I wonder what I’m doing wrong this time, but Max crashes every few frames when rendering an animation. If I restart Max and continue where it crashed, it crashes on the same frame. If I reboot the workstation, the it renders for a while - maybe a dozen frames and crashes again.
I was wondering if I should try V-Ray Standalone renderer. What is the correct procedure on that? I need to export everything as VR-scene format including tyFlow. What about Phoenix?
TyFlow doesn’t work directly with standalone. You can often still export to standalone, but the vrscenes maybe HUGE unless you export your TyFlow stuff to ABC.
But there are a lot of ways to use TyFlow, and some may not be so bad.
Make sure you are on the latest TyFlow. There were some crashing bugs with one of the previous versions, especially with various Ty modifiers. They seemed fixed now, though.
I’d personally just troubleshoot the file rather skirting around the issue.
I don’t know if there’s issue in my system, I have ordered a new workstation weeks ago. It will come any time soon. My current workstation HP Z640 is about 10 years old and needs to be replaced to to end of Windows 10 support. If the issue still exists it’s not hardware related.
In the meantime I just keep on restarting the rendering task. If it crashes on the same frame repeatedly rebooting the computer helps mostly and it renders for a while. By the way, I’m rendering with VRay6 very recent builds.
One idea would have been to use V-Ray standalone renderer, but it would require tyFlow precached to V-Ray proxies. I’m currently using tyCache format.
You may be just running out of RAM at selected frames.
Restarting and rebooting may just clear enough RAM for the frame to complete.
Try to make your windows swap file expand to very big size from an initially small one (so, f.e., 16MB to 256GB), and see if the frames complete.
They will go much slower than if sitting in physical RAM, but they may finish.
Checking the swap file size after rendering has completed, and the machine hasn’t been rebooted, will give you an idea of how far away you were from the needed RAM, if this was indeed your issue.
If it wasn’t, your swapfile will stay more or less at its minimum size.
Thanks,
It seems the workstation is using half of the available RAM - at the moment 49,2/95,9 GB. So I think it’s something else. Besides V-Ray, there’s preprocessed Phoenix- and tyFlow caches - no other plug ins used. I’d say it render average of 100 frames, before crashing. I have not found anything odd on the Windows Event Viewer. Total length of the animation is 6 500 frames, so it needs quite a few restarts.
CPU temp maybe? Getting too hot then crashing the PC?
If RAM isn’t the issue, then temps could be it, although 100 frames ought to give the CPU a steady-state temp: runaway temps would crash the machine earlier under load, i’d think.
Perhaps if the workstation is very old it may need a thorough cleaning to return to tiptop shape (i’m thinking gunk getting dislodged after a while and stopping some fan, or analogous.).
Ultimately though, without a scene to test (and see crash or go through on different hardware) it’s hard to fathom what could be doing what.
Yes,
It’s very old HP Z640 workstation with dual processors (9 or 10 years old). I have ordered a new HP Z6. I should get it early August. Maybe I just have to deal with the situation as it is and hope understanding from a client side.
A couple of hours ought to be enough, with an air compressor (and in case a vacuumer, if you’re indoors), to get the workstation opened, and thoroughly cleaned.
It’s all down to what you can afford the best, i’d guess. 
Perhaps use this forum
I’ve used this in the past when I’ve had crashes, viruses, etc. They’re super helpful.
Still crashing all the time. I have no Idea on how to fix this
Now the rebooting doesn’t help any more. It always crashes on frame 2029. I have total of 6500 frames to render. The client, that 90 000 bigger than me is now threatening with serious consequences if I’m not ready soon.
This is an improvement.
Send the log for the crash to our support, they may find things out.
Thanks,
What crash log we are talking about?
Anyway, I tested rendering with Phoenix hidden. Without Phoenix V-Ray renders as usual - without crashing. Does this help at all?
i mistyped, i meant the crash dump.
A 3dsmax.dmp file in the machine’s temp folder
Anyway, I tested rendering with Phoenix hidden. Without Phoenix V-Ray renders as usual - without crashing. Does this help at all?
It could surely be some issue with the caches.
It’s impossible to know without a file.
Pack up and send the crashing frame, with all its assets (for the frame, so no need for the whole sequences) to our support and they will find out.
Thanks,
I created a support ticket along with a minidump file.
Send the scene and assets via the contact form. Include the dump file (3dsmax_minidump.dmp), usually generated right after the crash, together with the vraylog.txt file. Both are located here: “C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp”. Make sure both files are recent (reproduce the crash first to refresh them).
EDIT: Pardon, didn’t see your last post. What’s your ticket number?
Thanks,
My ticket number is 402995.
I tested and noticed, I can render the Phoenix isolated alone, but not with the rest of the scene. Anyway, I processed the Phoenix simulation again. Now it’s rendering again.
Unfortunately I cannot share any part of the scene due to NDA.
That was some debugging you did, sir! Well done!
Unfortunately I cannot share any part of the scene due to NDA.
fyi, we are under implicit NDA with any of the clients’ material, and can sign further ones if needed.
