Crashes: The Sequal

[masonspappy]

Here I go again...
I reported TG3 crashing before and while I've been able to ameliorate the problem to some extent by literally clicking 'save' each time I make a change to my project, the problem has never totally gone away.  Crash symptoms are about what I've seen before - almost always crashes when populater runs.  PC is new, Windows 8.1, I7-5820K CPU w/ 32GB RAM and GeForce GTX 960 (loaded 11/7 version drivers but doesn't help crashes), also uninstall/reinstall TG3 several time.
I finally pulled out the Windows Crash data (below). Been a long time since I had to dig this deep into PC innards but wondering about that faulting module path pointing to tglib.dll .
Does this information mean anything to anyone?
--------------------

Faulting application name: tgd.exe, version: 3.3.4.0, time stamp: 0x55f3df96
Faulting module name: tglib.dll, version: 3.3.4.0, time stamp: 0x55f3df55
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000476b07
Faulting process id: 0x1608
Faulting application start time: 0x01d1196ca0d68817
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Planetside Software\Terragen 3\tgd.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Planetside Software\Terragen 3\tglib.dll
Report Id: 3d706234-8560-11e5-828a-e4f89c8e77c6
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
<Provider Name="Application Error" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>100</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-07T15:00:10.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>8488</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>renderbox</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data>tgd.exe</Data>
<Data>3.3.4.0</Data>
<Data>55f3df96</Data>
<Data>tglib.dll</Data>
<Data>3.3.4.0</Data>
<Data>55f3df55</Data>
<Data>c0000005</Data>
<Data>0000000000476b07</Data>
<Data>1608</Data>
<Data>01d1196ca0d68817</Data>
<Data>C:\Program Files\Planetside Software\Terragen 3\tgd.exe</Data>
<Data>C:\Program Files\Planetside Software\Terragen 3\tglib.dll</Data>
<Data>3d706234-8560-11e5-828a-e4f89c8e77c6</Data>
<Data />
<Data />
</EventData>
</Event>

[Oshyan]

When you say it "almost always crashes when the populator runs", do you mean it crashes every time you populate, or *when a crash happens*, it usually happens with the population phase? Can you try closing the 3D preview and then populating?

- Oshyan

[masonspappy]

When a crash happens it usually happens during the populater phase of image rendering.  Current image uses 15 populations, and earlier today I tried clicking "populate now" button for each population (as opposed to clicking the "populate all" button.  It would repeatedly crash on the 6th population. But tried to make it crash on Population #6 a few minutes ago and it ran fine. BTW, I've tried closing the 3D preview several times but no success. Also tried swapping memory modules around but no joy their either.

[zaxxon]

TG's population tools are some of my favorite parts of the program, but like you most of my crashes occur during the use of the 'Populate' button. I guess I never considered it a 'bug', having used Vue for many years with limited success in placing large numbers of instances: crash city!. TG, from my experience, does a pretty good job of handling massive amounts of instances; but still, that's a lot of data to manage if you are stacking up the populations. Even smaller pops if there are a number of them can cause the system to fail once in a while, but I see much less of that now.  I've cobbled together a sort of 'work-a-round' that seems to minimize the crashes. These are not 100% effective, but at least they help a bit. First: try to keep your populations to a manageable size, my rule of thumb is to limit the defined area so that the 'fill' rate of the populator is about one percent for one second or less. The slower the populator progress rate the greater chance of a crash has been my experience. Better to have multiple populations rather than one large one, besides it gives you more placement variety. I track the RAM usage as the scene loads, as well as when the populator is operating. Several times the RAM use during population has reached 30 gigs in heavy scenes - without crashing! I always save before any population activity (but sometimes, well... as Mr. Spock once said, "too much LDS in the sixties" ).   Keeping the viewport displays to a minimum is a help, the perspective viewport does use RAM. When I have to fresh load a scene, especially a heavy one, I reboot and re-launch TG. Then I manually launch each population. These are only my thoughts about mitigating crashes during 'population', and honestly I haven't charted out the crashes to determine the specifics. One of my IT friends has shared his ultimate constant crash fix: behead a chicken during a full Moon, walk three times widddershins (counter-clockwise) around the 'haunted' computer, sprinkling the blood on the floor from the chicken neck as you walk, then reboot and press the "three fingered salute"(ctrl-alt-del) repeatedly to a sound clip of "Lady Madonna" by the Beatles. He claims it works every time...

[Dune]

 

[Hannes]

 

[Kadri]

[Hannes]

Kadri, there should be three smileys!

[Kadri]

That looked too obvious and i am a little smiley shy lately   

[masonspappy]

... One of my IT friends has shared his ultimate constant crash fix: behead a chicken during a full Moon, walk three times widddershins (counter-clockwise) around the 'haunted' computer, sprinkling the blood on the floor from the chicken neck as you walk, then reboot and press the "three fingered salute"(ctrl-alt-del) repeatedly to a sound clip of "Lady Madonna" by the Beatles. He claims it works every time...

You can laugh but I have  occasionally mentioned to coworkers that I would fling the blood of a dead chicken on my monitor if I thought it would help. Your IT friend sounds very wise  .  AS far as the exploding populations I have narrowed it down to a single population in my current image that TG is most prone to blow up in.  If I get time I might delete and recreate that population just to see if it makes a difference.

[Oshyan]

Before you do, see if you can send us the whole project file (Export Gathered Project). It might help us narrow this issue down!

- Oshyan

[masonspappy]

Before you do, see if you can send us the whole project file (Export Gathered Project). It might help us narrow this issue down!

- Oshyan

I've gathered the project into a 160 MB file.  Where should I send/upload to?

[Oshyan]

At that size we can't do an email attachment, of course. You can use any of the usual file sharing services, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. Or something like https://mega.nz/ or https://www.wetransfer.com/. You can email the link to support AT planetside.co.uk.

Thanks!

- Oshyan

[masonspappy]

ok, sent link to support@planetside.co.uk .  Let me know if you need anything else. Thanks much for your help!