Rendering stops (Mental ray / Maya 5 / WinXP)

[Morbid Angel]

thats one of the bugs in maya5...it usually happens when you switch to mental ray then add objects to your scene...

[fr3drik]

Hm, I browsed the alias website (http://www.alias.com) but I couldn't find a bugfix... surely there must be some kind of workaround?

[Morbid Angel]

im sure they are aware of it so, they might realease new version like 5.1 or something soon

[Tierackk]

I am having the same problem. I've searched around and this is the only thread with this specific problem. Unfortuanatly there is no anwser:surprised . I tryed uninstalling- reinstalling, upgrading to MR 3.2.6. Same thing!! Crashes usually 50% into the render. Even if there is just one sphere with no shader.

[Shinova]

Does it start rendering and then suddenly go into a white screen? (the render window)

That's actually not a problem, it's normal for it to do that. It looks like Maya's not doing anything so XP stops updating its window until the render's finished. All it means is that you can't watch it actually render and can't cancel it, but it's still actually rendering.


That might be your problem.

[Morbid Angel]

oh come on man give us some credit here, we are talking about maya bug
oh and by the way, if you really want to see how badly mental ray is implemented in maya, drop a 2d texture file into shaders displacment under mental ray, and do a test render...

[Shinova]

Originally posted by Morbid Angel
thats one of the bugs in maya5...it usually happens when you switch to mental ray then add objects to your scene...

I've done this repeatedly. Added, deleted, rendered under software, then MR, back and forth, and no problems.


I think it's all on your side, cause aside from the normal white screening thing, I'veh ad no problems whatsoever with Mental Ray.

[Tierackk]

Anyone had any luck with this problem?

[Dirtystimpy]

I found a solution somewhere in this forum yesterday, I think 5 threads back or so. Anyways, try this.


Start a new scene, import your model, set up your lights, etc, then when everything is in place, switch the render output to MRay in the render globals.


This is what was happening to me: I was doing test renders w/ my model using Final Gather. I turned off final gather, created a few spotlights. I only turned on emit photons on the key light, left the defaults on photons(8000 i think)

and when I would render, Maya would crash about 10 seconds in.

so, I tried the above solution, and it rendered fine!

wierd solution, but it worked for me too.
hope it helps

[satchiel]

There is a Maya 5.0.1 update on the Alias website if you're a registered community user. I had some issues with network rendering crashing on 3.2.6 if invoked from Maya 5.0 and the update fixed it. Maybe it might work in your case too?

Just my 2 cents...

[Eric_Streame]

I've been having the same problem with MR just freezing up at random points.

I've tried with importing the object into a fresh scene, setting lights and then rendering, but it's the same problem.
I also tried rendering my file on two other pc's with no probs, so the settings and opjects should be ok.

I've found this old thread on Highend3D (http://www.highend3d.com/boards/showflat.php?Cat=1,2&Board=MayaMR&Number=105134&page=17&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=) where they suggest deleting .ray3hosts og .ray3rc, but I can't find these files, propably because it's an old thread, and it was ment for maya 4.5 or older. There are a couple of files with similar names in the MR folder, but you cant delete those.

Does this perhaps ring any bells?

I'm getting rather frustrated with this bug! Argh.

[Emmortal1]

There was a bug in the shipping version of Mental Ray version of Maya 5.0 that had the incorrect Physical memory allocation. Under your Render Globals -> Mental ray -> Memory and Performance -> Memory limits. The value set here for the Physical Memory defaults to -1, which is SUPPOSED to use all available memory, but in actuallity does not. Change this value to 800 and try rendering out some scenes. Also if you've upgraded to the 5.0.1 patch for Maya, you'll have to manually go back and set this setting for scenes created in version 5.0. Any new scenes created under the 5.0.1 patch will have the correct Physical Memory value.

Let us know if that fixes your problems.

Emmortal

[Eric_Streame]

Thanks for the answer.

I'm already aware of the 800 limit, and also that MR suggest that you turn the scanline mode off. But I did both, with no result, so thats not the resolution for me.

