cpu memory usage different at different parts of render.

[Thejazzshadow]

thank you to both of you for your help and advice.

[ryzst]

I hope this thread isn't closed, because I have a similar setup to Thejazzshadow and also have/had problems. I have an i7 chipped 27" iMac that I specifically bought to do renders. With the new TG2 upgrade, everything appeared to be working perfectly - until it comes time to finish the picture & save. No can do. Right now I have a beautiful, highly detailed, almost finished render at 2560 x 1440 that I can't save. The render is done & the clock stopped, but the program isn't responding in the activity monitor and yet still has a nearly 3 GB footprint in real memory. Would that be the uncompressed picture file I want to save? Kudos for all the improvements so far, but the program is useless if it won't save in a usable format.

[Oshyan]

We weren't able to reproduce the original issue mentioned in this thread, but it seemed to come down to possible memory issues. Your issue sounds different, although it may also be memory related. How much system memory do you have and how much is indicated as free/available?

The best way for us to diagnose further is to get a copy of the TGD file (and, ideally, any necessary resource files such as textures and objects).

- Oshyan

[jo]

Hi ryst,

How long are you waiting for the render to finish? TG2 can take quite some time between when the rendering on the screen finishes and when TG2 is actually finished. Because TG2 is doing something computationally intensive during this time the rendering clock stops and TG2 will be described as not responding in Activity Monitor. It should still be working though, that just means it isn't responding to user events because it's busy.

How long is the render taking and how long are waiting for it to finish? Can you send me a project file for a scene you're having problems with? My email address is:

jomeder@planetside.co.uk

Regards,

Jo

[jo]

Hi,

Further to my last message, look in the System Memory tab in Activity Viewer. How much Free RAM is showing at the end of the render while you're waiting?

Regards,

Jo

[ryzst]

Thanks for the responses.

The render in question had about 8 hours time from the clock stopping to when I got fed up & force quit. Got a screen shot first, but that's not a solution.

I'll send you the file, it's a very simple scene.

[Dune]

Note however that in order to properly use multiple crop cache files you would need to use "equal blend within range" and set the number of blended files to the number of crops/cache solutions *and* you would need to name each gi cache file sequentially, e.g. "gicache-crop1.gic", "gicache-crop2.gic", etc. With the settings in the file you sent me, it's just using a single GI cache file, which corresponds only to one crop area.

Isn't it easier/better to run a GI cache prerun on the whole uncropped scene, even at lower detail and/or size, save that and then run the crops using that one GI cache file?

[Oshyan]

Dune, yes that's correct. I was just explaining how you *would* use crop cache files if you wanted or needed to for some reason.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

Right, thanks.

[dandelO]

This 'unable to save a render' thing happens quite often to me since 2.4, usually if I have a small crop area enabled, for some reason.
If I raise the crop size and re-render, it usually finishes and saves fine(It has also happened when the full screen was rendered too so I couldn't say that it has anything to do with the cropping, since I always have crop area enabled so I can easily drag the crop handles around without editing render settings), I can only say that this hanging post-render issue mostly happens when I have a very small crop enabled, raising/changing the crop size usually stops it and it almost never happens when the full screen is rendering.
I've tested with some small crops that failed to complete and it repeatedly didn't finalize/save the render when it's done. Moving the crop handles has fixed it every time it has happened to me with a crop region.

[Matt]

This 'unable to save a render' thing happens quite often to me since 2.4, usually if I have a small crop area enabled, for some reason.
If I raise the crop size and re-render, it usually finishes and saves fine(It has also happened when the full screen was rendered too so I couldn't say that it has anything to do with the cropping, since I always have crop area enabled so I can easily drag the crop handles around without editing render settings), I can only say that this hanging post-render issue mostly happens when I have a very small crop enabled, raising/changing the crop size usually stops it and it almost never happens when the full screen is rendering.
I've tested with some small crops that failed to complete and it repeatedly didn't finalize/save the render when it's done. Moving the crop handles has fixed it every time it has happened to me with a crop region.

If you have something that's reproducible like that, it makes it much easier for us to fix the bug. Please send us one of these file

Matt

[jo]

Hi,

Just thought I would mention that ryzst's problem seemed to primarily be related to running out of RAM. The render still continues but using virtual memory and it gets very very slow.

Regards,

Jo

[Thejazzshadow]

I just wanted to mention in this discussion that I started that I upgraded my Macbook Pro to 16gigs of ram and that it fixed a lot of these issues. Although I notice that cpu usage drops during certain parts of the renders (for my pictures, it is correlated with water) at least the pictures are making progress now during these parts and not appearing to come to a halt.