pro help needed!

[luft]

New to Vray and have been having big problems with crashing. I have read that this is probably due to memory problem.

 

I render out at at least 4000px in the longest measurement, so is it best to turn of the VFB all together, set the Max FB to a small size and render straight to a VRImage file. Then open that up in Max and save as a tiff?

 

Is this the normal work flow for high res stuff.

 

I have a twin Xeon 3gh and 4GB ram.

[lambros]

I ve had no serious problems rendering at 4K with an Athlon4000 with 2GB ram. It would be best to render with the Vray FB but you can save normally as a tiff, I don't think that there is a need to do the conversion through a vray image file.

[JamesTaylor]

with the set up you have i'm suprised if your having memory issues? as lambros suggests, i have no problems rendering scenes at 4k with only 2gig of RAM.

 

what is the polycount for your scene, and are you using extensive displacement? post some info on the scene and its set up, we should be able to help more that way.

[luft]

Faces count = 192,000

Object count=800

 

I did have the 'show calculation' ON, which I guess added greatly to the memory probs. Also, the Max Frame buffer showing (empty).

[JamesTaylor]

having show calc phase on will take up a little extra memory but not enough that it causes crashes.

 

polycount is pretty low too, i've rendered scenes approaching 1,000,000 polys with with both the Vray frame buffer and max buffer at full size with no probs.

 

what is the error message you are recieving in the vray text box? are you running anyother apps at the same time? can you watch the task manager (windows) to see how much memory is being used whilst rendering, should be a good indication as to whether memory is an issue. If that is the cause i would think it is to do with a meterial setting or render setting rather than polycount.

 

post your render settings for us to have a look at.....

 

other methods to try - turn everything off and render 1st 100 objects, if ok turn on next 100 objects etc. if you get to point where it crashes you can start homing in on any offending objects / materials

[luft]

The program just dissapeared! or sometimes the std 'an error has occurred and the program will now close...'

Here are the settings I was using. I was using my normal materials, not Vray ones (apart from Vray map for reflection).

[AJLynn]

There is a known bug that can cause crashes when rendering at higher resolutions using VrayFrameBuffer. The behavior is unpredictable - happens on some computers, not on others, sometimes only on Tuesdays or when the moon is waning, etc.

[JamesTaylor]

Why are you using standard mats? are they placed inside a vray wrapper mat? make sure there are no raytraced maps in there, its a known issue that vray doesn't like them.

 

there are few bits in the settings which will increase memory usage, but again its quite a lightweight scene so should be ok, main result will most likely be increased render times.

 

worth reducing these as a test tho.

 

Vray:Quasi-Monte Carlo GI subdivs usually defaults at 8

Vray:QMC Sampler min samples default at 8

 

one other thing, at what point does it crash? during calc of irr map? during rendering of image? is it a direct render on the machine you are working on or is going thro backburner? are you using DR?

[luft]

Why are you using standard mats?

one other thing, at what point does it crash? during calc of irr map? during rendering of image? is it a direct render on the machine you are working on or is going thro backburner? are you using DR?

 

I've just got Vray, so I brought in a model previously built and textured. How do I convert them all to Vray materials?

 

The first two times it dissapeared, I wasn't actually in front of my PC, BUT I'm pretty sure the first was when it auto-saved the IR map, second when it finished rendering in the VFB.

 

It is a direct render on the machine.

 

I think I read that VFB doesn't dump the bitmaps from memory?

[JamesTaylor]

try assign a plain white vray material to the entire scene, just as a test to see if it renders that way.

 

i always use vray mats and never really get any issues

 

i guess if it still fails, then it must be geometry topology or memory issues.

 

with a direct render you have max open at the same time it will be using memory up also, i sometimes have to send renders to a slave as my scene is heavy and using up too many resources to render as well.

 

can you post a screen shot of the scene and let us know what the modelling was done in(shouldn't really make a differnce, if comes into max it should render).

 

have you tried rendering any other scenes yet, even just a basic box with vray, i presume these work fine?

 

if you want to post the scene, i'll to render it and see if it crashes for me too

[luft]

I think it works OK on very simple scenes at high res, but when the problem occurs, Viz just dissapears with a std Autodesk send error dialogue box.

 

So do you think it's Viz problem? Or maybe a driver issue?

[JamesTaylor]

it could be a install problem, maybe try reinstalling?

 

i'd be more inclined to say its an issue with the fact you're using a previously created scene and it contains something (material or geometry) that vray doesn't like.

 

i appreciate its probably becoming frustrating, but i'd suggest perserving and starting with a new scene and using vray mats throughout, no raytraced shadows or reflections.

 

you can convert all scene mats to vray by rightclicking in the viewport and using the convert to vray scene option. my be worth a go

 

vray running out of memory usually produces a error message from vray followed by viz crashing, plus you have loads anyway

 

do you have the correct install for the version of viz you are using?

 

if you want to post the scene, or email it to me (pm me for my address) i'll give it a go too

[luft]

with regards to the install version (1461570), when I installed it, it did say that I was running version 7 of Viz! (I'm running V6 with Sp1). Chaos emailed me this when their servers were down the other day.

 

I tried converting the scene to Vray materials, but nothing changed in the editor...anothe F*** problem!

[JamesTaylor]

that could potentially be a problem, i'm not too sure how important it is to have the correct version, but the fact that they produce different installs for max / viz versions must be for a reason i presume.

 

have you emailed the chaos team with your issues? they are normally good at getting back to you, but bare in mind they are small team and probably very busy!

 

in regard to converting the scene to vray mats, i think it just places the existing materials into vray wrapper material so the material editor slots probably won't visually change, you should be able to move up another level on the materials tho to the wrapper material.