out of 2 gig of ram!!!

[colorID]

hi friends,

 

The first thing i thought of, when i couldnt find a solution for our problem is posting to my favourite website,so thnx in advance everyone.

 

We are doing a big project that consists of multiple bldgs,about 4 million face for total,the problem is that once we load the whole scene that contains all the bldgs..the page file in wndows task manager says it is using 1.25 gb. after we start rendering the scene.. the ram usage starts to raise constantly until it reaches 1.85 gig then max gives verious error messages then it shuts down

 

 

 

My Q is does max has a certain limit of ram that cant use more than...i mean if we got more ram is this going to make the rendering succefull? two i always thought that that ram in rendering is not important as i thought that once the scene is loaded in the ram,the processor is the important issue.but ram usage was increasing during rendering.

 

is there a certain software that we can use that can increase the ram by using the page file or something like that.

 

any help is much appreciated.

 

the specs of the workstation is

 

dual xeon 2.8 with 2 gb of DDR ram and Nvidia geforce FX5600 graphics card

 

software used is max 5.1 with service pack one

 

thnx alot guys in advance

 

best regards

[Fernando Lino]

I think Windows 32-bit can handle 2gb per process....maybe you should render the scene in network

[colorID]

thnx alot

Fernando Lino ,

 

well, actually we are doin animation that is supposed to be rendered in a rendering farm that each of it suppose to take frame of the whole sequence...but rendering per frame in the whole rendering farm can make the time away longer.well i m not so sure about this info...

but any suggestion would be appreciated.

 

thnx alot again

[abicalho]

You can add the /3GB switch to your Boot.INI and 3dsmax will then use 3GB, instead of 2GB.

 

Search for information on the net or on the Microsoft website on how to add this switch.

 

Another option is to enable the Bitmap Pager which will then page your bitmaps to disk, freeing more RAM.

 

Alexander

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

there are a lot of faces in the scene as you are aware... reducing them will help. also, ram is required for shadow computations, raytrace reflections, ect.. ect.. try adjusting these, or doing away with reflection to see if the scene renders ok.

 

also, are you using a radiosity solution? ..what render engine are you using (max, final render, vray, ect..). some are alble to store solutions effectively so that your farmed machines do not need to do the calculations.

[hieu]

there are a lot of faces in the scene as you are aware... reducing them will help. also, ram is required for shadow computations, raytrace reflections, ect.. ect.. try adjusting these, or doing away with reflection to see if the scene renders ok.

 

also, are you using a radiosity solution? ..what render engine are you using (max, final render, vray, ect..). some are alble to store solutions effectively so that your farmed machines do not need to do the calculations.

 

 

I 've got a question of ways to reduce the number of faces??? Do you have any tutor about? I am using autocad and archicad to build up the building but it create too much redundant faces on the model??

 

Any suggestion is appreciated.

[3dp]

max has the optimise and multires modifiers or if you want bolt on tools the polygon cruncher from blackfeet will get face counts down in a parametric fashion

 

depending on what your shots are you should also consider rendering multiple pass

ie foreground midground and background

also save the scene as a copy and delete EVERYTHING the camera does not see and finally collapse to editable meshes

these last two if nothing else will speed up preprocess times

[colorID]

hi hi everyone,

thnx alot for ur replies,

it has been so usefull trying out those features.

 

abicalho, well the problem about the 3 GB switch is that our scene actually need more ram than 3 GB, beside i guess as fernando said , windows XP 32 bit cant handle more than 2 GB per process.

 

about the bitmap paging i guess iti s very usefull tool,really thnx to share it,our scene has somethhing like 3500 RPC all around the site, the first think i thought about that i can page out the textures of rpc to page files and not to keep them all in ram at the same time,i tried this tool more than one time in different settings but unfortunalty it didnt work.

 

i have the feeling that RPC is the main problem in our scene,though it seems that it is the count of faces in the scene .

 

does any body have any idea about the rpc calcualtions and its relation to the ram, is there away to make rpc less effective on ram(if they are the problem).

 

crazy homeless guy, thnx for the idea about reducing the number of faces ..that was in mind..but i feel this could lower down the quality of the objects in the animation,still this is a valid solution especially if we deleted the camera un seen objects. as 3dp said.

 

 

the final decision was taken to render scene in layers using render elements dialgue, frankly i m not that familiar of this one, maybe it is the same as 3dp said the multiple pass methoud, but it can render like shadows alone then the reflections alone then we can composite them in PS.

 

I ll post the solution in details once decison taken .

 

any further info or help about solving this problem or speeding up the rendering issue should be very usefull.

 

thnx alot everyone.

 

best regards

[quizzy]

go here if you want to optimize your RPC usage:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=3198&highlight=RPC+RAM

[colorID]

hi quizzy,

thnx a million man,,, that problem of RPC's that was discussed in that forum was the same to me, now i m assigining one material to the same bilboarded RPC's,that means every group that contains the same type of rpc will have only one material.instead of hunderds.

 

still we are loosing the quality of the non bilboarded rpc,yet it solved lots.

 

thnx alot everyone