But as the earlier posts in this thread shows it's a common problem for some. Just wondering if they've found a fix, or just has to accept it (which sucks!).

Thanks though.

[Emmortal1]

I would like to note as well that I previously had a problem similar to those stated above. I used to have an ATI Fire GL X2 256 video card. After intsalling it and updating the drivers, I had serious problems rendering with Mental Ray. Maya's renderer would work fine, hardware rendering would work fine as well, but MR had some serious issues. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it would just stop halfway through the render and I'd have to end task Maya.

I recently upgraded to the Nvidia Quadro FX 3000 and have had zero problems with rendering. My prior problems really didn't make sense to me because rendering with MR really isn't GPU specific since it's handle by the CPU's. I can't really explain why or how changing out my video card was a problem, but it was.

What I'd be curious to know is if there is a common denomenator amongst those having issues with Mental Ray? For those having issues, post your system specs, everything from your motherboard model to video card. Maybe we can hammer out a solution.

Emmortal

[Recursive]

MentalRay can use your gfx card to render some things, for example it can use opengl to render shadowmaps.

[Eric_Streame]

Well that makes sense to me. An empiric approach.

My modest specs:

Dell Dimension 4300

Processor: Intel P4 1.7 ghz
Ram: 1 gb ram
Motherborad: Generic.
Graphics: NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP8X 64 mb

Guess thats it. Doesnt really reveal much. Maybe it should be much more detailed?

[Emmortal1]

When was the last time you updated the chipset drivers for your motherboard?

And do me a favor, go into your computers BIOS, right when it boots hit the Delete key or F1 usually, it should say which key on screen, and check your AGP Aperature Settings. If it's set to a value of 256, try lowering it to 128 or 64.


Emmortal

[Eric_Streame]

Well. apparently my chipset is natively supported in Xp Pro. Also, the AGP setting was 128. Lovered it to 64, but it still hangs about 50 % into FG.

Thanks for your suggestions.

[Emmortal1]

Do you have the option to set it to 256? If you do, try that, just a stab in the dark.

Emmortal

[Eric_Streame]

Stabbed around with every possible setting, but no change whatsoever. This sucks.

I've been thinking about may reinstalling my XP Pro, but I'm not really convinced it'll make anything different. It's not that long since i did a reinstall.

Thanks, though.

Eric

[Eric_Streame]

I wrote a reply this morning, but I'm not sure if its's gotten lost in approval, since it's not up yet.

Anyway, I've tried all possible settings, with no effect. Considering a reinstall of XP, but not really convinced if that'll make any difference.

Thanks for your efforts, Emmortal.

Eric.

[Tierackk]

Well believe it or not this problem has been resolved for me and MR now works fine. How did I do it. Well I dont know!?:eek:
But what I do know is that I hadent tried to render with MR in a while and now that I have, it works fine. What I did in the meantime is the key to what fixed my problem. I was just doing some routine clean up on my computer. Uninstalling quite a few programs (some 3D related, some not) which I knew I wouldn't really use anymore. I honestly believe that this lead to MR working properly. I remember reading a while back, when this problem 1st came up, someone saying that it sounds like a conflict between MR and antoher app. I guess in my case that person was right. I dont know if this will work for anyone else or that this is 100% the reason why it works now, but if your computer has some apps that you rarely use, maybe a clean up would help.

[Eric_Streame]

Well, that makes sense. Maybe I'll do a reinstall of xp this weekend. If the problem is caused of a conflict, then it should go away.

Argh, hate reinstalling, but hey, hating problems i MR even more.

[RickStefani]

I have the same problem. I have uninstalled Maya and XP about three times. It will render a simple scene but when the virtual gets to arounf 1.6 gigs it fails. I have tried all the fixxes you have brought up but none helped. I think you might be on to something with the graphics card. I will try to get the newest drivers but I might also pull it and run off the onboard card and see what happens.

