Shadow causing Daz to crash - Fixed -

Basis

EDIT ***Fix action***
The Cause was the Genesis2 Model.
Fix action: manually downloaded the whole Victoria 6 Bundle and placed into the library. About 50 to 70 MB was missing from one of the items

*****

Any time I attempt to Turn on a shadow type (ray-trace or Map) on any one or more lights the program does a hard crash to desktop. The sub-window where the image is expected appears and before the image starts to draw the program collapses itself and the process is killed. Additionally, anytime the program dies like this, I have to wait about 4 or 5 minutes before attempting to restart the program or the program hangs. Either permanently or for a couple minutes.

It's set to max with delight. Progressive is not enabled. Two light source; point and distant.

Here is my card specs:
Current OpenGL Version: 4.3.0
OpenGL Provider: NVIDIA Corporation
Hardware: GeForce GTX 690/PCIe/SSE2

Features:
MultiTexturing: Supported
Shadow Map: Supported
Hardware Antialiasing: Supported
OpenGL Shading Language: Supported
Pixel Buffer: Supported
Pixel Buffer Size: 1024 x 1024
Maximum Number of Lights: 8
Number of Texture Units: 4
Maximum Texture Size: 16384 x 16384

I have the “Display Optimization” set to best. And the slider on the Interface is set for max performance (left side).

The restart hanging from a prior crash isn't connected to the render attempt as it does the same hanging "not responding" during any prior crash or freeze.

fixmypcmike

The crash happens when you start the render, correct? How much RAM do you have?

Basis

16Gig.
Yes, when I attempt to render.
The render kills the program when the rendered image in both the sub-window image example and during a direct to file render.

There are only two light sources. (Spot and Distant), Two Gen2 models in the image (with Gen2 Hair and clothes). Rendering Parameters are at default settings.

Also got it to crash when I wasn't using any shadow types when I changed some 'Ray' values under: 'Posing/shaping' - 'Parameters' - 'Display' for the 'spotlight' lighting. (It got halfway through the rendered image before crashing). I tried it again later, but with a close up of a face, and it succeeded the second time, but went straight to crash when I changed the spot-light to Ray-trace).

Could it be a 3D card setting? Maybe my 690 Nvidia card is configured to a non-DAZ friendly setting. Is there a recommended Graphics card configuration for use with the Daz EXE file?

Mattymanx

What version of Windows do you use?

What version of DAZ Studio is installed?

What is your advanced render settings in DAZ Studio? - (Screen shot please)

Basis

Windows 7 64-bit
Daz4.6.1.0.18 (32-bit)

Shader: Default
Render Engine is set to: 3Delight;
(Non-progressive Rendering)
Bucket size: 16
max ray trace depth: 2
Pixel Sample; X/Y: 4
Shadow Samples: 16
Gain: 1.00
Gamma Correction: Off
Pixel filter: Sinc:
Pix Filter: X/Y: 6.00
Motion Blur and Render to RIB (OFF)

Preferences: Interface:
Hardware Anti-Aliasing: ON
Display Optimization: Best
Backface Lighting: ON
Texture Resources: Max Performance (far Left side)
Pixel Buffer: 1k x 1k

Miscellaneous: Multi-Threading: ON

fixmypcmike

Is there a reason you aren't using the 64-bit version of DS?

Basis

Not Really, the 64-bit was crashing or hanging up too. So I've been working off the 32-bit version solely because I haven't bothered to go back to the 64-bit yet.

Basis

Don't know if this might help.
The render will go through on hardware Assisted Render. But the both Ray and Map shadows appeared very harsh and pixialated when it finished.

Mattymanx

Basis said:

Don't know if this might help.
The render will go through on hardware Assisted Render. But the both Ray and Map shadows appeared very harsh and pixialated when it finished.

Can you post a screen shot of what your seeing please?

Basis

Blast, now it's crashing using the Hardware Assisted Render settings.

However, this time it crashed with a bug window:

DAZStudio.exe caused ACCESS_VIOLATION in module "C:\Windows\system32\nvoglv32.DLL" at 0023:538A8A0F

I Have attached the error report.

The send report button on the error window is grayed out. Is that a forthcoming feature?

I've saved the Crashdump.dmp, errorlog and log file.
Which of the three files should I post attach?

fixmypcmike

That one is an NVIDIA driver crash -- have you checked for driver updates?

Basis

Yes, Updated them a week ago.

Could there be a program setting in the Nvidia's Daz.exe profile causing an issue? Like Multi-GPU 8x or Transparency using Supersample instead of multisample, for example?

Basis

Alright, I have a handle on the cause of the crashes. If not the reason.

Here are the troubleshooting steps I took.

Fresh render.
Two Genesis Models. One if front of the other. No Hair, with body texture.
Used one spot-light place low on the ground aimed up placing background genesis in the shadow of the foreground.
Placed Shadow Bias to 20.0 and Ran: Ray, Map and None.

Ran Max quality (4). Ray finished in a couple seconds, Map about twice as long as Ray, None Spit the image out immediately.

Loaded one Genesis2 model and placed it Higher and behind the previous background Genesis.
The Genesis2 model took 5 to 10 times longer to load, The program started to bog down a little during model placement (which became noticeable because the previous two had no responsiveness issues.)

Started the Ray Trace; When the Bucket started to horizontally scan in, the program dropped to desktop (no bug window or message saying the program crashed.) The render order progressed until it reached a sizeable block with the Genesis2 model, at which point died out.

Do I have a bad load of the Genesis2 Bundle? What should the build date/version sub identifier be on for Gen2? Should I try loading the Gen2 bundle again manually or delete it and do a complete reload of the module via the Install Manager?

Richard Haseltine

A bias setting of 20cm is very high - I suppose it's possible that it's causing some kind of division by zero error in the SSS shader that G2F uses where the offset is wider than the mesh. Why are you using such a high value, or was it just a value you found would trigger the crash in testing?

Basis

It could crash at any value.
First rule of Troubleshooting: (besides the old axe of, 'is it plugged in' or 'is the 0/1 toggled to 1')

Get a consistent result. It doesn't matter if it's good or bad as long as it's consistent.
I'd placed some values at max under the belief that, if it might work at Bias 1.0 nine times out of ten.
That's not a fix, that's a crash waiting to happen, right before you realize you haven't saved in 20 minutes.

I'm going to uninstall Gen2 and try a fresh reload. Could be some files didn't get correctly unpacked.

Basis

Okay, fix action was to manually download every module from the Victoria 6 bundle separately.

After unzipping all the files into the 'content' file, I went into the content file and cut all the folders and pasted it into the library.

I'm still unsure what missing, but I skipped the transfer of all the files already in the Library. Whatever was was missing was about 60MB. As the unzipped folder went from 1.31GB to 1.25GB.