Weird Problem in max

[MartyMan]

I have had a strange occurance last night with my max file. I have a large urban landscape file of about 60 meg containing a town and area landscape complete with trees. I have been buikding all the assets and saving as I have gone alone to new file names just in case. All was going well. I had done single frame renders along the way and no probs. Im using FG and Gi and to date, no crashes. Late last night I suddenly got a memory error and it crashed. This morning the landscape area with aerial images rendered black and I was getting warning messges again with memory. So I went back to some of the older files, and surprise I got the same result, again with crashes. I did nothing to my Computer and no downloads etc. Nor did I play with max settings. We are at a loss to explain this issue. I even replaced my graphics card today. I went back and started the scene from the original base file and all rendered ok. I was able to bring all houses and road geometry in...........and again all ok. Then I brought a small road piece in and it rendered black.( but rendered ok in its own origiinal file )Even when I go to the Mat editor the material is black. I tried to open the image file and got no memory warning.Is thumbnail showed ok, but when I pressed open to apply it, nothing happend. Has anyone had this before. It seems strange that all the older files that worked fine before suddenly had the same issue.

[SandmanNinja]

If you know 100% for certain that those old max files worked fine before, then it sounds like the machine is at fault.

 

Either:

a) the files got corrupt (if the old files are on a removable medium, then I doubt this)

b) the hardware is pooched

c) the operating system is pooched

 

In a nutshell, that's the troubleshooting matrix root level.

[MartyMan]

If you know 100% for certain that those old max files worked fine before, then it sounds like the machine is at fault.

 

Either:

a) the files got corrupt (if the old files are on a removable medium, then I doubt this)

b) the hardware is pooched

c) the operating system is pooched

 

In a nutshell, that's the troubleshooting matrix root level.

 

Thanks for you reply. Yeah Im sure about the files as I rendered shots each time before saving. Harware..........doubt it, its a brand new Mac Pro.

 

I do believe I have solved it anyway. My boss suggested corrupted image files. ( dont ask me how ) but he has had many instances in After FX with this problem. So I took his advice and opened them up in Photoshop and resaved them. Funny thing......................it worked. NO more black images and the file is stable again. Cheers for your imput .

[Ky Lane]

Make sure your images are RGB - have had alot of issues with CYMK JPG's.

[SandmanNinja]

same here. I got some TIF files and they were gray in my material editor.

Took them into photoshop, could see them fine, then saw they were cmyk.

changed them and they worked fine.

 

Good point, Ky.