Mental Ray - Fatal Error 031005 ??

#21

Thanks for all the replies.

tyyp: Tried all those already with no change for myself.

zalooa: If you find anything let us know.

digtlpete: I’ll give that a try, it sounds plausible. What Graphics card are you using ?

Just before my crash I can see the little box squares appear - then it seems to stumble. It can’t possibly be system memory (2 Gigs + Max XP swap file on 2x Xeon machine) because it renders fine, although slowly on my laptop (700kb ram).

I’ll post my results from clearing the Material Editor.

D.

#22

I am using a quadro fx 1000.

#23

One more thing I have heard of is that there is a way to modify one of windows system files to allow windows to allocate up to 3gb of memory to applications. Standard windows will only allocate up to 2gb to applications. 1gb to windows and 2gb to applications. By modifying this file windows will grab more memory from your hard drive (virtual memory). I may have this info wrong but it is definetely something to look into. I know we have machines here that are set up in this manner but I am unsure what needs to be done.

#24

The /3GB Switch can be found on discreet’s forum. Post your Tips and Tricks / Improve Memory Handling. Don’t get your hopes up, thinking it’s the fix. I just wanted to include the trick here to close a trail.

#25

Nearly two years ago I had a similar problem with MR, on one computer it’d work fine, on another not. I traced it to my swap file being on a striped RAID setup and figured that the swap file was corrupting or otherwise stuffing up during the render. Swap files are inherently messy little things. Try moving the swap file to another hard drive in your system, and forcing it to a size by setting min and max size to exactly the same. There is a way to completely disable the swap file that involves setting it to min and max of 0 plus then changing something in the registry, but I can’t remember what it was and I’ve only got 2 gig in my machines so I’ve never bothered chasing it. Windoze always uses swap files if they’re available, even if it doesn’t need to.

#26

Guys I have some VERY GOOD NEWS
While fiddling with the mental ray settings as i was doing for a long time. The answer to our problems…well mine at least was right in fron of me. WHen You hit F10 and the rendering dialog comes up, THere are tabs at the top. I clicked Processing and saw the CONSERVE MEMORY BUTTON…this did not help but right above it and to the righ is the MEMORY LIMIT. IT WAS set to 1500 MB my scene needed more than that so i made it 3000 MB and it RENDERED. THE SAME SCENE that would not render FINALLY renderred. I think this is the problem because I am happy with the results. It would explain why the memory runs out if you tell the program to use only a fraction of it. Let me know if this helps guys
PEACE

#27

This is still haunting me !

I have tried EVERY trick mentioned but I don’t feel it is actually a lack of memory on my 2Gig RAm 2x2GHZ Xeon Workstation (The EXACT same scenes renders, albeit slowly, on my low spec laptop).

I upgraded to the newest MAx 7.5 - after installing SP1.

I tried to push my image resolution up to 3000x2500 and all it did was draw small white boxes !?

So, I tried again at 800x600 and CRASH. AGAIN. I still get this message :

mem 0.x1 fatal 031008 : cannot allocate x2 bytes

With x1 being either a 0, 4 or 6 and
x2 being anything from 16 to 50 Mbs.

I was watching the memory use as it was rendering right up to the point it crashed and there was over 700 Mbs physical RAM available ! And NO use of any swap file. EXACTLY what 20mbs can MR not allocate ??

I’ll try stripping out memory modules now …

It SHOULD be possible to render a scene at 4000x3000. How the HELL do ILM render out their MR scenes ??

Dave

#28

How the HELL do ILM render out their MR scenes ??

they don’t use max’s mr :smiley:

#29

I can see clearly why they wouldn’t want to use Max’s MR !

Just start to render Yoda - CRASH.

We would have to wait a lot longer than May 9th for a movie !
Dave

#30

well, at this point, max’s mr isn’t very well implemented, it doesn’t support many features of mray and thus is slower than the standalone version.

.those at ilm use mray standalone for the final render.

#31

I have a dell precision 650 dual 3.06 with 2 GB and i had a big problem with memory in after effect to render 2K pictures ( “not enough memory to create…”.) After many many research in forum i found a solution with the /3GB switch ini ( the crew’s post).Perhaps you have already installed it , if not try it because i think it could be the solution for the 2Gb system (i’m almost thinking that you should not had any problem with only 1 GB on your dual xeon).
This is the link of the adobe forum: http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@235.H0SCeVSehwn.0@.3bb50d64

And a link for the 3GB : http://www.eyeonline.com/Web/EyeonWeb/Support/TechFAQ.aspx#15

I hope it could help you

#32

Hey Dave_3d,

I have recently come up with this problem also and am wondering if you have fixed this problem on your machine? I am running a Amd 3300 with dual 512mb Corsairx Ram.

