render cancelled due to insufficient memory????

[annasaloura]

I have been asked to produce a 40-acre-fruit-tree cultivation aerial, with specific detail to show fruits on the trees. I am having memory trouble and cannot produce render images on my 110-tree scene, which I had also scaled down by 0.1, just in case sizing it down, helped. I should also say that my trees have fruit groups on them (max objects placed on to mr proxy trees).

I use WIN7 ULT 64bit, Max 2012 for 64 bit, 700GB capacity, 8 processors i7 CPU 2,67Hz each, 4GB (RAM) memory, GeForce 9800GT 2815MB.

Mr proxies sized down my file to half (from 40.000kb to 20.000kb). However, 3ds max keeps messaging that renders are cancelled due to insufficient memory. There are no lights on the scene except for two suns, all materials are from autodesk library (no more than 8 in total, grass being the most elaborate of all).

Render info: output size 1753*1240, enable proxy system, downscale map to eighth its original size, use proxy only if the original map's largest dimension is greater than 256 pixels, render with proxies (high performance, low memory), page large images to disk, compute advance lighting when required, samples per pixel min:1/4, max:4, scanline: off, ray tracing: enable (no autovolume), BSP2.

What more can I do?

Thank you for your time.

[Corey Beaulieu]

I don't use Mental Ray; Vray has a setting called Dynamic Memory which helps mitigate this issue. A quick Google for a similar concept in MR returned this: http://www.lamrug.org/resources/memorytips.html which seems helpful. In all honestly though, I only skimmed it.

[Matt McDonald]

Your system is a little light on system memory, but that probably isn't the answer you are looking for. Of the settings you list, everything sounds right. I'll give you a few thoughts that you might tinker around with.

 

You say that you are using AutoDesk materials, I know those are compatible with Mental Ray but they might not be optimized for it so you could try switching to A&D materials.

 

Are you using displacement? Generally, it's a memory hog.

 

If you still have access to the tree geometry used to generate your proxies, you might try adding the fruit to the editable mesh and then exporting that as a proxy. Max will have slightly better memory usage with fewer objects and if the fruit is part of the proxy it then can benefit from memory flushing.

 

You can try turning off the frame buffer while you render, that will save a little memory.

 

You could also try Thorsten Hartmann's "render optimizer". It does lots of stuff but of particular interest here would be the ability to limit the memory usage of the renderer. Prior to 2012, the user had the ability to set the max memory used by Mental Ray, after 2012 that value is calculated automatically. There is an opportunity to set a more conservative memory cap which may allow your render to finish albeit slowly.

 

http://www.infinity-vision.de/page/ro_menue

Edited December 27, 2012 by ELEVATION
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[hockley91]

Hmmm. I've never had any memory issues with V-ray. Mental Ray gives me trouble with displacement, but not V-ray. Where I have run into issues is with geometries that have been heavily modified in 3ds Max. What I've done with some success has been to "convert" all geometry to a mesh. That kind of "flattens" all the geometry. Of course save the original file and mess with the copy. Sometimes that makes a difference. The original file may have some corruption as well especially if 3ds Max has kicked you out previously. Little glitches like that can cause problems with your 3D file. In those cases, I've selected all the geometries and save as a new file for only the selected objects. Sometimes that works also.

[annasaloura]

I have been a bit frustrated with Vray since I can't open most of my old files when its license is running, though I would never doubt what it does. My first interior scene was with Vray and I could not believe the result in terms of how close it was to real. So, shamefully enough, I did not start this file in Vray. I will though just to try what you say, and maybe I should have in the first place to save me from all trouble now.

Thank you very much for the promptness.

[annasaloura]

I am not very familiar with specs on computers when it comes to visualisation. It puzzles me how memory works. S What does"light on memory" mean? Supposedly I have the heaviest machine in the company I work for (which is not specifically about visualisation, I should say, so no one else does what I do. We don't specialise on visualisation. We design and construct buildings, however, visualisation is a very important part of it). Supposedly, as my employers say, they had spent 6000euros on my machine 5 years ago (someone else was using it then) and therefore it should be enough. I will ask for an upgrade, but I should know what to ask for.

I will also reassign my materials to try out what you say about Autodesk materials. And maybe I should give it a go with Vray (I am using Vray for interiors).

I have tried to integrate fruits to the trees, but when I selected the group (which was grouping 3d max treelib foliage and a bunch of fruit on it), it comes out "fruitless" as a proxy - it does not show any fruit, and that is why I placed them directly on the mr proxy object. Maybe I should try to "mesh" it all as you say.

I visited the link about Thorsten Hartmann's render otpimizer. Ok....we say: "now that you are in the river you have to swim"....I am very intrigued to see how it works (beginner's curiosity!).

It is all very pressuring (as always, though usually my pc delivers), because I am expecting the client from day to day, so there is very limited time for experiments (which I otherwise love), and I have no render.

People with no knowledge about these programs mostly believe you hit two buttons and the pc does the work for you.

About displacement, I had ticked "view" and "smoothing", edge length:200cm, Max.Displace:2000cm, Max.Subdiv.:16K. I turned them off and the frame buffer off, as well. Just these two of all you proposed delivered!! My render is shwiftly building up, fruits and everything!

I am very grateful for all input. Thank you for sharing in this forum. You can't beat experience!!

[Josef Wienerroither]

4GB for Win 7 64 bit and using it for rendering is way too low and seems to be totally off when compared to your other system specs. Maybe you could get the scene to render but i strongly would advice to at least quadruple your system memory to be 16GB. RAM is dead cheap, it's not worth the time to strip down your scene and deal with all the other problems you will face with that low memory ammount. The rest of your hardware is totally wasted when trying to use it with 4GB RAM

[annasaloura]

I honestly can't tell who put my machine together, someone else was using it before me in the company I work for, doing this kind of work. But hopefully with your input I will remedy this with an upgrade. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my post.

[annasaloura]

For some reason my first answer to you was "sensorshipped" (no offence, please, by the forum administrator, thanks to your forum and to ELEVATION, I solved my problem!).

Thank you for the time, just by turning off displacement and frame buffer of all other stuff you suggested, the problem was solved. Great sharing.