Irradiance Indirect Passes crashes SI 2010...

#1

I’ve discovered that setting the Irradiance Particles Indirect Passes Accuracy to anything higher that 1 will crash Softimage 2010 x64 every time, without fail, no matter what other settings I have, no matter how simple and low the settings are or how high, no matter how simple or complex the scene.
Even just a simple sphere in a scene set up with IP will do it.

 It crashes every time, without fail, immediately after setting that value above 1 and trying to render.
 
 I have the SI 2010 64 bit trial running on two computers, both Windows 7, both 64 bit, one an Intel quad core, the other an AMD dual core, and this happens with both of them, in exactly the same way.
 
 The specific error message is an APPCRASH and Event Viewer has this:
 
 [b]Faulting application name: XSI.exe, version: 8.0.2009.811, time stamp: 0x4a8233da
 Faulting module name: XSI.exe, version: 8.0.2009.811, time stamp: 0x4a8233da
 Exception code: 0xc0000005
 Fault offset: 0x00000000004e4545
 Faulting process id: 0x10bc
 Faulting application start time: 0x01ca3b708c618650
 Faulting application path: C:\Softimage\Softimage_2010_x64\Application\bin\XSI.exe
 Faulting module path: C:\Softimage\Softimage_2010_x64\Application\bin\XSI.exe
 Report Id: c67fd480-a764-11de-b845-001d604b498c[/b]

I can’t say it’s a Softimage thing, and it may very well be a Windows 7 thing, but I figured I’d just put it out there in case any Autodesk types want to have a look into it. :slight_smile:

EDIT:
I meant to mention that’s when attempting to render after changing the setting above 1, not just simply moving the slider up. But just a few seconds into rendering with it above 1, SI go bye-bye fast.

#2

Never set it higher than 1.
1 already samples -every pixel- in the image, so the bigger the image the more samples.

You don’t need to go that high most of the times to get a good result.

#3

Thank you for the reply, bravmm. :slight_smile:

I did read it though, and it says:

The number of additional passes of indirect lighting. When this option is greater than 0, a sequence of passes are done to collect the irradiance coming from every particle position, such that irradiance particles will contain both direct illumination and indirect illumination information. When this option is set to 0, then the irradiance particles will contain direct illumination information with one bounce of indirect lighting.

Also:

Set the number of additional Indirect Passes you want to use to collect the indirect lighting. When this option is greater than 0.0, a sequence of passes are done to collect the irradiance coming from every particle position, such that irradiance particles will contain both direct illumination and indirect illumination information. The default of 0.0 means that the irradiance particles will contain direct illumination information and the equivalent of one bounce of indirect lighting.

l guess I read it wrong though?

Going by those paragraphs above I was under the impression that setting the Accuracy higher for Indirect Passes would result in more bounces.

At any rate, if there’s a setting that leads to an instant crash, it should be fixed if for no reason other than to prevent crashes, regardless of whether or not it’s correct to use that setting or not.

I can see if I were trying to perform an illegal operation or something like that, or typing in an unrealistic value manually, but that slider does go up to 5, so I would assume it should work above 1 if the user wants to set it above 1.

Still though, you are right. A setting of 1 seems to be more than enough as it is. :slight_smile:

#4

Ah, sorry…

Was mistakenly thinking you’re talking about the ‘Density’ setting. That one is linked to the render resolution, where a value of 1 equals one sample per rendered pixel. Increasing rendertime when setting this value higher and higher. (Not higher than one though…)

From what I gathered from the manual and training vids from www.i3dtutorials.com there’s no real benefit from cranking the ‘Accuracy’ value any higher than two.
Be aware of the fact that the rays value will increase the samples taken, so very high settings might crash MR.

The default setting in the PPG for IP are way to high for testing anyway. It’s even too high for most final renders as well.

Also, when not using an environment, bu sure to turn that one off, or use separate rays settings for both. Keeping the rays value for the environment to 0 will mean the rays will be equal values. With high settings in the "Accuracy’ box this will give a unnecessary high amount of rays to calculate.

Hope this makes more sense, and sorry for the confusion.

#5

Oh it’s cool, bravmm, and thanks again for the information. :slight_smile:

The i3D stuff looks good, and I’m going to have to get the one on irradiance particles for Softimage.
I have 8 GB of RAM and a 3 ghz quad core, so cranking up the settings for testing isn’t too big of a deal, and I’m getting some pretty nice results so far. Irradiance particles are actually pretty quick to render - faster than Final Gather, at least.
Still, I’d love to be able to see what kind of results I could get with the Accuracy set above 1, but of course it crashes immediately when I try it.
It’s not a RAM thing either, as it’s only using a fraction of my RAM. I’ve been told that it does the same thing in SI 7.5 x64 too.

Hopefully Autodesk can do something about it. I guess I must be the only person to ever try this or something, or else I’d think they’d have fixed it in SI 2010.
If it were only happening with one machine, I would suspect something on my end, but when I can reproduce it on two separate Windoze boxes at home and also have someone else test it out for me and get the same results, something is definitely up.

#6

hi, its just another bug in another beta-unfinished-feature in mr.

and its up to mental images not autodesk to fix this.

or better to write it from scratch. with all those renderers having interactive renderering, irradiance particles process is a joke with all that prepasses, passes, finalizing passes…

#7

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