camera memory issue?

[Tango]

I am working on a medical documentary, lots of bacteria animations to do. I have my look set-up and tested.The base shading uses "A-fractal" and "A-rim" great products no longer supported. I did render tests with 3 objects using the same material and everything went well. Now that I am in production and have to populate the scenes with around 20 to 30 bacterias (simple models, same material), I can get only one frame rendered before camera crashes.

It looks like a memory allocation issue since lowering the number of objects allows me to render up to 5 frames before crash. I increased the camera memory allocation, tried on EI7, same results... I tried to replicate the same look with other shaders but it is hard. I have over 2 minutes to animate and I can't afford to deal with such a technical problem.

Has anyone run into a similar problem? Any idea what I should try?

Thanks,

Christian

[S. Houtzager]

I use those 2 shaders and they haven't crashed camera on me yet. Maybe using the proxy pluggin (which EI sells on the Pluggins page) will help here. I can take a look at the file if you send it to me to see if it crashes for me after 5 frames.

Steven Houtzager

[Tango]

I use those 2 shaders and they haven't crashed camera on me yet. Maybe using the proxy pluggin (which EI sells on the Pluggins page) will help here. I can take a look at the file if you send it to me to see if it crashes for me after 5 frames.

Steven Houtzager

Hi Steven,

Proxies won't help, I can have as many objects as I want and render them, it's when I start rendering an animation that the problem occurs. I am considering buying "placer deposit" and "Flock this" from Northern Lights. They are instancing plug-ins, and should help. I bought from them before but am not sure if they are all up to date. Not a very active site...

Either that or I keep creating the same look with other shaders.

Thanks,

Christian

[bwcc]

It doesn't sound like Placer Deposit would help. It doesn't really "instance" like other apps do. It duplicates. I think as far as memory goes it's no different than duplicating the model. I use PD all the time and run out of memory consistently with too many models or dealing with high res models.

If you can render a full resolution, full quality frame in Animator it should work.

When you render the animation are you using renderama? any other plug-ins or shaders? If using renderama how many slaves? Are your rendering single frames in strips? How much memory do you have allocated to Camera? Did you try to render the animation with the shaders turned off?

bw

[Tango]

It doesn't sound like Placer Deposit would help. It doesn't really "instance" like other apps do. It duplicates. I think as far as memory goes it's no different than duplicating the model. I use PD all the time and run out of memory consistently with too many models or dealing with high res models.

If you can render a full resolution, full quality frame in Animator it should work.

When you render the animation are you using renderama? any other plug-ins or shaders? If using renderama how many slaves? Are your rendering single frames in strips? How much memory do you have allocated to Camera? Did you try to render the animation with the shaders turned off?

bw

That's too bad, I was just about to give "flock this" a go. It takes a while to set-up and may not be the answer. I am rendering animations in HD resolution. A single frame is O.K., but as soon as I fire it on Renderama I get trouble. Yes, turning off the "A-fraktal" and "A-rim" allows the renders to complete. I can render the 10 sec. seq. with three objects, if do 6 objects it crashes at frame 5, if I have all 24 objects, it does only one frame.

Camera memory allocation is 1024, I doubled it with the same results. It really feels like there is data piling-up somewhere. Although, the MCIO is a Mackintosh File I/O error (I am working on Macs).

I get the same problem wether I render on a single machine or an 8 core mac with 8 render engines. I have yet to try rendering without Renderama. That would be a pain but might get me out of this jam.

Christian

[bwcc]

unfortunately I don't have A-Fractal and A-Rim and it's obvious an issue with those shaders and renderama. I wish I did have them. Maybe they will be included in version 9...

I have gotten I/O errors while rendering in renderama before. This is a simplistic explanation, and I don't really know if this is what happens but it seems like when Camera renders a certain frame it will render temp files and store them on disk (like for glow). If one Camera renders a frame and writes the temp file then another Camera writes a different temp over the first. The first Camera attempts to read the temp file while it's in the process of being written and gets an I/O error.

Do those shaders use temp files?

bw

[Tango]

unfortunately I don't have A-Fractal and A-Rim and it's obvious an issue with those shaders and renderama. I wish I did have them. Maybe they will be included in version 9...

I have gotten I/O errors while rendering in renderama before. This is a simplistic explanation, and I don't really know if this is what happens but it seems like when Camera renders a certain frame it will render temp files and store them on disk (like for glow). If one Camera renders a frame and writes the temp file then another Camera writes a different temp over the first. The first Camera attempts to read the temp file while it's in the process of being written and gets an I/O error.

Do those shaders use temp files?

bw

Hi,

I don't know if the shaders use temp files, it's a potential answer. The production deadline forced me to move to plan B ( or was it C or D?). I converted the geometry we originally built in Maya and re-imported the models as 3ds, straight into EI. It had an impact on the topology and how various shaders react. I was able to use the basic fractal shader to mimic the look I was getting from "aFraktal", and changed my lighting to approximate a rim light. I know I can do a pass with a ramp shader if needed.

Worked all night and got the scenes I was working on to render (and quickly on my MacBook Pro at home). I will dig deeper into this problem once I have finished this project. Thanks for your help.

Christian.