48mb Max scene = Virus?

V-Ray for 3ds Max V-Ray for 3ds Max :: General
1

Sorry - don’t know how to title this one…

I have a scene that I have been working on for 2 weeks. Suddenly yesterday somthing is corrupted. File size went from 11 mb to 48 mb. Today I have been merging to file the bad object. No matter what I REMOVE from the scene - the file always stays at 48mb file size, except for 1 time it went to 98!

Any part I save out of this model - is also 48mb.

WTF!?

The only other thing I can think of - I had a norton virus block pop up yesterday for some trojan thing… I have scanned the files and folders on this drive and finds nothing. Can the virus be in my max file?

Oh - and here is another probably related issue. Running out of file space on the server - I cleaned up some directories - freeing over 1 gb of space.

2

I think you have a case of file bloat, in the listener window type “GC()” and enter, open and close both of the xref dialogues (object and scene) then enter “GC()” and enter again in your listener window. That should do it.

btw this is supposed to be fixed in 7.1

3

? What is this?

It is def. related to VRAY. I made a new scene with VRAY not loaded - and it is fine. But any scene I save with VRAY as my default renderer - it is 48 mb.

I will try it now after the fix…
a

4

Is it something to do with the license server? Cause now the other machine that had Max + Vray open isn’t responding.

5

hmm, I use vray all the time and have not seen this happen

6

Yes - I have used it since it was released - and even in beta - this is the first problem.

This is severe. I can’t really even open these models anymore - only merge. Oh - wait, maybe without vray loaded… no - still hangs up.

Although I have crashed out a few times on the mat lib with 1.46.XX - but that is just a minor max restart.

7

Am I supposed to get some # code back when entering that “GC()” - gives me a number every time. What is that?

Well, regardless - looks like it worked.
File is actually 1.57 mb.

Thanks.

8

That’s the GarbageCollector that removes unused junk from the scene

9

haha I think everyone has their own homespun version of the garbage collector workaround. Its supposed to be resolved with max 7.5 i believe.

10

heh… hope you’ve got a subscription then!

11

thats the amount of free ram in max after the garbage collector was run
to quote the maxscript help file:
"This function returns the number of bytes free in the MAXScript heap after collection. Note that the collector may take many seconds to run if the heap is full of many small reclaimable objects. "

btw: take notice that the gc by default deletes all undo/redo states in max - so make sure you dont need to undo anything.

cya,

Mike

ps: if anyone is having problems in max 6 with displaying lots of textures causing the ram to fill up (turning the map display off doesnt free the ram afterwards), there also is a function to clear the bitmap caches
freeSceneBitmaps()
my ram usage for one scene went over 2gig, disabling map display made the usage go down to 800mb, freeSceneBitmaps() got it down to 300mb