Max2009 and mental ray crashes!

[k-ram]

I have recently migrated to 3DS MAX Design 2009 (XP64 bit) and I experience quite frequent crashes when running final gather (even on low or very settings) I've tried many ways to avoid this, but even scenes that rendered without problems in MAX2008 seem to crash. Memory should not be a problem (8GB), neitherfile size (50.000 polys) The message I get reads: "DB 0.16 fatal: accessing unknown tag 0x1000382" When I render without final gather, everything usually works fine. HW: Dell Precision 690, Xeon X5355 @ 2.66 GHz 8GB RAM. Could it be the CPU temperature?...or should I just migrate back to VRay?

[AJLynn]

Hey, you've found a new error message that Google doesn't know

 

Have you tried the same render in the 32-bit version to see if it's a 64-bit version bug?

[amer abidi]

working fine for me! I'm on 32-bit though..been extremely stable with very large scenes, and even distributed render.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Maybe a bad RAM stick?

 

http://www.memtest86.com/

Edited January 11, 2009 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[k-ram]

Thank you all! Unfortunately, the scene crashes in 32 bit too. Registry is clean, disks are defraged and ok, no error messages on the RAM. I've tested different ways of optimization (mr memory options), but nothing really seem to work well.

[pthomas1172]

Same here...I have been using max 15 yrs and it's crashing like like the old days..

 

So I have done the following to reduce the crashing by 50%

 

- set autoback for every 5 min.

 

- MR PROXY for meshes (good speed increase fwiw) The original mesh has to be XREFED to put the mat. on the proxy.

 

- bitmap proxies at 1/2 res.

 

- cache your FG at low res. 250x100 or something. then lock it. (might have to add to the cache with another one at a little larger res if you plan for BIG renders. ) two small caches take less time than cacheing FG at a large res.

 

- cache your geomtry.

 

- Try DBR, even on a smaller machine this does a lot.

 

- Check your MAT. Do away with ALL PRO Mat. this seemed to help right off the bat. (damn it)Just use ARCH MAt. and Standard for small crap.

 

- check your reflection on ARCH MAT. turn on interpolate / keep GLOSSYSAMPLES below 12 if you can.

 

- try to keep your # of objects down to a minimum, i.e. attach all the steps of the stairs together instead of having them as seperate objects.

 

Patrick Thomas

[Justin Hunt]

Does it crash with just this scene or all scenes? It sounds more like a scene error rather than a machine one.

 

I have been flogging Max2009 with millions of polies and 1000's of objects and its handled it fantastically. Only problems I've had is with legacy scene opened in 2009, even then its been relitivly easy to fix.

 

Just a thought what video driver are you using DirectX or OpenGL? try switching

 

jhv

[k-ram]

Thank you both! I've been tweaking for ages (also with the display drivers), but now I think I've found the reason for the instability. In larger scenes, it seems like complicated Arch+Design materials (see attached screendump*) is too demanding for the system (even with glossy samples set to 8) and lower AA.

 

*In case it does'nt show up; AO, Round corners, maps for diffuse color, reflection colors and reflection glossiness.

[pthomas1172]

Round corners are very expensive

[Justin Hunt]

in what way?

[Superfinicky]

What type of video card are you using? Are you running XP pro 64 with 32 bit max now?