dimensonal problem with that? What do you think? Also my glass is reflective on the inside...
I'm planing to delete the glass solids and leave just the front panels (2d) - do you think, that máy help?

Glass Opts attached.


Please reply. Thanks in advance!

Greetz
teo

[Micha]

Yes, don't use 3D glass, "2D" is enough, but delete the refraction layer, isn't needed. So you should be able to quick render with refl/refr depth 1. The file size can be quite big because a Rhino issue (try visclearmaterialtable and save the Rhino file under a new name) and maybe you have a lot of objects at hidden layers or orphaned block definitions (use the Rhino _purge command helps here). Important is the RAM usage, but this shouldn't affect the render time.

(We talked about noise threshold and architecture glass last here http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...tience-Problem ... why you don't try it first?)

[Helldoor]

Hi,

ok, is there any way to purge all the textures in a model? I tried making all the Windows from 3d to 2d, but it didn't help much. Playing with the render settings also doesn't help.
However, as I tried saving just a Geometry modell, the whole thing become just 75 MB... That's why, I think it's a texture problem.
But I can only remove these in the Material Editor. However - some imported models - have brought their own textures, which are not listed in there? How do I get rid of them?

Thanks in advance, folks!

Greetz
teo

Edit: Removing all the textures form the Material Editor made the Data shrink form 900-1000 mb to 200. What the hell?!..

[mcvltd]

If you're importing models in from somewhere else then you'll definitely have to re-assign vray materials to everything, I don't think vray likes other materials. It does seem strange that it's caused so much of a memory issue though.

[fooprobe]

For imported textures, you have to manually replace them by selecting geometry and assigning a new vray material (or assign by layer etc).


the big size for textures rings a bell, try searching the forum to see if it's a known issue

edit: here's the thread:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...material+rhino

seems like legacy and non-native materials are problematic, try replacing.

[Helldoor]

Thanks mcvltd, micha & fooprobe!


@mcvltd : looking at thethread, fooprobe quoted, exploding the file size, when applying textures, seems to be a big issue of the Vray 1.5 ...

@fooprobe : thanks for the sharing the thread - I've read it through and that is exactly the problem I'm having... However, it doesn't seem to be having a solution already. Here, my case:

. After constructing everything for an exterior scene, my model was suddenly huge - 1.5 gb. you can take a look at the attached pic - it's not a very complicated scene, although there is some displacement and lights...
. At this point, the render time for a 800x600 image was about 58 mins, taking all of my 16 gb RAM!!! Bigger images were not really possible to be rendered...
. First, I tried removing all the 2d data and simplifying the model (converting '3d' glass to '2d', deleting all the surfaces, that are not seen in the scene or being reflected) - that reduced the whole size to about 1.4 gb - so it didn't help much. The problem was elsewhere.
. The render time for a 800x600 image went to about 55 mins, still using all of the RAM...
. After that, I removed all the textures, thinking, that I have a corrupted texture somewhere, snuck in with an imported furniture model or something.. The file size dropped drastically to 180 mb!
. Render time for a 800x600 pic - about 1 minute (check settings attached). The RAM stayed low.
. At that point I knew, it was a texture problem. I began importing new (existing .mtl) textures to the scene, using the material editor (as I always do).
. I saved my scene, after importing and applying each texture. It was crazy, as I saw, that after applying the concrete thexture to the tower in the scene (check TOWER pic), the scene size grew from 250 mb to about 700 mb!
. The concrete texture has a reflection map, using a filter, but is non of a big one... The concrete texture image (also the filter image) is about 150 kb of size...
. After retexturing the whole scene, the model size grew up again to 1.3 gb. As if Rhino/Vray was saving and embedding all the applyed textures in the model...
. The render time of a 800x600 scene dropped to 21 mins, but images, bigger than 1024x.. are not really possible, because of the immence RAM usage.
. Damn.

. I don't have any more time for that now, but on friday, I'll try creating all the textures I need in Vray 1.5 (and not importing the old ones, created in 1.05) and rerender. I'm really interested in finding out, if this could be the soultion. I'll keep in touch with the results.

And till then - I'll be glad to hear from you, what you think, or how do you manage, getting around this issue.


Greetz and have a nice day,
teo | helldoor

[Micha]

.... The file size can be quite big because a Rhino issue (try visclearmaterialtable and save the Rhino file under a new name) and maybe you have a lot of objects at hidden layers or orphaned block definitions (use the Rhino _purge command helps here). Important is the RAM usage, but this shouldn't affect the render time.

Did you test it?!!!

[Helldoor]

Hi Micha,

. i purged several times. nothing more to be purched. it didn't help.
. the 'visclearmaterialtable' command I didn't manage to find in Rhino. that's why I deleted all the materials - and then everything was ok (according the file size). how/where do I use the command (visclearmaterialtable)?

Sorry, if I didn't get anything right. Thanks again.
Greetz
teo