Memory read error

Started by Mohawk20, February 08, 2007, 08:44:53 AM

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Mohawk20

I have a consistent problem. While rendering a scene with a lot of large fake stones, after rendering the top half, midway rending the lower right quarter, I get this error message:

"The instruction at 0x7c910f29 references to memory at 0x1e4ae930. The read or write operation ("read") on the memory has failed.

Klick on OK to end the program."

I ran into this message twice on my slower pc, and again on my better pc. That means it's not occasional.
I will try rendering at different resolutions...

Here is the .tgd for those interested.
Howgh!

Mohawk20

I have just tried to render at 800x600 (first were at 640x480), and now the error occured in the first quarter, instead of the third.

The location number vary from messase to message...

I guess it has something to do with the render cache. I know I have enough virual memory (about 3 Gb total, spread over 2 disks), and my RAM is 768 Mb DDR on the faster pc, and 1024 on the slower one...


So can I adjust the size of the render cache?
Howgh!

buzzzzz

Quote from: Mohawk20 on February 08, 2007, 08:44:53 AM
I have a consistent problem. While rendering a scene with a lot of large fake stones, after rendering the top half, midway rending the lower right quarter, I get this error message:

"The instruction at 0x7c910f29 references to memory at 0x1e4ae930. The read or write operation ("read") on the memory has failed.

Klick on OK to end the program."

I ran into this message twice on my slower pc, and again on my better pc. That means it's not occasional.
I will try rendering at different resolutions...

Here is the .tgd for those interested.

Don't think you can adjust render buffer like in the old TG 9.43 which sometimes solved these problems. I have the same proble with water. For now I think all you can do is set the scene aside and wait for the update to come out. That's what I'm doing in hopes that the update will allow me to go back and render those scenes that got memory errors.

Mohawk20

I didn't want to abandon this project just yet...

So I decreased the fake stone size and density. I still got the error, but this time the render was allmost finished. I rendered at 640x480, so a significant decrease is still neccisary, but it's progress.
Howgh!

duff

#4
If it always the same part of memory this could be due to a hardware issue. It may be worth running memtest86+ to check.

Edit - Just realised you ran this one 2 different PCs so ignore that!!

Mohawk20

And so I will...  ;D

Fixed the problem.
Initially I had the fake stoes at a size of 1000. Got a nice landscape. Now they are at 300 and still give a nice landscape.

Added water, and a nother layer of fake stones at 50 size. Takes 5 hours to render but finishes.

Conlusion, do not set your fake stones to 1000 if you don't have to!
Howgh!

Oshyan

I have verified this problem. I will report it to development for troubleshooting.

- Oshyan

DeathTwister

I as well have been having serious issues when going to render out my scenes.  I have a P3 with a gig of ram and not to shabby a comp, but they can allways be bigger and better, but not to shabby and I can crash it like a champ.  Mine seems to be mesh in terrain to complex.  Here is a scene that was rendered out at 1, but that was before I started messing with the terrain.  My objective was to while  did love what I had, I had wanted the stones to be rounded and not steps, sounds easy right? naw. and after I got it it didn't want to render.

OK low rez version looks like this:


But I was actually after someting a bit different.  Then I got what I wanted but it would calculate the dots, then start to render out and crash bam....So I tried a my main render button and it did the dot calc then BAM.....Screen shot below:

I took the textures out then back in, out, back in, and I finally did a very small render at 320X280 and I0.35 render setting and was able to get a small render out and here is the screen:

I could not no matter how I treid to get a render out with that file.

I have a gig of ram and it looks like it will take 2 gigs of ram to render, not good, I hate it when stuffcrashes and I want that terrain hahahahaha.  I have noticed that the render engine seems to be the chink in the armor as they say.  I would like to be able to set what 2 render and what the camera does not see shouldn't be rendered, but could not find a gui for that. 
It is taking way to much ram to render not just the picture, but what is behind it, I have sat here and watched it, WOW what allot of resources it takes.  Funny thing, when I open TG2, my ram goes all the way up to 100% and I am very curious as to why? and that is even before I load a file of any kind into it, it is kinda like Windows Vista that way, needs a gig O ram to run maybe.  There should be some kind of setting for that somewhere though, but I couldn't find any.

