i have a scene that I rendered at 3000 x 2000. Rendered fine. Saved fine. Now, without making any changes, it renders and gets all the way thru the process and the render progress box closes… and the whole computer freezes and I have to do a restart. Render is not saved to directory. Tried leaving save to file box un checked, system still freezes. Not just max, whole computer freeze.
If I render at 1500 it seems to work. Update, now it hangs even at 1500
wtf? This is frickin killing me. Any advice on What can/ should I do? I am desperate
Does it happen in this particular scene only? You can try to merge the contents of that scene in a completely new and see if this fixes it. Do you have a Denoiser or lens FX turned on? Try turning them off.
Thank you Alex. That sounded like good advice. I merged everything into a new scene. Renders at lower setting using progressive ok. Rendering at 3k with buckets = full system lock up at render end. This is really causing me some very severe trouble and distress… out of nowhere this has started.
Confirmed no render elements or lens effects active
I have an exterior template scene with vray sun/ sky and physical camera. I can render a box at 3k, buckets and same settings as the scene that is causing the trouble. Rendering the box in that simple template,scene works
What if you merge the objects in groups and render them one group at a time? With this technique you can pinpoint the potential culprit. Sometimes objects would just break and go “defective” and cause weird stuff to happen during rendering, potentially crashing it or freezing your PC. You might have such objects in your scene.
Alex, thank you so much for your help. I am trying a variety of trouble shooting including loading older,versions of the scene. And maybe an autobak file or two.
I will I’ll try your suggestion as well. Of,course it’s very time consuming because I have to render at 3k and wait till completion to see if problem remains. Sheeeeesh x 1k
I’m finding that even rendering older iterations of the scene from yesterday are hanging at render end and causing system freeze. It was rendering fine but now…not.
No sir. Not overclocked. I am trying to merge parts of the scene into new file part by part. Still getting lockups after seemingly imported ok amounts of he scene.
this was working just fine this afternoon. I have gone past deperate and I’m now entering into permanent drain bamage with this. Of course worst possible timing with backed up overlapping projects and client expectations/ needs.
I’m at my wits end. I have very little of the original scene in a new file. It will render once or twice. Save file. After performing some basic action like un hide one spline or move two vertices up then save file. it will freeze the system on next render end.
then, after freeze up, re start computer, re start max, re render scene it renders to completion without freeze up. Save file, do a few minor things, save, render, freeze up. Restart, repeat, same thing.
I am dead in the water with three projects in process.
Does it still freeze with clay materials applied to all objects? Did you try older version of Vray like 3.5? I see you use Max 2018. Maybe if you try to render it on 2016? If these still don’t help do you have another PC that you can open the scene on and render it in order to rule out problems with the hardware and installation on that PC? Maybe there are missing plugins or other junk that you can try to clean with these tools: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/sc…cleaner?page=1 http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/sc…missingplugins
Try Alex_M suggestions if they don’t help you can send us the scene to support and we will have a look. Also you can use resumable rendering option (https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/…able+Rendering) or render to vrimg which saves the output during rendering. This way even if your max crashes you will still have the output saved.
Thank you both for your efforts to help me, I really need it.
1) By clay materials do you mean using an overide vray material of simple gray?
I do not have Max 2016 installed. Only 2017 and 2018. I do not have a second computer.
2) My understanding is I can only have one vray on my computer so not sure how to go back and forth with various versions and etc?
I have now managed to get the complete scene to render using progressive set for 10 minutes. I do not have the save file checked. I save as .exr from the frame buffer. Still flaky and undependable. one attempt at this resulted in freeze up. I have successfully saved this way twice.
I have noticed that the autobak is not working. It is set to autobak every 10 minutes but it’s not doing that. It was as of yesterday but it’s not anymore. Last apparently good autobak was yesterday at 2:35 PM and the file is 542 MB. (At 1142 PM last night it saved an autobak of 3MB That is probably when I was testing a nearly empty scene and trying to merge stuff in. The project file was still set to the project with the scene I’m having such trouble with.
