Errors - Errors

[Thelby]

I am working on my first Populated Terragen 2 Deep scene and it just will not finish rendering no matter what I do to prevent it. I have changed my render settings, ALL OF THEM, at least 3 times. I have changed the size on the cache because it kept telling me that my cache to thread ratio may cause problems. I have had Memeory Allocation Errors and up till now the app to do that was Carrara 6 Pro. I am at my wits end with nowhere to go  Any Help Please!!!!!

[neuspadrin]

What did you change the cache to? What sort of system specs do you have? Render quality settings?

The second warning message is nothing, basically can be ignored it doesn't cause a crash.  But the error's of crashes are probably either you need to update drivers, or you are setting settings up with too high settings for your machine.

[buzzzzz1]

Hi,

I've hit this c++ runtime error when memory hit the wall(not enough memory to finish the render). First thing to look at is how many trees are being populated and what is the file size of the .obj/.tgo in the population?  not sure of your OS but in XP 32 bit 2 GB per app is the limit and in XP 64bit it's 4 GB. Try the scene again and monitor your memory usage for TG in task manager. You might try rendering you scene in crops. Also, how many threads are you running? I see your subdiv cache is set at 50 where 200 might work better. I'm just pulling straws not knowing your system specs but this is just a starting point.

[Thelby]

I have 3.2 GHz DualCore XP Pro 32 with 4 GBs of RAM.
I have LaaTiDo enabled on all my apps including TG2Deep. It allows me up to 3 GBs of RAM when running Lightwave, Vue, World-Machine2 and TG2D.
My Render setting are as Follows:
Details: .7 it was reduced to .6 in the last image above.
Anti-Aliasing: 5 reduced to 4 in the last image.
GI Detail: 3
GI Quality: 3
When I started the cache and threads were at default of:
Cache: 400 MBs
Threads: 16
I went to 200 MGs and 8 then 4, then to 100 MBs and 4 then 8. Everytime it would tell me basically that my cache to thread ratio was wrong.
On the grass, it is Walli's grass.
The trees are "Modualz Old Wood Pines" from RDNA, Very Realisic and thought since Vue handled them so well that TG2 would be a snap at populating them. The tall trees have 47, 843 polygons, not really heavey as I am used to handling trees that are up to 250,000 polygons.
Also My first resolution was at 1200x900, then 1152x864, then 1024x768.
Here's one thing. On the Default cache and thread size it crashes in the first pass, but on smaller cache and thread sizes I can make it to the second pass and it only seems to crash when it starts to render in the grassy places. Is that grass that tough to render???
Thanks for Any Help in Advance.

[buzzzzz1]

Your system is somewhat similar to mine with the exception that I'm running 64 bit.

Walli's grass is really nice but also very demanding. I had to crop render my contest entry because of the same problems you are having. The trees you are using I also have in a render and had no problem with them. 


Try setting the minimum threads back to 2 since you have a dual core and the max you can leave at 16. Subdivide cache @ 400 or if needed drop to 200. Then try rendering with the grass disabled to see if that's the culprit.


Really GI of 1/2 or 2/2 should be fine. AA of 5 or 6 is cool too. Quality of .7  isn't overdoing it either, although I would run the final render at anything from .85 -.9  Also can you watch when the trees and grass are populating to find out how many instances there are in your scene? If you are in the millions that may be the problem and there is a way to confine the objects to just the field of view. I'll have to find the link to that tutorial, here it is -> http://en.tgblog.de/?p=28  keep in mind,  objects not in the field of view are still using resources. So they are basically wasted.

[Thelby]

Thanks for that Buzzzz. I did take your advice on the Splitting the render. I am splitting into 3 parts. The first part just finished rendering with NO Render Errors, Very Cool  !!! It is the laft third and I will render the middle now with the righthand side last. The righthand side has a hill that has more grass and it seems to hanf there more often, but I will post it all put together if I get it there. 

[domdib]

If you are rendering in crops, you may want to use the Ray detail region (set to Detail in crop region) and the Ray detail region padding (set to 2 perhaps) in the Advanced tab of the renderer. See the discussion here:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6234.0

[Thelby]

Also can you watch when the trees and grass are populating to find out how many instances there are in your scene?

I observed approximately 300,000 plus instances on the grass. They were spaced at 30 apart, so I changed it to 50 to see what happens along with making the terrain green to fill in any bald spots if there are any.
About 3000 instances on the large Alpines at a spacing of 300.
And about 4000 instances on the smaller New Pines that cannot be seen in the images I send at a spacing of 270.
I have gone back and made the appropriate changes to Crop Region, restarted the render and crossing my finger that everything will turn out right this time. This is going to be one expensive render in terms of time, WHHHEEEWWWW!!! But I have learn a lot and that is what it is all about, right???

[Oshyan]

A couple of notes. First, if when you say threads is 16, you mean *max* threads is 16, that's fine, but if you've set *min* threads to 16 then you're forcing 16 threads which is highly inefficient on a dual core system, and will use way more memory than necessary.

Second, when rendering in crops, if you're using GI, you may run into differences in lighting between crops. GI Blur and higher values of GI Sample Quality can help with this. Your GI detail already appears to be fairly high, probably higher than it needs to be. You might try 2/4 for example.

- Oshyan

[Thelby]

Yes, the MAX Threads was 16 and now I have the MIN Threads at 2. It still kept telling me though that basically my thread to Cache ratio is off and that is one thing I just can't wrap my head around, I mean Why is it off? If I have lowered the cache size and the warning/error pop-up window suggests, than why is the ratio still off? Just things I am trying to figure out. I am not one to run at the first sign of trouble. I consider it a challenge to handle to the situation and figure the best solution and with ya'lls help, that is what I intend to do 

[Oshyan]

If the min threads is at 2, then you should be fine with the default cache size, unless you've got a very demanding scene, e.g. lots of instances, complex models, many textures, heightfields, high render detail, etc. If you do lower the cache to try to avoid memory issues, you may get warnings, but you can generally ignore them unless you see errors in your renders (missing or incomplete render tiles). The warning is there to make you aware that there may be possible negative consequences to having lower than recommended values, but it will only stop you when you try make the cache too small to actually be usable.

- Oshyan

[Thelby]

Initially, I lowered the cache because the scene crashed while rendering and it told me that I had an error in a memory thread because my cache was to large.  That is what the last Screenshot is and the last error on it tells me to lower my cache. Come to find out the culprit was Walli's grass. My machine just does not like it, so I have to find a replacement.