Max crashing on render (vray)

[batteryoperatedlettuce]

I'm using Irr/LC for primary/secondary.

 

I've pushed the LC settings up to a reasonable amount and I'm fairly sure that it is LC that is causing max to crash as it's always happening during the lightmap construction.

 

Anyone here got any advice? I'm taking some screen shots now and I'll bung them up in a sec.

 

-edit This is driving me up the wall. I've got a brand new computer sitting in front of me. I'm going to throw the blasted thing out of the window in about ten seconds then drive my jeep over it!!!!!!!!

 

-edit OK, I'm having FTP issues too so I'll just have to write it all down

 

primary = irradiance map

Secondary = light cache

 

Ir Map

Medium

HSph = 50

Interp Sub = 30

single frame

(rest is default)

-----

Light cache

Subdivs 1000

size 1.0mm

Scale world

----

rQMC

adaptive = 1

min = 8

noise thresh = 0.01

global subs = 1

[ShaunDon]

It could be one of a number of issues, we deal with this problem all the time. In fact we've got one computer (dual xeon 5050, 4gb RAM, so not too shabby) that will crash calc'ing 1000 subdivs of a lightcache. I open it on my machine (dual opteron 275s, 4gb RAM) and everything calcs fine. Haven't figured that one out yet.

 

A few things to check... how much RAM does your machine has? How much is max using? (check this in the task manager and watch the 3dsmax process as it calculates the LC) Are you combining a lot of high-poly folliage with displacement-mapped geometry (brings the LC to a halt in my experience). Are you watching the VRay log as it renders -- are you getting any warnings or errors there?

 

Only thing to do to really troubleshoot this is start hiding suspect geometry and rendering until it doesn't crash. Then examine the object you hid and go from there. Learning V-Ray is kind of like riding a horse... anyone can get out of the gates with it, but you have to get to know the beast and learn its quirks before you have a smooth ride.

 

Good luck,

Shaun

[batteryoperatedlettuce]

sorry for that outburst up there.

 

Foliage, yes - tons. Little leafy indoor shrubs and things everywhere, and an ornamental victorian style railing round the stairs. I thought I was so clever for modeling that.

 

I'm going to remove these things for a while and see if that works.

 

Cheers.

[ShaunDon]

If you're just doing a still, you might try making the heavier folliage not visible to the camera, and then render the folliage groups in passes and add them back in Photoshop. Either that or give up your lightcache and switch to irradiance/qmc -- your render times will go up, but you shouldn't have the crashing issues. The lightcache has to calculate the entire scene at once, which is resource intensive and why it tends to just up and crash without warning on the heavier scenes. Irrad/qmc limits the amount of geometry your machine calculates to only what each bucket sees.

 

Shaun

[manta]

Try converting your heaviest geometry to vray proxies...

[batteryoperatedlettuce]

right, that was going to be my next question - why does the LC crash on high settings and not the others?

 

Anyway I've played with the settings, I'll settle for a bit of noise in the rendering this time and sharpen it up later on. Besides, my client this time is pretty old, which should add a softening gaussian effect to what ever I put in front of him.

 

-edit If I go back to IM+QMC - what settings do you guys use in the QMC secondary bounce - and the QMC Sampler for a nice sharp render?

 

(check this in the task manager and watch the 3dsmax process as it calculates the LC)

 

Ohhhhhh... You mean that place where there's a dark green grid with a slighty brighter horizontal green line right at the very top where it says CPU