Irradiance Map/Light Cache Storing Question

[VCRUPI]

Hi all,

 

I am trying to render out an interior scene at a resolution of about 2400x2550 but it I keep getting memory issues. As VRay is building the light cache, my PF gets to about 5.25GB then vray says "unloading geometry" so I'll cancel the render. The Vray settings are nothing special either (its set to medium).

I have done renders of this size and larger before... only real difference is this scene has more materials with slight displacement (values from 0.5 to 2).

 

I am running on XP Pro with 4GB of RAM. I have already done research about the term "unloading geomtry" and it has something to do with calcuating the displacement maps and cranking the Dynamic Memory limit in the Vray system settings rollout. It was at 400MB by default... I put it at 2000MB.

 

I guess my real question is, if I enable the "don't render final image" box in Vray and try to build and save my IR map and Light cache at a lower image resolution (like 800x850 instead of 2400x2550), can I then use those saved files to render at a higher resolution? ... or will I notice anything weird? When Vray calculates the IR maps and Light cache... does it calculate this based on the scene or the pixels your rendering it at?

 

If anyone knows anything about this problem I'm running into and has a solution, please post ASAP as this deadline is rapidly approaching. I can feel it breathing down my neck!

 

Thanks in advance!

[Ricardo Eloy]

You could calculate everything at 800x850 and render a larger final output, but you'd probably see some artifacts, depending on the amount of geometry detail you have. What I would do is render it at final res (just decreasing the GI specs a bit), but with the Render to Memory Frame Buffer option off and saving a VRay Raw Image File. That will save you tons of memory.

[ronel]

You could calculate everything at 800x850 and render a larger final output, but you'd probably see some artifacts, depending on the amount of geometry detail you have. What I would do is render it at final res (just decreasing the GI specs a bit), but with the Render to Memory Frame Buffer option off and saving a VRay Raw Image File. That will save you tons of memory.

 

WOW NICE FEEDBACK FROM RICK ELOY.... or how about rendering it with strip rendering.... there are some maxscripts available across the net like superender and sparrow render... it will subdivide the whole image into parts and joining them automatically at the end of last portion of the image. In this case your computer will not forcibly read all the data fro rendering as a whole but, rather it will read them part by part.

[STRAT]

sounds like vray for max is similar to vray for c4d in this respect. i never render a final still all in one. i'll cache my gi solution at about 1/3 of the final resolution, then render out my final render using the pre-cached solution. a much faster method me thinks

[Ricardo Eloy]

Quite faster, indeed. Just be careful because since GI is often calculated using the available pixels, sometimes one has to calculate everything a bit bigger than 1/3.

[Brian Smith]

good solutions. you could also render without a secondary bounce and try to compensate for the reduction in illumination with color mapping. you could also use qmc for either primary or secondary bounces as they use a lot less memory. you could also just render the whole scene in dynamic mode.

 

it seems strange that your pf would be that high. i imagine there are a ton of tips that you could use to streamline your scene. just one example would be...

 

using fake shadows for 3D trees. for 2d terrain place either a single polygon with a shadow mapped onto it at the base of the tree. for 3d terrain use a projector map to suck light away from an area thereby creating a shadow. then turn off shadow casting on the 3D trees. saves a lot of render time and ram.

[STRAT]

externals i use irrad for primes and qmc for seconds, internally i use irrad for primes and lc for seconds. dunno how this compairs to you max users, but for c4d it's the 'prefered' method

[VCRUPI]

It's a small space. Here is a screenshot of one of the spaces (the one i am trying to render @ 2259x2400).. there are three spaces in total:

 

 

Here are the settings I am using:

Is there anything about my settings I should be tweeking or changing?