Mental Ray Fatal Error when rendering dense geometry

[veiledsongbird]

I also wanted to mention that this model consists of several IGES files imported from Solidworks that are NURBS.

[slipknot66]

You could try with Large BSP or Grid acceleration
Go to the render Settings---mental ray tab---Raytracing---Acceleration, there try Large BSP (defaut values), or grid (default values).

[veiledsongbird]

Thanks for your help and the great link!! I made sure to sign up!

What would be a good high setting for the BSP or Grid acceleration?

[slipknot66]

Here is a link to a text where you will find some useful information.
Check the BSP part.
http://www.lamrug.org/resources/charoptions.html#bsp

Usually the default values are a good start.

[Kabab]

Avoid iges like crazy its a totaly crap format...

Use step out of solidworks..

Also use the approximation editor to set the apporiate amount of tessalation on the object.

[veiledsongbird]

Some of the materials (Blinn Shader) on my model do have reflections and I'm using Final Gather (500 rays), but it turns out that the problem was with insufficient RAM. I added 2 more GBs of RAM to my computer and I am now able to render a print quality image of my model (TIFF with alpha channel, 8x11 @ 300 dpi). I also found out after it was installed that Windows 32-bit OS can only utilize 3 GBs of RAM.

I have attached a render of the model using Final Gather and Mental Ray.


I wanted to share this reply from someone at Northern Illinois Autodesk Animation User's Group:

"Any time I have gotten a Fatal Error with mr, it was when running on 32 bit machines and was due to memory limitations. Running a 32-bit version on a 64-bit machine with 4 gig memory, or using the 64-bit version, took care of the problem, but I was unable to render on my machines with the 32-bit OS.

The mesh doesn't look so dense that it shouldn't work. Try turning down some of the settings for Final Gather; that is most likely the source of the memory issue."

You can visit their forum here:
http://www.max3ds.com/index.php?name=Forums (http://www.max3ds.com/index.php?name=Forums)

Thank you so much for your help! You rock!!

[veiledsongbird]

Avoid iges like crazy its a totaly crap format...

Use step out of solidworks..

Also use the approximation editor to set the apporiate amount of tessalation on the object.
What makes IGES a bad file format to use? I tried importing several file formats into Maya 8.0 including STEP_DC, but the only one I could get to import was the IGES.

Most of the time I could just drag and drop the IGES file into the viewport. With some of the files I needed to use the Import window to bring it into the scene and some IGES files required "string" information to be able to read the file.

Do you know how I could be able to import other file types, perhaps more efficiently.

Thanks! :)

[Kabab]

Iges is like 15+ years old doesn't understand hierachy in with solids and there are lots of little sub standards...

If you use step you will have less errors..

Your data in Maya will be represented with groups exactly the same as the assembly is represented in SolidWorks (makes texturing easy).

I've found the Maya Step importer flawless..

What exact problem are you having with it?

Maya can read Solidworks files natively to read up on it in the documentation.

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