Other then that and a few problems I am having I do not think is bug related, This program is awesome awesome awesome /smiles broadly.  I can only assume that Terragen is working on that issue as it does seem to not be a good thing and a borderline bug at best in my humble artist opinion. it should page those files better I would think, on the other side, I may just need a hell of allot more ram, no one has ever had a program like this so it is hard to judge what is or what should be when driving on the bleeding edge as we all know......and are all driving it at the same time.

DeathTwister   aka Maylock
Maylock Aromy DeathTwister Stansbury
ATOMIX Productions

Oshyan

Depending on what kind of other applications and services you may have running, 1GB of RAM is really not much these days. XP in a default install takes up about 150MB on its own.

When you say your "memory use goes to 100%" I presume you mean CPU. This is because the preview starts auto-generating and takes CPU time to do so. It will continue to update until it reaches a certain detail level, unless you pause it or start a render. There is also a known bug that causes CPU use to continue even after the preview finishes updating. This will be addressed in the future.

As for TG2 taking memory to render parts of the scene that get covered later, certainly the scene rendering will be made more intelligent where possible. However I think if you look at any other renderer that works with this level of extreme displacement you will see that it's difficult to do proper culling of all hidden scene elements beforehand.

Have patience, expect some crashes, and remember that this is just the beginning - things will be improving steadily from here.

- Oshyan

Cyber-Angel

Even so Terragen should release memory sectors once it has finished with them or from my understanding you begin to see memory address space issues which in turn can lead to that old favorite run time errors, that's my understanding any way which may or may not be correct.

I am not sure, but is Terragen been looked at to see weather or not it has memory leak issues; which could be one explanation for the high CPU loading?

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

Oshyan

We do have tools to look for memory leaks and other common "generalized" problems. "Releasing" memory often isn't as simple as you might think it should be. Memory fragmentation is a problem XP still hasn't sorted out. I'm not sure if Vista is better in this regard, but just because you have "2GB of memory" doesn't mean even 1GB of that would necessarily be available to any given application, even if you have nothing running at the time. Many applications require *contiguous* blocks of memory, sometimes of very large size (256MB's for a large heightfield for example). If previous applications have been running the memory space can get very fragmented and remain so even if most applications are closed afterward. Working around this is a difficult problem that I don't think many developers have solved. There are dedicated "memory defragmentation" programs that supposedly deal with it in fact. But it's always a good idea to reboot and have minimal other programs open when doing a final render.

- Oshyan

duff

As Oshyan said, there are several applications which defrag the memory for you.
One I have used previously is fsautostart, you can also set it up to stop and start services and make other preformance related changes to allow optimal running of the chosen application. It allows the creation of shortcuts so that the all optimisations and memory defragging can be done immediately prior to the application starting.

buzzzzz

Quote from: duff on February 16, 2007, 05:02:41 AM
As Oshyan said, there are several applications which defrag the memory for you.
One I have used previously is fsautostart, you can also set it up to stop and start services and make other preformance related changes to allow optimal running of the chosen application. It allows the creation of shortcuts so that the all optimisations and memory defragging can be done immediately prior to the application starting.

Thanks for the tip Oshyan and the Lead on the software duff! I installed "fsautostart" configured it with it's help, got my running processes down to 15 not including TGD. Then I ran memory defrag with System Mechanic to free up and defragment memory before starting TG. Hoping this will help with memory errors I get rendering Water or Reflective Shaders. We shall see? 

Thanks Again!

DeathTwister

Hay guys,

Oshyan Wrote:
QuoteDepending on what kind of other applications and services you may have running, 1GB of RAM is really not much these days. XP in a default install takes up about 150MB on its own.

I hear ya about the ram, getting ready to drop at least 1 more ig in and I would love to anti up to 4 gigs.

Oshyan Wrote:
QuoteWhen you say your "memory use goes to 100%" I presume you mean CPU.

Yup yup /smiles....

Oshyan Wrote:[/b
QuoteThere is also a known bug that causes CPU use to continue even after the preview finishes updating. This will be addressed in the future.

