Phoenix Ocean-animation memory issue

[Wigstrand_Digital]

Hi.

I have created a large Phoenix-simulation that I render with Vray GPU. (standard CPU crashes so GPU is my only choice).

All is fine for a couple of frames. Each frame takes about 5-7 min to render out. But after a couple of frames, render time increases drastically, and when at say frame 10, render takes 45 minutes, and it seems to increase even more after that.
My guess is some problem with the memory. If I stop the render, and start it again from where I left of, everything is fine again for a couple of frames, but then it repeats the same issue after a while.

How can I get rid of this issue?

[georgi.zhekov]

Sounds like a bug, can you send us a scene along with some caches so that we can check what is going on?

The scene shouldn't be crashing with CPU as well - so we need to investigate this as well.

You can use the form here - https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/r...#regular-login

Thanks!

[Wigstrand_Digital]

Thanks. I'm uploading files using the form right now.

I have attached frames 200 - 225 of the simulation also. The actual simulation is longer, but for testing this should be enough.

Regarding crashes with CPU, here are some information on that:
The scene consists of 6 big ships. They are created by my client in Cinema 4D. Im using 3ds Max, so I have saved the ships as .vrscene-files (i hope the textures are embedded in those files, otherwise you wont have them in the files I sent).
The ships render just fine in 3ds-max and Vray. When the ocean is not visible. And the ocean renders just fine if the ships are not visible. But if I try to render with both visible at the same time, the render crashes. I later figured out that GPU worked instead. But then the memory-issue came instead.

[nicolas_fuminier]

Hey Wigstrand_Digital & georgi.zhekov


We had a similar issue at our studio (I guess it's similar, not 100% sure about it),
I didn't took the time to explain it in details before because we were always under tight dead line.

Here is the short version of what we thing happen :
As in our discover of a memory leak in VRAY GPU 5.23 with Ornatrix Vray Proxies (https://forums.chaos.com/forum/v-ray...bic-vray-proxy) we guess the might be a potential memory leak with Phoenix and VRAY GPU,
It look like Foam cache won't purge between the render of two consecutives frame rendered by the same computer without restarting 3DSMAX. Our guess is in Foam VRAM cache but it might be elsewere.
Foam VRAM value will stack onto each other at each frame.

Looklike the issue doesn't exist in VRAY CPU

Short fix is to ask your computer via deadline (or other render software) to restart your max each X frame (X value is the number of frame your CG can stack the VRAM value before crashing, X can be 1)
This is painfull but it worked here,

Our analysis might be totally wrong, but there is definitly something wrong between PHOENIX VRAM and VRAY GPU somewhere.
I can't provide any scene yet but this but should be easy to reproduce in any scene.


Software :
- Windows 10 Professional 21H2
- NVIDIA STUDIO 516.59
- 3DSMAX 2021.3 up to date
- Vray GPU 5, update 2.3
- Phoenix 5.00.00

Let me know if I can help,
Best,
Nicolas

[Wigstrand_Digital]

nicolas_fuminier - Thanks for your reply. Yes, I found out yesterday that If I sent the render to Backburner and added a time-limit that forces a reboot of 3ds max if time-limit is exceeded, it works well.

[tashko.zashev]

Hi,

Yes, I can confirm that there is a memory leak on GPU / RTX and Cuda with Phoenix Particles shader Bubble; Cellular; Point modes. It is not specific to the scene rendered and can happen on a basic scene setup too
The issue is now logged in our bug tracker and as soon as we have any updates on it, will share them here.