So very odd that autobak is not working. My intuitiin is that something is wrong with the system or the max install or something. I don’t think it’s a conflict with something in the scene. BUT.. I do not know that, or anything else for sure.
I’m considering re-install Max and vray as a next step.
1) Yes, I mean a default grey Vray material. I would install Max 2016 with Vray 3.5 and test the scene with them. You can install them both along your Max 2018 and Vray 3.6 installations without issues and conflicts.
2) You can have only one Vray installed per each Max installation. So if you’ve got Max 2017 installed, you can install Vray 3.6 or Vray 3.5 for that version without any conflicts with Vray for Max 2018.
If none of these work, you should send the scene to Chaosgroup to look at.
I know this may be a dumb question but it has tripped me up a couple times, where are you trying to save the file(s) do you have adaquate disk space to save the rendering? One other thing that has got me before is in the VFB History settings do you have auto save turned on? I make sure that is off as it has caused havoc for me before.
I would also try what Alex mentioned that to put a v-ray material in the override slot in the render settings and see if that makes a difference.
And you can run different v-ray versions on different versions of max on the same box, Im running 2016 and 2018 and have no problems at all, even using DR if its setup correctly.
Thank you all for your ongoing help. I definitely need it.
Dave - I have 790 gig free space on new disk drive that I am saving to. I have not checked that VFB History Auto save and I will look at that for sure. Truth is I use VFB history but was unaware of auto save option. maybe it’s on.
I want to get 2016 installed. The problem is I have a current scene - almost completed except for client tweaks to furnishings - established in 2017 and another almost complete except for client tweaks to exterior materials in 2018 (thats the one that is causing the freeze ups). Can I somehow take my scenes from 2017 and 2018 backwards to 2016?
Whats very odd is how the autobak has stopped working . it just doesn’t even try to autobak.not sure but that seems like a strong coincidence and I suspect it’s somehow related or symptomatic of the underlying insanely frustrating problem.
One other thing that I have just done is to delete/un-install a script I used - Populate Terrain.
Still testing but that is very time consuming due to needing to render the entire scene at 3K to see if problem still exists and then , when it freezes, re-start and etc.
Autobak is now working on simple scene with just a couple of objects
Yes, you can save your scenes 3 versions back. So if using 2018, you can save all the way back to 2015. In the save dialog there’s a dropdown menu under the file name field. Click it and choose 3ds max 2016 before saving the file.
As for the autoback issue - no idea what could cause this. Maybe because the file is corrupted and somehow it doesn’t work with it anymore.
For saving backwards you should be able to open your 2018 file and do a ‘save as’ and there is a drop down box [save as type] at the bottom where you should be able to save it back to 2017, 2016 and 2015.
OK I was able to figure out the save backwards. Simple and obvious I’m just so flustered I am grabbing at straws.
More testing and…I may have found the super obvious self inflicted problem. too early to tell but things are working better. Autobak is working again.
I’m going to own up to this in advance because I’m pretty sure I frickin suck. I used that Populate Terrain in the older 2015 version of the scene and it carried into the new file I’m revising in 2018. I almost never use scripts and very few Plug -ins.
I collapsed the little Populate Terrain object, which had a Forest Pack scattered on it, and that may have done it. Don’t know why it worked OK for days and then suddenly whamo …not.
Too early to be sure but cautiously optimistic. I’m very sorry to have dragged you all into this stupid rabbit hole that I dug. Sincere apologies.
No matter what the cause Im just glad you were able to nail down what is wrong and resolve the issue. Ive made countless posts that ended up with me as the problem lol but only a small percentage get posted as Im in the habbit of writing the post out and then not hitting submit till I take a couple more cracks at the problem and if I fix it then I delete the post lol. No need to apologize as someone else that is using the same or similar setup may run into problems and be able to fix theirs faster because of what you posted here. There is usually a brighter side to most things.