I think I killed Maya. Rendering problem.

# 1 20-05-2004 , 04:07 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2003

Posts: 31

He guys. I am having some problems rendering out a scene. Here's the problem; Please see attached image:

Maya cannot render out this scene. In the first example (1), I start to redner the scene and it takes almost 15 minutes for it to start rendering. Sometimes it just crashes but when it does render...I only get what you see and than Maya stops.

So I thought about rendering it in regions as in example (2) but it still dies on where you see it in the image.

I know there is alot of geometry which the bulk of it consists of the pipes I have modeled (3). This is what I believe is killing my renders.

I than got rid of the pipes and it still takes awhile to render but it does render the scene. Still sometimes creashes doing this so I have tricked it my doing a batch render of one frame. This seems to work.

This is extremely frustrating. How can I render my complete scene? Why is maya dieing? I have deleted all history on objects and Optimized the scene for rendering and deleted all unused shader nodes. Where am I going wrong?

About the pipes...It's all polys except for the round curving tubes which are Nurbs. Could this be the problem? Should I convert these to polys or does it not matter? I am running a PC with 2.4 mhz with 1 gig of memory and about 13 gigs of free hard disk space. Thank you for any help.

Attached Thumbnails

Click image for larger version

Name: pipe_problem.jpg
Views: 451
Size: 369.5 KB
ID: 15279

Quote

# 2 20-05-2004 , 04:32 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Jun 2003

Location: Sweden

Posts: 571

I'd wager a guess here, it probably throws a memory exception during render startup. Try rendering from the commandline:
render -s 0 -e 0 -im <image> <filename>

or just hit
render
and it will list all the options.

Björn 'santa' Fredriksson

<A href=https://www.bjornfredriksson.com>Site Online.</A>

Check out our 1on1on1 battle for the SandCrawlers.

Quote

# 3 20-05-2004 , 04:56 PM

Moderator
Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: London, UK

Posts: 2,800

or render it with render layers and put the pipes on a separate layer that will help it out. Also check your shadows etc. Use light linking to lower the overhead on the rendering.

Alan

Technical Director - Framestore

Currently working on: Your Highness

IMDB

Quote

# 4 20-05-2004 , 05:44 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2003

Posts: 31

Thank you for the replies. I tried the command line but could not get it to work fredriksson. Not very familiar with that but I tried it through the Maya command line and typed in ( render -s 0 -e 0 -im <image> <Factory_FINAL2>

It came back and said Syntax error? I than tried to go through DOS but have no idea how to do this. Any suggestions?

Interesting Idea Pure Morning. I am trying that test out now with render layers making a layer for the pipes and the rest of the scene. How should I set this up meaning...What shoudl I leave on and off for the 2 layers, i.e. Beauty, Color, Spec? I also do not know about light linking. How does this work and what should I check in my shadows? I am new at this. thank you.

Quote

# 5 20-05-2004 , 11:37 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: Los Angeles

Posts: 695

You may also want to check the tesselation values of your pipes (assuming they are NURBS). You may be able to lower them, especially the ones not so close to the camera.

FYI, mayabatch handles memory differently that the render window within Maya. By differently I mean better. think of it this way, Maya is sucking up RAM to display and manage your file so it has less to work with for rendering.

I would try setting up your render globals they way you want them, quit out of Maya, right click on your file and select "render".

Setting up render layers is a great idea for flexibility, but it likely won't help your RAM problem.

You could also buy more RAM, but Maya doesn't seem to recognize anything more than 2 GB.

Good luck.

Quote

# 6 21-05-2004 , 08:45 AM

Moderator
Join Date: Oct 2002

Location: London, UK

Posts: 2,800

Setting up render layers is a great idea for flexibility, but it likely won't help your RAM problem.

Originally Posted by

Yes it will because you will be rendering less at once and thus the memory footprint will be less.

As far as what to leave on I would do a beauty and shadow for each layer and then spec if you need to tweak it. That's probably all you will need. There is a free tute here at SM about render layers

Light linking is where you tell maya to only use certain lights to light certain objects. The default is to try and light everything but light linking will make mean that only certain lights will be used to light certain pieces of geometry.

Alan

Technical Director - Framestore

Currently working on: Your Highness

IMDB

Quote

# 7 21-05-2004 , 03:54 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: Los Angeles

Posts: 695

OK, moderately less, but not significantly. Each layer render still has load the objects not in it's layer to check for things like shadows. I've done tests and found that to really save on memory for heavy scenes, I had to save each render layer into it's own scene file.

Quote

# 8 21-05-2004 , 04:50 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2003

Posts: 31

Well guys...first off, thank you for all the advice and information you have provided. Bad news is that it did not work. Alan, I tried the render layers experiment and it failed. The renders still dies out. The info on light linking was useful.

Dann...I forgot about rendering out of Maya with selecting the scene and using render command. I forgot about this since I changed the opening default of all my 3D scenes to DeepExploration. I'll have to give that one a try again.

Good news is that I rendered out just the pipes in sections with primatives as stand ins for my geometry for shadows and it worked. I composited the whole thing in aftereffects. Here is the final image. Suggestions and comments are welcomed. Thank you again. Cheers!

Attached Thumbnails

Click image for larger version

Name: factory_final.jpg
Views: 406
Size: 942.5 KB
ID: 15292

Quote

# 9 21-05-2004 , 11:01 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2003

Location: Somewhere out there.

Posts: 127

Final Image looks great.

Quote

# 10 22-05-2004 , 12:20 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2004

Location: UK

Posts: 352

That looks great. Nice one user added image

Quote

# 11 22-05-2004 , 10:47 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: May 2004

Posts: 233

Image looks great BUT on the technical point of view, its illogical for all these pipes to interconnect like that, especialy when the connection are so close. BUT it still is very good looking!

Quote

I think I killed Maya. Rendering problem.

Posting Rules Forum Rules

Similar Threads

Topics

Free Courses

Full Courses

VFX News