#33

Meinda : Thanks for those links. I have tried that on a borrowed laptop and I can create 4000x3000 images at high-res.

But in my DELL when I enable the /GB switch it crashes or locks-up ???!

So, no Jasont028, I have not yet found out what is the problem. I still get error messages on my DELL and MR crashes and I have to restart.

I think it is something to do with the memory handling by the DELL.

Either way it is F$*&ing annoying. I can use my Dual processor Workstation for testing and have to take it to my small laptop to make a final render.

Dave

#34

hello Dave_3d,
it is strange because on my dell 650 i have no problem with /3GB switch.
Have you try the Diagnostic Dell’s CD then you could test your ram ?
Perhaps try with only 1 GB.
Is your system ok( no conflicts, no other applications bugs…?)? if you have windows service pack 1 the /3gb switch needs a patch to work ( see the microsoft site ) but if you are on SP2 there is no problem.

i hope it could help you.

#35

I’ve got a similar problem with max 7 and mental ray, so I’m just throwing this out to see if there’s a common thread.

I’ve got a new system, asus m-board, dual 3.2 ghz xeons with 2 GB ram (matched), nvidea fx500. I have a striped RAID, but it’s not selected for my pagefile.

The offending geometry seems to be a large-ish scatter object. When I reduce the number of objects being scattered I can get it to render. However, as I edge up the number, it crashes before rendering. Thing is, the scene is only using just over half of my RAM at render time - I’ve done much larger scatters in the past with smaller systems and the scanline renderer (indeed, max’s scanline has no problem rendering this same scene).

I’m only trying to render at 1280x1024 and I don’t have any large maps in the scene. The scene is under 5 million polygons at render time (I say “at render time” because I know that scatter objects are created at render time and can therefore “balloon” dramatically. I’m referring to RAM usage as given by the renderer while it’s rendering, not in . I’m not using any caustics, indirect lighting, raytracing, or sss materials (ie. it’s a “straight” old max scene). In My “memory limit” is set to 2000 MB.

#36

Mienda!

Thanks so much for finding that alteration to the boot.ini file (adding the /3GB switch) in XP. It seems to have fixed my memory problems while rendering with mental ray on a dual xeon with 2GB of ram.

If anybody else is having this specific problem, here is the link again, as posted by mienda:

http://www.eyeonline.com/Web/EyeonW…TechFAQ.aspx#15

Lars

#37

I`ve got "mental ray has encountered a fatal error and the application will now shutdown. The error is:

MEM 0.2 fatal 031008: can`t allocate 300161424 bytes. "

I try with “/3GB” and other… but always with no efect :confused:

Can anyone help?

#38

Same problem here on a brand new DELL Precison 670 Workstation with 2 x Xeon 3 GHZ and 2 Gb ram, trying to render on Mental Ray under Max7 and Windows XP.

In the same way, the scene is rendered on old notebook single old P4 1Gb RAM, same softwares and Win XP, taking days; so I guess it’s not a software or file problem. I push down the resolution, until 600x480 and the Dell still not able to render it!!

I have already tried all tips on this topic, but nothing works here. I apreciate any sugestion.

“The error is: MEM 0.2 fatal 031005: cannot free memory”

#39

Same problem here on a brand new DELL Precison 670 Workstation with 2 x Xeon 3 GHZ and 2 Gb ram, trying to render on Mental Ray under Max7 and Windows XP.

In the same way, the scene is rendered on old notebook single old P4 1Gb RAM, same softwares and Win XP, taking days; so I guess it’s not a software or file problem. I push down the resolution, until 600x480 and the Dell still not able to render it!!

I have already tried all tips on this topic, but nothing works here. I apreciate any sugestion.

“The error is: MEM 0.2 fatal 031005: cannot free memory”

i guess it’s max 7.0’s fault then, not mray’s. Try updating to a newer/better mentalray implementation

#40

Nope - I have the latest version of 3D max and MR and it still does it.

Interestingly, when I push my Dell with a large Stitcher scene it again falls over complaining of a memory problem - and again the scene works well on my laptop.

It must be something to do with the DELL.

Dave