ianmoran Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 Hello all, I am working on an archviz project and I am having problems rendering at anything above 2K. The render seems to get stuck each time. I'm using a late 2013 Mac Pro with 12GB RAM, Maya and V-Ray. I'm wondering if I am maxing out on RAM despite not receiving any error messages. I have raised my Vray Dynamic Memory Limit to 10000mb but that only got me pass the GI Light Pass Phase and had little impact on the render phase. How does RAM work during the rendering process? Could it be a RAM problem or maybe something else? I am hoping to find a none hardware solution as I really can't afford to upgrade right now. Thank you in advance... Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaronrumple Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 You could be. You won't get an 'error' message. Rather you'll see Vray 'unloading geometry'. When this starts happening, things get really slow. However the renderings should finish given enough time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 What is stuck? Are you sure the bucket isn't just taking time to calculate the render? If you use the default bucket size of 64 things can get "stuck", so try reducing the bucket size to around 32 to ease up the strain on the CPU for detailed areas. It would help to know what you are rendering. There could be a huge difference between getting "stuck" on a simple gray cube versus an outdoor scene with 5 bajillion trees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianmoran Posted June 24, 2015 Author Share Posted June 24, 2015 Thank you for responding guys... I have a scene of a house elevation plus displacement grass and 3d trees, plants etc. Altogether about 10 million polygons (mainly due to the plants and trees). I have exported the plants as Vray Proxies. Some of the textures also have a lot of detail. The scene will render when using an override material but seems to choke when going for a final render. And yes, I have already reduced the bucket size to 16. I ran a render last night, after 10 hours it was on about 50% done and had pretty much ground to a halt. I checked the RAM in the activity monitor (I'm using Mac OSX) and the RAM was struggling. Today I tried for the first time to setup a Distributed Render by hooking up my Macbook Pro laptop to my main Mac Pro workstation. I managed to get both systems rendering but the textures were glitchy and blocky. I think this may be due to a texture file path problem for the slave machine. I have been unable to find a solution to this at present. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted June 24, 2015 Share Posted June 24, 2015 Are you using any opacity maps and is filtering turned off (and/or set the opacity mode to clip mode if you are in Vray 3.0) on those opacity maps? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianmoran Posted June 24, 2015 Author Share Posted June 24, 2015 Are you using any opacity maps and is filtering turned off (and/or set the opacity mode to clip mode if you are in Vray 3.0) on those opacity maps? Ah yeah. Scott, I think you may be onto something there. Filtering is on but I am using opacity maps on the leaves. Now you mention it I seem to remember reading an article by Alex Roman where he talked about reducing the amount of opacity as V-Ray has a hard time rendering it. He explained that it is better to model the leaves correctly rather than use cards with leaf textures + opacity. He said that the opacity should not be more than 10% of the geometry's surface and this should help reduce the pressure that V-Ray faces during render time. I shall have another look at my, very possibly messed up, leaf geometry. Thank you Scott, your advice is much appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted June 24, 2015 Share Posted June 24, 2015 You can use opacity mapped leaves all you want, just make sure to turn filtering off. With Vray 3.0 and the new opacity modes, clip being the fastest, the speeds are improved even more. With opacity maps and filtering turned on, the renders are very sssssssssssllllllllloooooooooooowwwwwwwww. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianmoran Posted June 24, 2015 Author Share Posted June 24, 2015 You can use opacity mapped leaves all you want, just make sure to turn filtering off. With Vray 3.0 and the new opacity modes, clip being the fastest, the speeds are improved even more. With opacity maps and filtering turned on, the renders are very sssssssssssllllllllloooooooooooowwwwwwwww. Really??? I didn't know that. So I'll try turning off the filtering and see what happens. I'll try it now and let you know the outcome. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianmoran Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 Really??? I didn't know that. So I'll try turning off the filtering and see what happens. I'll try it now and let you know the outcome. Thank you. Brilliant Scott, this seemed to work!!! I turned off filtering on materials that use opacity and the render was completed in less than 4 hours. I also managed to get my Macbook Pro hooked up to it for a bit of extra Distributed Rendering power - so it is looking much better now. Thank you so much Scott - I owe you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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