Hi there .
I have a big file (4 m.polys) ,& I need to render it for a billboard(super high res) , about 10mx4m . every time i try to do it the max crashes (maybe normal !!).
I have Dual Xeon 3.06 + 2gb Ram
& file came from max6+vray1.09 and now Max7+vry 1.46(without change)
I am using 1)irradiancemap+2)monteCarlo
Can anyone help me please ?
sincerely
look into render stripes
First try the /3GB Thread and see if it can help you. 
Good Luck.
dont forget to use backburner, even if its on your own machine.
What’s the resolution you’re trying to render?
Turn off virtual frame buffer maybe helps to free some memory?
10x4 m at 150dpi would amount to around 60000x12000 px or a 5,2G image…!
Isn’t that a bit big?
Turning on Bitmap Pager under Max’s Rendering Presences would also help when doing high res renderings.
Render at low dpi, high dpi’s is not noticeable on billboards anyway. And if it’s still too big use Genuine Fractals to scale it up , no one will see the difference. ( http://www.lizardtech.com/products/gf/ )
/Thomas
10x4 m at 150dpi would amount to around 60000x12000 px or a 5,2G image…!
Isn’t that a bit big?
Ask yourself if someone needs to read a 10point font on that billboard: then you need 300dpi if it’s an offset print and 150dpi if it’s an inkjet print.
Ask the one that is making the billboards how big the fonts are for developer, architect, etc. I think with 10m width it’s at least a 100point font, so even 15dpi would be sufficient…
Mostly architectural billboards of that size are for along a highway. And for that purpose there is no reason to render such high resolutions.
I wonder if advertising agencies even know what DPI is. They always ask me to make a 300dpi image, but NEVER tell me the size :shock:
thanx every one for your help.
The resolution is about 20000x8000 (50 dpi).
& 3gb trick didn’t work on my system (just a blink blue and reset!)
& i’m using the bitmap pager and it dosn’t do the job!
I think mybe I have to use strip render (never used before & do not know if it works for me ?).
thanx again , i will go try .
Ok.. Well…
Its a Ram problem with an image that large.. basically the Max Framebuffer is 48bits/pixel, Regardless of what you’re saving out as (Which incidentally is the reason why you cannot save an HDR image directly out of the framebuffer, you need to save to a file)
Anyway, at 48bits/pixel.. At 20000 x 8000 you’ve got 160000000 pixels… thats 7680000000 bits / image.. something along the lines of 915mb .. JUST TO PUT THE IMAGE TOGETHER at that size.. not counting the memory for the scene geometry, the AA, the irradiance, bitmaps.. etc It adds up quick when you only have 1.7gb to work with.
Render strips will get your all the slices you need for the image.. but it wont be able to stitch the image together for you.. you’ll have to do that in Photoshop.. and the render strips have a little black line on the strips on the right or top side (Each one..) so you need to layer them together in the right order, or you need to clean up the edges of the compiled image.
Good luck, its messy.. Hopefully once this 64bit computer thing catches on we can address more RAM!
I wonder how hard it would be to add to vray a big render feature. Something that writes the buckets to a file immediatly. This way the pixels info isnt stored in memory. ( i know nothing about programming, so im thinking ignorantly) Is this possible, maybe the VFB is a lower resolution of the same render?
you can also try a script called “big render” which you can find on www.scriptspot.com
it works great with vray and huge images
regards
alkis
use the very stabele plugin called fi**lRe**er…
you can use the nice feature called “dynamic bitmap”
and you can render easy 30k renderings…
no memory problem…
but you need a lot of harddisk space… then all data that dont have place in the memory goes to harddisk… and on a 30K renderning… that is a lot of data… !
btw. i have rendered 20k images… whitout problems…
hehe…
/.mario’
hehe :roll:
woops,
I have just render the scene. but not easy .
try to use render strips&backburner(file too big,res too high …not working)-->try to use 3gb switch (not working with sp1)-->install SP2(bad luck BSD error, don’t know why , not working)-->try to render in separated layers(backburner not working !! not enough time to fined out why)-->uninstall sp2-->Separated layers+Renderstrips(+40 line each)+Photoshop … haha
Thanx everyone for the help , i will try the script , & i don’t have F.R.
From the docs (under VRay Frame Buffer):
Render to V-Ray image file - this fature writes directly to an external file that contains V-Ray raw data as it is being rendered. It does not store any data in the RAM, so this feature is very handy when rendering huge resolutions for preserving memory. In order to see what is being rendered - turn on the Generate preview setting.
Generate preview - this will create a small preview of what is being rendered. If you are not using the V-Ray frame buffer for conserving memoty - you can use this feature to see a small image of what is being actually rendered and stop the rendered if there is anything that looks wrong.
Now all we need is some converter to convert the vray image format to something photoshop can read.. Or a photoshop plugin for the file format.
EDIT: looks like the generate preview feature doesn’t fully work yet.
Well you can open V-Ray image in the Max image viewer and then save it as any file type it supports, whether it works with an image that size, I could not guess
I just renderd a teapot at 10000x7500 for a test. Rendred fine, max used only 150 MB ram or so. Converting to TIFF in side 3ds max also worked fine
Edit: that was 10000, not 1000 as I originally wrote
Is there a way to disable the vfb and still render the vrimg other than killing it after the render starts?