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Author Topic: trouble with animation  (Read 1972 times)

MQ4267

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trouble with animation
« on: April 24, 2015, 05:11:35 PM »
hello. i'm having some issues:

1. when doing test scene renders, usually multiple in a row 5 or 6, the memory used on mentalray max design 2014 goes up from example 3gb-8gb by the last test and then things like final gather take a very long time to process.  this is for render sizes of 600x400 or 900x600.

2. i tried to render an animation via backburner and the machines locked up and stopped rendering half-way through a frame after about 60-80 frames.   i used pre saved Final Gather solution with mentalray. rendered images size was 1280x720. i was able to re-render the 300 frame sequence by "disabling" the objects within the geometry tab. there were two objects, mrproxy grass clumps.

3. i started to render the same grass as in #2 above, as a separate pass on my main machine only, not using backburner and not using DBR.  i used the mentalray render subset of scene camera lens shader and added only the forest pro object.  it too crashed last night, that is, locked up mid-frame.  i've attached screen shots of memory from task manager and from the render progress window.  note that when i first started rendering, the memory was in the 5-6GB range.  i've rendered in "bunches" starting over after a crash, so i'd get 100 frames done, then start over at frame 101, etc...

my machine has 16GB ram.  i'm not sure how to look up how many objects are in the FP object? i'm a new user. i can upload a file if you'd like but a little later today.

thanks!

iToo

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Re: trouble with animation
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2015, 07:00:56 PM »
Hi, definitively the memory footprint of your screenshot seems too high for a single Forest object, even with tons of items.
Please, send us a simplified scene and we'll check it. If possible, the scene of test #3 because it will be easier to debug.

You can send it to support@itoosoft.com. For large files please use a web sharing service as WeTransfer.
Thanks,
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

MQ4267

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Re: trouble with animation
« Reply #2 on: April 27, 2015, 07:17:41 PM »
hi. i uploaded the file via the webshare program, used the support email address you gave me.

thanks,
steve

EDIT:  for fun, i modified the forestpack.ini file to disableMRTintByElement=1.  i'm re-rendering now to see if that helps but probably won't know until tomorrow.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2015, 08:47:19 PM by MQ4267 »

iToo

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Re: trouble with animation
« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2015, 09:03:30 AM »
Thanks, we have received your scene. Please hold on, we must do several tests with it.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

iToo

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Re: trouble with animation
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2015, 01:43:41 PM »
Hi, i can confirm there is a memory leak with Mental Ray.
We are working to isolate the problem, but it seems to happen on the Mental Ray side, so probably we have to contact with Autodesk (that may take some time).

As far as we can see, the instances created by Forest are not deleted from the Mental Ray scene, even after resetting Max. Problem is worse when using Camera clipping, because Forest need to rebuild all instances at each frame, so the memory leak grows with each rendered frame.

By now, the only workaround would be to not use Camera clipping. In this way, Forest only creates the instances one time by render. It must be disabled in the following way:

1) Uncheck Camera->Auto assign to active view.
2) Uncheck Camera->Limit to visibility.
3) Click Camera->Clear, to remove the link the camera.

While checking this issue, we've found a way to avoid the memory errors that happen randomly with Mental Ray (this is a completely different issue from above). We'll release an update in the next days, but until then we suggest to keep disableMRTintByElement=1 in ForestPack.ini. That fixes this specific problem.

We apologise for any inconvenience.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

MQ4267

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Re: trouble with animation
« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2015, 08:37:01 PM »
thanks for the help!  hopefully we'll see some information from mentalray/autodesk as we go on.  perhaps in 2016 it might be different.  i appreciate the response very much and also the tip on not using camera clipping, this will help me with planning any animations.

also i will keep that ini setting to =1 for now.

UPDATE:  actually i've tried the steps above and still run into the increased memory.  and it hangs for a while at "cleaning up" in the render progress window.  i'll try a whole new scene without the camera visibility later to see if it helps. thanks.

UPDATE2: i've tried a few scenes now where i didn't seem to have any problems manually rendering a few times "test renders".  i also rendered a sequence of 100 frames and no problems.  big difference seems to be the # of objects within the 1 forest object.  i've pulled up another scene i've been having a problem with. i took 1 patch of the grass and copied it 9 times, then combined all those into a single object.  i'm getting a lot fewer forest objects (2.1m before, 879k after) and my memory use isn't that bad even doing several "test" renders in a row. i'll run an animation sometime.  to be clear - i'm _still_ using the camera distance visibility.  maybe a good thing.

in the "problem" scenes from earlier, i've found that when the render progress window gets to "cleaning up" it can take a long time before it completes that process and returns me to the active windows.  oh well.  thanks.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2015, 11:49:36 PM by MQ4267 »

iToo

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Re: trouble with animation
« Reply #6 on: May 15, 2015, 11:10:04 AM »
Hi, i just want to inform you that this problem is solved in FP 4.3.8 beta.

We reported the problem to Autodesk, but to avoid a long wait for a fix, we used a different method in our code. Now it works fine without memory leaks.
Also disableMRTintByElement=1 is not needed anymore for the other bug. That is fixed as well.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2015, 11:11:40 AM by iToo »
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software