Need help with mental ray error

[pajalmeida]

Hi,

 

When i render in 3Dsmax 9 using mental ray with one of his preset - mental.ray.daylight.high, whith the resolution of 3000x2250, it starts ok, but then some minutes later while it is calculating the final gather points it gives me this error: mem 0.3 fatal 031008:can't allocate 170122076 bytes.

I have a quad core 6600 with 4 gig of memory.

Could you please help me on this one

[Thiago de Andrade]

are you using displacement, for the grass for example?

[pajalmeida]

No, i don't have any displacement on

[Paul Twyman]

Hi there,

Try to see exactly what is causing it to run out of memory by looking at the message window, it may be one super large texture you have on something that even with 4G of RAM once it's opened it a few times during the render it'll give up. Also consider using bitmap proxies this can save huge amounts of memory with large scenes.

 

If there is no other immediate cause that you can see (or even if there is seeing as you are rendering to a high resolution) you should probably render out a final gather map at a smaller resolution then use this for your final size image using the Read Only (FG Freeze) check box. You can use a really small resolution for you final gather map as long as it is the same aspect ratio as your final. eg. 200 x 150 if necessary in your case if needed.

 

Hope this helps.

[Paul Twyman]

Hi there,

Try to see exactly what is causing it to run out of memory by looking at the message window, it may be one super large texture you have on something that even with 4G of RAM once it's opened it a few times during the render it'll give up. Also consider using bitmap proxies this can save huge amounts of memory with large scenes.

 

If there is no other immediate cause that you can see (or even if there is seeing as you are rendering to a high resolution) you should probably render out a final gather map at a smaller resolution then use this for your final size image using the Read Only (FG Freeze) check box. You can use a really small resolution for you final gather map as long as it is the same aspect ratio as your final. eg. 200 x 150 if necessary in your case if needed.

 

Hope this helps.

[Justin Hunt]

Will it run with an other preset, I personally wouldn't recomend using presets, as often you can get better results with lesser settings and quicker rendertimes. Without knowing whats in your scene it makes it very difficult to trouble shoot. Post some screen grabs of your scene, settings etc so we can narrow things down

 

JHV

[Paul Twyman]

Yeah I agree. I normally start with the high preset then tweak things. I don't think I would ever get anything finished if I left it as it was, that's if my computer would let me get that far!!!

[nisus]

I normally start with the high preset then tweak things

 

The MR presets are 'not bad' for people who don't know what they do, or what all individual parameters contribute... Yes, MR can be a lot quicker than the presets... a lot lot, and the presets ARE quick...

 

pls, just don't start with the high setting... start from draft and work up...

I can't imagine running all tests at high quality...

 

rgds,

 

nisus

 

ps: ow, and post in the correct section pls... You'll get faster results ,-)

[Paul Twyman]

hello,

i didn't mean i started on the high preset for draft renders, of course i wouldn't recommend that (i don't have that much spare time). Just meant that once i'm ready for a decent render i use the preset to change the settings globally then from the preset i know what tweaks i need to make to get the results i want. I just meant it's a good base point so you always know what changes you have made and what effect they have had.

[gecson]

I had this error too and googled for it. I found lots of answers, but no sollutions for the problem except, maybe, for the 3GB switch, but I found out it could be another reason and, possible, sollution for it.

 

Working with a large scene I began to be disspoainted by the performances of my videoboard - lots of regeneration, very slow, even if I have a board with 512MB of memory. From the begining I used the Open GL driver for Max, but then I switched to the Software option and things are going much smoother and no 031008 error anymore. Maybe this is not the basic reason, but it worked for me, so why shouldn't I share it