Max error: failed to allocate filter tables

V-Ray V-Ray Common Off-topic
1

Started getting this error this afternoon - ‘failed to allocate filter tables for this bitmap, the bitmap may render incorrectly’.

Normally, i’d think it was a memory issue.

But:
It’s doing it on every scene I open, even ones with a light model and one texture.
They work fine on other peoples machines but mine kicks this out when I open the material editor or try to render. Bitmaps display in the viewport ok.

Absolutley no texture of any kind can be displayed - if i open a new max scene, open the material editor, go to select a bitmap for the diffuse - it crashes with this error the instant I press ‘ok’. It’s proper screwed up and I cant see any reason why this has started.

Restarted and opened up max while nothing else was running, no change.

This is pretty serious, because it means I cant do any work. Whats happening, why, and how do I fix it?

2

updated your video drivers recently?

3

Nope, not changed anything on machine for weeks.

Should I?

4

maybe try with openGL instead of directx and see if that helps or vice versa

5

No dice, still instantly kicks up the error when I load any bitmap.

6

do you have the bitmap pager turned on?

7

Hm, just tried and 2010 is fine, it’s just 2008 that’s doing this.
Unfortunatly I cant use 2010 because i’m the only one here with it installed.

How do I know if have it turned on, wheres the option (and what is it)?

edit: looked in the help, turning it on now.

8

Kept it open when I loaded a map, heres what it flashed with before it died:

mem usage:
total paged - 12mb
in memory - 0mb
on disk - 11mb
non paged - 0mb

Number of pages:
total - 50
in memory - 1
on disk - 49

activity
num flushes - 248
dirty flushes - 199
num loads - 150
bytes written - 47mb
bytes read - 36mb

memory limit - 0mb

Is this healthy? Just grabbed the closest bitmap, but it does it with all of them.

9

where are you reading that from?

10

The bitmap pager statistics, is that not right?
I just searched help for bitmap pager and it told me I could bring up the stats through the user interface, so I grabbed them.

edit: read more, yeah i’ve got it turned on. Sorry for being a spaz…
edit2: turning it off makes no difference, still crashes.

11

I have never seen those stats before!
How did you get them to come up?

how big are the bitmaps you are using?

12

customise - user interface - toobars - cat: all commands - bitmap pager stats. haha.

I re-installed max earlier which didnt help, but just then I took out vray, exported my license, uninstalled and put everything back in again…

Now it’s working, just loaded up a 6k wide map in the material editor fine.
10 minutes ago it crashed on a 300px square jpg.

What an awful problem.

13

be careful with JPGs that are compressed.
The file size might get compresses but when max has to uncompress them it eats up a whole lot of memory.