Rendering Treestorm Trees with VRAY

[cg_Butler]

Hi all.

 

Has anyone experienced this problem?

 

I'm trying to render some animated Palm Trees. The tree was created using Onyx Tree and I'm using a wind system that I've set up in max.

 

The file has about 10 of these trees copied with different seeds and some xrefs also that are various parts of the entire scene with Matte objects set up in their VRay properties. -1.0, Affect Alpha etc.

 

When I send the files with out these XRefs turned on they render fine with no errors. But when I turn the Xrefs on i get the following error

 

[V-Ray] UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: Calling EvalWorldState() for node "animated palm" at time 2496

 

These xrefs are used in other files so I'm certain it's nothing to do with them.

 

I'm using animation the animation prepass and rendering method at i have moving trees and moving cameras.

 

I am going to try two things.

 

1. Merge all the Xrefs in to my file. And if that doesn't work.....as a last resort.....

2. Created animated Vray proxies of each tree. ( I am reluctant to do this though as their file sizes are going to be massive!)

 

Your thoughts please everyone.

 

Cheers.

[Ricardo Eloy]

I was going to suggest you converted them into VRayProxies while reading your post. Regardless the file size, it's going to be way more efficient memory-wise, and you probably won't get an error.

[cg_Butler]

Thanks Ricardo.

 

I've tried the first option.......still the same errors.

 

I'm just trying a third option which has less trees to see if it's that. But it's looking likely proxies will be the way forward. Luckily, I only have 10 trees and they are short pans of 200 frames max.

 

I'll keep you posted!

[Tommy L]

Hi Andy, how did proxy-ing the animated trees go? Any tips?

[cg_Butler]

Ah yes thanks for asking me to let you know. I was a bit lax on the update!

 

In the end I proxied them which was a little tempremental. It kept crashing my machine and i had to proxy one. Close max, proxy another etc etc. But eventually I had them all proxied. Then the network couldn't handle all the maps and proxies when loading the maxfile up for rendering. These trees alone were 10GB. In the end I copied them to C:/temp and patched through to that location in the maxfile. Then it worked perfectly.

 

I can recommend animated proxies, especially trees. These were large because they were in the foreground so fully detailed and around 400 frames long animation length. Not ideal having them copied locally on every machine, especially if you have a lot of render machines but it's the way i worked it for that job. Needs must when the deadline looms! Anything goes to get the renders out.

Edited July 4, 2013 by cg_Butler