The error I get is "not enough storage available to proccess this operation" and the "Tread blah-blah failed"

I am running a AMD XP 2500 Barton, 1 gig DDR400 and a Gforce 4800 card. I have the virtuall set at 3 gig. I would like to use the great tools to render my jeep but I am not having much luck.

edit. I am running windows XP.

[lauren]

It sounds like this might actually be the link I'm looking for...

My problems are that:
1. Sometimes when I open maya there's an error message that says No valid licenses for mayatomr.lib. Then I have to go into the System Preferences>Plug-in Manager and re-click the Mayatomr to load and autoload it, and then restart maya. (But sometimes it won't let me click load, but it will let me click Autoload, which doesn't make any difference even after restarting maya...)

2. When it DOES load, and I get the scene ready to render, I go into Render Globals and try to select mental ray from the list, but it isn't there to select.

3. When it does load, and mr is there in the Render Globals, most times (and this is where I usually have the problem), I go and click Render>Batch Render and then open up the Script Editor to watch the progress. The Script Editor says:
Result: Rendering with mental ray...//
Then it sits there for a minute or two or three, then it says:
Result: Rendering Completed. See mayaRenderLog.txt for information.//

Sometimes the batch rendering icon disappears from the dock and nothing happens, it will just sit there forever, unless you cancel it.

But sometimes, if the rendering icon settles in the dock after bouncing around, then that means it should eventually render, even up to an hour or more later... (On the other hand, I have left files sitting at that screen overnight and they never started...)

However, if it brings up TWO lines of:
Result: Rendering Completed. See mayaRenderLog.txt for information. //
Result: Rendering Completed. See mayaRenderLog.txt for information. //
then it definitely will never render.

???????????
Can anyone help??? :) Thanks!

[RickStefani]

Lauren, have you opened the render log to see what caused the stop? If so, what does it say? Same error as I was getting?

This may be a rude question but do you have any tif files in the scene? Mental ray will not render if there are even tif files on layers that are turned invisible. Use a TGA. It is almost the same but mental ray does not mind them.

[lauren]

Rick,

Yes, I've opened the renderLog. No, it's not the same error message you were getting. I get lots of different messages. i.e.:

-Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node
'LightMain_mrLoc'; preserving node information during this session.
-Error: (Mayatomr) : could not get a license. (which is a server problem)
-No object matches name: mentalray Globals.output Path //

Yes, I have a bunch of tifs (and jpg's and tga's). Sometimes the scenes do actually decide to render. That's the problem. And it doesn't seem scientific when they will or won't. Yet.

[RickStefani]

DId you set your project folder after you had MR loaded? It does add deferent folders. My problem has been steady with the same errors. I had problems with tiff files so to make life easier, I do not use them. Mental ray has caused a lot of :cry: for me.

My problem started the more complex the scene got. The larger the texture maps are also.

[lauren]

I don't know if the project was set before or after mr was loaded, but the extra folders are there, i.e. finalgMap, lightMap, photonMap, shadowMap. Are those the ones you're talking about?

And yes, the scene is very complex, very poly-intensive. That, I'm sure, does have something to do with it, and could that also be the reason mr won't render at all???

Another question. About baking. And this could maybe also be part of the problem??? Here's how I bake FG, is it correct? I go into Render Globals, checkmark FG, checkmark Final Gather Rebuild, and type in a filename in the Final Gather File line, i.e. finalLite. Then I IPR render one frame of the scene (which I think is what bakes the FG file ???). Then I go back into the Render Globals, un-checkmark Final Gather Rebuild, and set the scene to render all the frames. This should, theoretically, speed up the render time, (right?), by making the scene not have to compute the FG rays for every frame. Or am I doing it wrong, and is my scene actually trying to compute FG on every frame? And maybe that's why when it does render it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to render a frame?

