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Support => Terragen Support => Topic started by: AndyWelder on June 30, 2008, 09:57:45 AM

Title: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: AndyWelder on June 30, 2008, 09:57:45 AM
After installing Version 4 and loading a .tgd that did suffer from incomplete rendered vegetation I got these "Counter error in population Long Grass/grass/Long Grass" messages. The render did continue and the result looks fine: the vegetation now looks completely rendered.
Have to admit though I didn't count all the grass-stems so I can't tell if TG2 did miss a few. ;)
Oh, I used the new render options "Supersample prepass" and "Preallocate subdiv cache" (with the default 400 MB).
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: ZStar on June 30, 2008, 11:00:36 AM
I am running the new TP4 1.9.98.1.  I tried a cropped render of my current project and got the same error message:

  "Counter error in populator Pop Grass clump short"

"Pop Grass clump short" is the name of one of my grass populations.  The small patch of grass that was in the crop region looks good.  There are no obvious holes and the render appeared to complete normally other than the message. 

At the moment it may not appear to be a major problem the way the dropped buckets were but it does seem like a number of people are encountering the message.  It has been mentioned in one or more of the other update related topics on the forum.
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: Matt on June 30, 2008, 11:47:01 AM
There is a bug in the rendering of populations which we're still trying to solve. I've added a safety check for this situation. When you see the "counter error" warning, the populator has detected this problem while rendering a particular object instance. The populator isn't supposed to reach this state and I don't yet know why it happens, so it is theoretically possible that your populations may not have rendered correctly if you see this warning.

This bug is not the same as the missing vegetation tiles which were seen in TP3. That was caused by an algorithm which hadn't been designed for rendering with multiple threads, and that has been changed for TP4.

Matt
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: gregsandor on June 30, 2008, 12:53:02 PM
I'm getting the same error, seemingly at random:  sometimes in grass, sotimes in telegraph poles, sometimes not at all. 
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: Oshyan on June 30, 2008, 02:56:44 PM
The error is something we're aware of, but so far it seems to handle the issues gracefully and we have not seen any missing vegetation as a result. Further reports of the error occurring aren't necessary, but if you do notice missing vegetation and can provide a screenshot please let us know.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: AndyWelder on June 30, 2008, 03:20:10 PM
Quoteif you do notice missing vegetation and can provide a screenshot please let us know.
Yup, will do.
And "Dank je wel" to you and Matt for the swift response.
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: PG on July 02, 2008, 04:33:51 PM
How did I not see this thread?
I've had this error today, very similar at first but when I tried to render it as final it did the top half of the image and on the bottom half it rendered all the objects of the population that was throwing up the counter error but nothing else...then it crashed throwing up a C++ Redist error. Should've taken a screenshot really. I'll render it again tonight
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: commorancy on August 01, 2008, 02:55:26 PM
Quote from: PG on July 02, 2008, 04:33:51 PM
I've had this error today, very similar at first but when I tried to render it as final it did the top half of the image and on the bottom half it rendered all the objects of the population that was throwing up the counter error but nothing else...then it crashed throwing up a C++ Redist error. Should've taken a screenshot really. I'll render it again tonight

I've found that the C++ Error is due to the fact that the system tries to allocate memory for the subdiv cache and it fails during the allocation.  If you turn on preallocation of the subdiv cache under the renderer's advanced tab, I've found that this C++ error goes away.  You may still find that you have thread crashing errors on a mutlicore processor (thread crashes do not throw a C++ exception).

I am also having this populations error on a render that I'm presently trying to render.  I am unsure if the population error is also related to the thread crashing.

Thanks.

--
Brian
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: sonshine777 on September 07, 2008, 07:18:41 PM
Is this the error you are talking about in this thread?(See below) The render I am currently doing pops this up for each tile as it starts rendering. It doesn't seem to stop the render or leave things out. The one thing that is curious is the primary population is the grass population which hasn't even started rendering yet.
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: jo on September 07, 2008, 08:22:40 PM
Hi,

I would like to point out something about the Errors and Warnings window. It shows both errors and warnings. Errors have a red stop sign like icon, warnings have a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark. In general errors are something you would worry about, and are most likely things which would prevent a render from being successful. Warnings are just warnings though, they are usually to notify you of something irregular happening but which won't necessarily stop a render from being successful.

It's the difference between "Things are seriously wrong and you should not go further" and "Something a bit funny is happening, but there shouldn't be any harm in carrying on. Just letting you know".

In this case the wording of the warning message is a bit unfortunate because it suggests it's an error.

Especially because the Tech Previews are still alpha quality software there are often warnings posted that are diagnostic tools for us, and not much use to you as users. The counter error is an example of this. For the final release we will try to minimise these sorts of things so that you only see useful errors and warnings.

Sonshine, the error you're seeing is the one being discussed here.

Regards,

Jo
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: sonshine777 on September 07, 2008, 08:48:39 PM
Thanks Jo.
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: rcallicotte on September 08, 2008, 10:34:16 AM
Thanks for explaining your processes, Jo.  This is helpful and goes above your duties as a programmer.  Thanks.  I'm glad someone is doing it.
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: sjefen on September 13, 2008, 03:01:50 PM
I get this warning too. Also when I render something with a population, it very often takes a very, very long time to start rendering. When the GI pass has finished it can take several minutes before the actual render starts.
I don't know if this has anything to do with the counter warnings but I didn't know where to post this.

- Terje
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: Oshyan on September 17, 2008, 02:37:50 AM
Sjefen, I don't think that would be related to the counter warnings. Are the populations large (many instances) when this delay happens?

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: sjefen on September 17, 2008, 11:24:24 AM
Quote from: Oshyan on September 17, 2008, 02:37:50 AM
Sjefen, I don't think that would be related to the counter warnings. Are the populations large (many instances) when this delay happens?

- Oshyan

Most of the time it happens when there are many instances, but it has happend with less dense populations too.
Not that often, but it has happend.

- Terje
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: Oshyan on September 22, 2008, 01:34:02 AM
Larger populations will definitely cause delays in various areas. Unless this can be reliably reproduced in less complex scenes, I'd say it's just a simple function of scene complexity.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Counter Error in population XXXX
Post by: PorcupineFloyd on November 04, 2008, 03:41:57 AM
It happens for me only when I'm rendering previews - small picture with low quality.