Haha I knew it /smiles, I figured it had to be something like that /winks.

Oshyan Wrote:[/b
QuoteAs for TG2 taking memory to render parts of the scene that get covered later, certainly the scene rendering will be made more intelligent where possible. However I think if you look at any other renderer that works with this level of extreme displacement you will see that it's difficult to do proper culling of all hidden scene elements beforehand.

Yes I figured that was the case since this is heavy bleeding edge I had a feeling it had to do with the extreme displacement that we are doing and pushing our CPU's tyo the limit, now I also need a bigger CPU /smiles.....Ahh the bl;eeding edge.  lolol.

Cyber-Angel Wrote:
QuoteEven so Terragen should release memory sectors once it has finished with them or from my understanding you begin to see memory address space issues which in turn can lead to that old favorite run time errors, that's my understanding any way which may or may not be correct.

My bet is they know and are working on it, I just thought I would post to make sure they had a clue ROTFL /smiles.......3D Max renders good, Bryce is a boondoggle for rendering, 2 Xtreams to my mind.  TG2 if the same render time is OK, just need to just render what you see, not what is all there.  God, think what will happen when we can take the anti aliasing to 10? Holly chit Batman we in trouble, as it is it is default at 3, whew..../smiles.  I am installing SoftImage XSI 6 today, Lets see what it does in rendering I am curious.  I should be able to world build scenes for the Ogre engine in it.  We see. Another note is it looking like TGEA may be on to doing this as well inside the TGEA engine with procedural textures, I would have thought it would take them 6 months to a year or more to figure out, now we know it can be done as shaders, again very exciting times we are in right now with Tech. 


Oshyan Wrote:[/b
QuoteWe do have tools to look for memory leaks and other common "generalized" problems. "Releasing" memory often isn't as simple as you might think it should be. Memory fragmentation is a problem XP still hasn't sorted out. I'm not sure if Vista is better in this regard, but just because you have "2GB of memory" doesn't mean even 1GB of that would necessarily be available to any given application, even if you have nothing running at the time. Many applications require *contiguous* blocks of memory, sometimes of very large size (256MB's for a large heightfield for example).

Ouch and bummer ruskie

Oshyan Wrote:[/b
QuoteIf previous applications have been running the memory space can get very fragmented and remain so even if most applications are closed afterward. Working around this is a difficult problem that I don't think many developers have solved. There are dedicated "memory defragmentation" programs that supposedly deal with it in fact. But it's always a good idea to reboot and have minimal other programs open when doing a final render.

Yes I hear ya, and I usually have both Tg2, Photoshop Open on the fly editing and sometimes other apps as well like Bricks' N tiles and so on.  Needless to say restarting your comp is a must after a while and I also noticed if I do to much in TG2 and have other apps open, I will get to a point where I have to save and go out and come back in to show what I had done sometimes.  Not allot, but the more complicated your scene gets, the more it seems to clog up the CPU and ram, so you need to go all the way out sometimes to clear your cash out, and restarting is even better when you get to that point I found.  It is always good to have as few programs open when using TG2 when posible so if you can do pre and post work on texture files and such is always best.  I am just a dumb artist who likes his cake and eat it 2 /smiles.

Duff Wrote:
QuoteAs Oshyan said, there are several applications which defrag the memory for you.
One I have used previously is fsautostart, you can also set it up to stop and start services and make other preformance related changes to allow optimal running of the chosen application. It allows the creation of shortcuts so that the all optimisations and memory defragging can be done immediately prior to the application starting.

Wow shoot us a link? I am always looking for better software to do stuff, even better when it is free /smiles...

Buzzzzz Wrote:
QuoteThanks for the tip Oshyan and the Lead on the software duff! I installed "fsautostart" configured it with it's help, got my running processes down to 15 not including TGD. Then I ran memory defrag with System Mechanic to free up and defragment memory before starting TG. Hoping this will help with memory errors I get rendering Water or Reflective Shaders. We shall see?

Wow lets us know if it helps? OK? I will go download it anyway just in case and see what it has under the hood /smiles.

DeathTwister   aka Maylock



Maylock Aromy DeathTwister Stansbury
ATOMIX Productions