[Tierackk]

Im not sure about the IPR for FG rebuild. I guess that would work since its calculating the FG during that render and then saving the points. I usually render 1 frame with the FG rebuild checked and named. After that I would render frame 2-??? unchecked, with the name in the fg rebuild space. Im not sure what version of maya and MR your running. If its in 4.5 you get a detailed message of whats going on (eg computing final gather points 10%..etc) and when you are rendering with the rebuild file the computing FG points flys by and it goes straight to the rendering. You could try to test render 2 frames with FG rebuild checked and then 2 frames without. This way you can see if rebuild is working for you. Its possile that your renders are actually taking that long to render. Are you using HDRI or a colored dome, or is you camera enviornment your FG source? How large is your scene(scale). You mentioned your scene poly intensive so that yould definitly be a contributing factor. If you have alot of reflections going on the render itself will take forever. You should take a look at this link, its for XSI but the same rules aply.



Optimizing Mental Ray (http://www.softimage.com/Education/3D/tutorials/mentalray/OptimizingMR/mroprender.htm)

One last thing, if you find that your animaiton begins to flicker, this could be because the FG needs to rebuild, which could really slow things down!!

I hope this made sense, im not an expert but there are alot on here. I'm just mentioning points from my experince with rendering animations with MR using FG.


On a side note, anyone know how to view the detailed messages while rendering. I've gone into the translation tab in the MR render globals and turned on detailed messages, but it doesnt show the FG/GI process.(maya 5)

[Eric_Streame]

Click the "Progress Messages" on under Translation. Then MR will keep you updated on GI and MR progress.

Eric

[lauren]

Guess what. By accident I discovered something. One frame was missing from a series that had already been rendered, so I thought I'd set that one frame to render overnight, hoping it would actually do it. When I came back 5 minutes later to check before going home, it was 50%!!! of the way through rendering. So I thought, great! It's working again! But when I tried to render a BATCH in mr, and it did exactly the same thing, quitting and going nowhere.

So. I thought, well, I'll just try and render one frame again and see if it works. And it did!!!

So now I'm rendering per frame on a couple of computers, which is really impractical in the long-run, but will work for today.

Any ideas why it would do that? It must be something in the actual batch renderer, then?

Btw. I'm on maya 5.0 and mr 3.2.2.1. I don't think there are any HDRI's in the scene, where would I find that, in the Hypershade? I think the FG source is a combination of lights and textures.

And on your side note of detailed messages, can I add a question. Where is the Output Window on a mac?

Thanks!

[lauren]

Oh. And Progress Messages is turned on.

[Tierackk]

Strange problem. I guess all signs point to the batch render. Only thing I can think of is to try it with a render queue like smedge 2

free to download (http://www.uberware.net/smedge1/old_index.shtml)

There are quite a few different programs like this out there and sometimes these solve alot of problems.

HDRI are high dynamic range images. You would definitly know if you are using one. They are not built into maya. You can search this forum to find out more about them( they are images that you map to a sphere surrounding your scene containing up to 12 exposure ranges). Extremely powerful for photorealistic rendering. We shouldn't get into this because this thread will take a completely different turn.

FG is sourced from by colours in your scene, you would generally use a dome, or half dome or your camera enviornment to use FG. It cannot be sourced from lights. It wont come from your textures either unless you map you texture to your ambient or incandesence(sp?). You control the brightness by the colour gain. Again there is alot of info in this forum and quite a few tutorials on FG. Although if it is improving your renders then go for it. But by understanding FG fully, you will be able to use it to its full extent.

The progression of your renders should be show in the script editor.

Thanks Eric_Streame, been while since ive seen the progression. BTW have you fixed your MR render problem?

[Eric_Streame]

No, I'm sorry to say, that I haven't. Everything seems to run fine until it just stops. No error message or anything. Just freezes up, and nothing is going on (processor 0 %). It's usually around 50 % into the rendering, but it varies. And this is in both simple and complex scenes with or without GI.

Maybe it's a hardware failure or something, but i've tested the processor and motherboard thoroughly, and they look fine. Also, everything else is running fine, and modelling in Maya is as sweet as ever.

So, my best guess is, as suggested in an earlier thread, that it is some sort of conflict between some other software. Maybe, I should try uninstalling everything else...

Glad I could help with the "progress" setting.

Cheers!

Eric.

