i´m working on a hudge scene which i have to render with vray. i have 2gb ram but when the raycaster is collecting the data, max crashes at 1.84gb ram. no matter what i do. i´m using the “r” build at the moment. when i switch to the 1.45.38 with the dynamic ram function it works, but then i have a lot of “unhandled exeptions”. for that reason this is also no way to deal with the scene. any ideas out there for a solution ? thanks…
ha, i think you are speculating that you will get the internal 1.5 build this way. 
sorry, no idea.
when it will work i will take anything !!! even the first vray version. the strange thing is, that it also happens with 3gb ram. this is very dramatical, cause i can´t render the scene…which would be…a disaster… 
The 1.8 limit is a windows thing, have you tried the 3GB switch? ofcourse there is also adjusting the raycaster params to use less ram…
with the 3gb switch i have a blue screen…which raycaster parameters ???
With the internal build, you can export your geometry as VRayProxy objects and render that way.
Best regards,
Vlado
metroberlin, under the system rollout you have the raycaster parameters. the default are set to 60 try reducing this value. I have a scene that wouldnt render and I found droping this value to 20 helped. Be careful in reducing this value as there is a critical point where it will take forever to render.
Also make sure that your face/level co-efficient is set above 1.
Let me know how you get on.
Chris Jackson
cj@arcad.co.nz
www.arcad.co.nz
In the rendering rollout under Vray:System try setting the Max tree depth to a lower value than you have now (defaults to 60). This will slow down rendering but will safe some RAM due to decreased BSP tree size. Increase face/level coefficient.
Also most of these things worked for me one time or the other:
Try rendering brute force (Direct computation, no Irradiance map). This should also free some RAM which the Irradiance map normally occupies.
When using displacement, reconsider if the displaced object really needs to create GI. Normally, Grass or bushes (and also trees) are so dark that they hardly contribute to the overall lighting. It´s ok for these objects to receive GI though.
When using displaced geometry try rendering without the cache function.
Besides the cacheing algo´s are still a bit buggy, they also require a lot of RAM. Will increase render times.
Use instance geometry rendering whenever possible (turn on “instanciate” in the Vray:System render settings rollout)
Use an optimized system. Turn all services off that you don´t need. Close all apps you don´t need . Unload all plugins (eg reactor, Character Studio, mentalRay extensions) you don´t need (put them in a folder where max can´t find them temporarily).
I don´t know how the bitmap pager affects Vray when rendering but it´s worth a try playing with it.
Free RAM occupied by unused bitmaps in your scene before you render.
Type into the MaxScript listener: freeSceneBitmaps()
Do a manual garbage collection before you render.
Type into the MaxScript listener: gc()
Buy more RAM?
Good luck,
Stefan
One more thing: Try converting to editable mesh as many objects you can afford to. Editable Poly´s require 4 times more RAM than Meshes do. Contruction history too. Collapse whatever you can.
Last resort: Max6 feature: Render from the command line (I´ve never done this before). Consult the Max6 help files how to do this. Will safe quite a lot of RAM that Max´ UI normally occupies.
thanks for the answers. the vraymesh brought some other problems…
thanks, stefan. will try it…
try the following - take the 1.45.20 and your original scene, use the 3gb switch and set your raycaster to 100/0.0/1.1 - that is a setting that prevented some huge scenes here from crashing, we’re running 3dsmax.exe with up to 2.8 gb only on the process and it works.
thanks for all suggestions. in the end the only working solution was to reduce the map size from 3-4k to 1-2k. for our render resolution still okay. with the lower maps the ram just goes up to 1.1gb. hmmm..a dynamic bitmap function like in stage1 would be great in vray
Pretty sure it was mentioned that the unlimited bitmap size will be in 1.5 
oh dear, my avatar is gone…i hate german providers, grrrhh..
yes, that function ist an absolute MUST !!! especially in movie production. a bitmap size of 2k per object is nearly normal. stage 1 is great because you can choose normal bitmaps for the viewport and for the rendering you say were the “great” bitmaps can be found.
I was having the EXACT same problem with my scene. It would reach 1.8 GIG ram and then Max would run out of ram and yes, I also have 2 GIGs of RAM. The /3GB switch is not an option for us since we use Win2K. There was no solution that I could find and we had to resort to lower meshsmooth densities.
It’s a real shame - but it seems to be a MAX issue, not a VRay issue.
-Richard
Not VRAY, Not Max.. it’s Windows …
It’s a real shame - but it seems to be a MAX issue, not a VRay issue.
It’s a Windows limitation. In our daily rendering VFX for films we constantly hit that 2GB limit. Windows XP can only address 2GB of continuous memory per application. Windows 2003 server can address up to 3GB. 64-bit Windows will greatly enhance rendering. The key difference between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP-based computing lies in the 64-bit version’s ability to use much more system memory. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition will initially support up to 16 gigabytes of RAM and up to eight terabytes of virtual memory
An interesting fact is if you have 3GB or 4GB in your machine you would be able to have 2 MAX sessions both using rougly 1.6 to 1.8GB RAM each and bit left for the OS, then it would crash.
As far as the 3GB /switch, it works on Windows 2000 and XP and it can only be used if the software (MAX, Vray, Digital Fusion) has been writtent to take advantage of it specifically.
Ben
Digital Dimension
Ben, some machines will not accept the3GB switch, at work I have a few machines that just blue screen it is odd because the other boxes with the identical specs work. One machine in particular started to bluescreen after updating the graphics driver while other boxes took the drivers fine, reverting to the previous drivers did not fix it, any ideas of what might cause this?
Try probably setting the graphics aperture differently in your system bios -dunno if it will help though. The /3gb works only on xp proffesional and 2000 product of the enterprise edition, where classic win 2k professional is not part of it. there’s a way to turn programs not designed for the 3gb switch to a 3gb aware application by using imagecfg.exe -l applicationname.exe. we did this with maya.exe and it works like charm.
greets, michael
The /3GB option may cause problems on some raid configurations too (such as promise i guess).
Else, in order to spare memory, you can switch off bitmap filterings on many maps (or even the global switch for filtering). It won’t bother too much if you are rendering stills and you’ll cut the memory consumption for your bitmaps by 2.