CGTalk - Mental Ray memory problem !!!

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akropol2000

07-16-2004, 02:48 PM

I really hope that someone here can help me out with the problem that I encountered using MentalRay.

I have created a scene (architectural -exterior) it has couple raytrace materials, skylight and a direct light .... nothing complicated .... using only Final Gathering (250) for rendering ...

When I render it at, let say 800x600 it takes about 3-4 mins to render .... no errors ... nothing - everything is totally fine ...

But when I raise it up to 4000x2800 it starts to render and then .... BOOM ... ERROR MESSAGE : MENTAL RAY HAS ENCOUNTERED A FATAL ERROR AND THE APPLICATION WILL NOW SHUTDOWN. tHE ERROR IS: MEM 0.9 031005:CANNOT FREE MEMORY.

and thats it ....

I can't do anything .... It is very frustrating to not being able to do anything about it ....
I also happened to own VIZ 2005 wich is pretty much identical to MAX (the rendering part). So I opened my scene there ... ....same thing ...

I checked in Preferences-> Rendering-> Bitmap Paging ... and I tried to raise all the parameters there ... but I don't think it helped because it crashed just the same way ...

anyway ... I really hope that somebody can help me !!!

PLEASE HELP !!! I'm frustrated to the level where you start to pull your hair out ....

nebille

07-19-2004, 08:35 AM

http://www2.festival-gmbh.de/sixcms/media.php/108/TipsUndTricksZuMentalRay_ThomasDriemeyer.zip (http://www2.festival-gmbh.de/sixcms/media.php/108/TipsUndTricksZuMentalRay_ThomasDriemeyer.zip)

Have a look at this link . its a power point presentation that talks about bsp tree depth which is causing you all the memory problems.

also try the following

<LI class=MsoNormal style="COLOR: navy">If you’re using displacement, reduce the “max displace” value (in the renderer tab) as much as possible. If you reduce it too much, then your displacement will be clipped. However, if the value is too high, then more memory may be used. <LI class=MsoNormal style="COLOR: navy">Use the “conserver memory” option (in the processing tab). To our experience, this option generally results in _less memory usage_ AND _faster rendering_. It will optimize geometry, and it will free a lot of resources used by 3ds max which are not needed when rendering with mental ray. <LI class=MsoNormal style="COLOR: navy">Use the “placeholders” option, IF you’re not doing GI or final gather. This option will allow mental ray to flush geometry out of memory when it’s no longer needed, and rebuild it when it needs it back. It’s not a good idea to use this option along with GI because mental ray would probably be constantly destroying/rebuilding geometry, resulting in very long rendering times. With Final Gather, only use placeholders if you also specify a “Final Gather Falloff”. The FG Falloff can help avoid the constant destroying/rebuilding of geometry. <LI class=MsoNormal style="COLOR: navy">Use the “Large BSP” raytrace algorithm, IF you’re also using placeholders. The large BSP can benefit from flushing, while the normal BSP can’t. <LI class=MsoNormal style="COLOR: navy">Use the “Grid raytrace algorithm” if you’re NOT using placeholders, and if you have a lot of instancing in your scene. The Grid algorithm will benefit from instancing, whereas BSP will not.
Use raytraced shadows – shadow maps eat up memory (and are often slower in mental ray)

akropol2000

07-19-2004, 04:23 PM

thanks for info ...

I'm going to try it today ...

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