[Eric_Streame]

Well, it seems that the good old "forget reasoning, reinstall!" approach did it again! MR is up and running smoothly again after af complete XP and Maya reinstall.

Got no idea why I had that prob, but this time I'll be careful to note what I'm installing, to maybe rule out a conflict between MR and other software.

"Phew", nice to be back! :D

Eric.

[RickStefani]

Did you install all the newest drivers for the video yet? I heard some of the newer drivers can cause problems. I am just curious.

[Jackdeth]

Another reason why XP sucks for production.

Linux is tight.

[Eric_Streame]

Sorry for the late reply, Rick. Been away for a while.

Yes, installed the latest nvidia driver. Seems to be ok. Have had no problems with it yet.

Eric.

[fr3drik]

Long time ago I started this thread and I still havn't gotten MR to work on my home computer. At school it works fine though! Weird!! At school I've got a Quadro FX 500 and at home I've got a Geforce256 DDR ... (yeah I know it's soon time for an upgrade). Other than that, I've got pretty much the same specs in terms of hardware.

Today I started a render from the command line (home computer) and I got the following error:



F:\Projects\26_hdri\scenes>render scene01_test.mb
Maya (R), Version 5.0, 200304010010
Copyright 1997-2003 Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited.
All rights reserved.
***** Error: file: D:/Program Files/AliasWavefront/Maya5.0/scripts/startup/autoL
oadPlugin.mel line 37: initializePlugin function failed (Mayatomr)
Error: line 1: initializePlugin function failed (Mayatomr)
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'mentalrayItemsList'; preservin
g node information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'mentalrayGlobals'; preserving
node information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'miDefaultOptions'; preserving
node information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'miDefaultFramebuffer'; preserv
ing node information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'Draft'; preserving node inform
ation during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'DraftMotionBlur'; preserving n
ode information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'Preview'; preserving node info
rmation during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'PreviewMotionblur'; preserving
node information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'PreviewCaustics'; preserving n
ode information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'PreviewGlobalIllum'; preservin
g node information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'PreviewFinalGather'; preservin
g node information during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'Production'; preserving node i
nformation during this session.
Warning: line 1: Unrecognized node type for node 'ProductionMotionblur'; preserv
ing node information during this session.
File read in 0 seconds.
Result: F:/Projects/26_hdri/scenes/scene01_test.mb
Total Elapsed Time Since Start Of Maya (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:02
====================================
Resource Usage At Start Of Rendering
====================================
19317 Page faults
69.621 Mb Max resident size
43.043 Mb Peak total size(Estimated)
2.937 Mb Peak arena size
====================================
66.234 Mb Current
0.313 Mb Data Blocks
0.125 Mb Transforms
2.500 Mb MEL
====================================
Automatic near/far clipping values: 17.7737, 24.5049.
Result: F:/Projects/26_hdri/images/scene01_test.iff
Constructing shading groups.

Rendering current frame.
Frame triangle count: 12

====================================
Resource Usage At End Of Frame
====================================
617 Page faults
67.027 Mb Peak total size(Estimated)
6.270 Mb Peak arena size
====================================
68.582 Mb Current
0.007 Mb Render Geometry Arena
0.313 Mb Data Blocks
2.500 Mb MEL
3.333 Mb Render Cache
0.125 Mb Transforms
====================================
Postprocessing rendering result.
Time For Tessellation (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:00
Time For Shadow Map (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:00
Time For Post Process (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:00
Time For Frame Render (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:00
Finished Rendering F:/Projects/26_hdri/images/scene01_test.iff
------------------------------------------------------------


====================================
Resource Usage At End Of Rendering
====================================
124 Page faults
67.027 Mb Peak total size(Estimated)
6.270 Mb Peak arena size
====================================
68.836 Mb Current
0.313 Mb Data Blocks
2.500 Mb MEL
3.333 Mb Render Cache
0.125 Mb Transforms
====================================
Total Time For Render (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:00
Total Elapsed Time For Maya (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:03

F:\Projects\26_hdri\scenes>



I wonder what's up with that.

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