Carrara keeps crashing on render

Mosk the Scribe

Hi. I have a scene in C8.5 Pro with 2 characters, M4 and K4, both dressed and with hair, and a beard for m4. The two characters are lip synched and the scene runs for about a minute 15 seconds. There's also a building and some grounds.

I also added several target helpers for focusing eyes and pointing cameras.

I had done a test render at 1 or 2 fps at some point and that worked okay.

Now as I'm trying to render the actual scene for real at 24fps, I keep getting errors after one or two frames (1 if on 1024x768 resolution, 2 frames sometimes if on 600 x 400).

I've tried making everything except m4 invisible, even hid the beard - but still gets error after 1 or 2 frames.
Tried reducing the render from 1:15 down to 10 seconds and still error after one or two frames rendered.

The file is only 500MB or so, and I've rendered 2-4GB scenes without such problems.
Looking at task manager as the render starts and hits error/aborts, my usage doesn't spike or anything - it's running at about 2.2 GB the whole time - and I have a Windows 7, 64 bit system with 24 GB ram, usually only get crashes at 4GB or so RAM (and also when the .car file size approaches 4GB I seem to get problems).

Any suggestions what to try?
This doesn't seem like an especially complicated scene, though there are lots of clothing movement adjustments, and facial expressions via the parameters for sad / angry etc. Characters movements were generated with custom aniblocks made in DAZ studio, imported via Aniblock Importer, lip synched with Mimic Pro, with those applied via pz2 file in DAZ and captured as aniblocks.

I need this scene to complete a music video I've been working on and once again, I'm hitting errors that make it so frustrating to work with Carrara and DAZ and Mimic. This pipeline seems to hold such huge potential. But whenever I start putting all of the elements together, I always seem to run into crippling problems that make the project take forever.

Any help / suggestions would be very much appreciated.

NOTE - when I look in Progress/Statistics tab of Render after crash, I get Objects,: 38, Lights 6, Master Objects 104, Master shaders 1537, And for Texture Map Surface it looks like gibberish: -/.),-*,(by -/,),(-*,(pixels -1156265088.00Bytes) - Didn't know if that could be relavant.
Number of Rays launched 814428, Number f facets scanned 0. I'm not using Global Illumination or Motion blur, and I left Depth of Field unchecked.

Also - is there any way to eliminate subsurface scattering globally, or would I have to go through every shader to find where it's used - and if so, is that usually just set for skin? I just see it pop up with every frame, and imagine it's adding a lot of time to my renders - would like to see quality difference.

Just tried removing all unused objects, shaders, consolidating and so forth - let me render 19 frames before hitting error - now have 37 Master Objects and 87 Shaders , and Texture map surface reads 30243 x 30243 picels, 3.41 GBytes (the gibberish is gone); Rays launched 5588773, Facets scanned 0.

Tried again with camera on my character and error after 1 frame even at 600x400 dimensions.

Also of note - this was after a fresh reboot of my computer, which has helped in past when Carrrara was choking.

Dartanbeck

Fenric might have a plugin that can help you to globally rid yourself of SSS. Otherwise you have to do them one by one :shut:

One thing you might try is Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders and then Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Remove Unused Objects followed by Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Remove Unused Shaders. Over 1500 master shaders sounds high to me, and might be causing issues.

Next I'd check to see the output of the render. Are you rendering to AVI? If so, try using full frames instead of using a codec. If Image Sequencing, check that there are no unnecessary check marks or omissions. If it's QT, are you using 64 bit Carrara?

Still crashing after that? Maybe check the anti aliasing and object/shadow accuracy settings. If you're running higher than fast aa, try it on Fast and see if it removes the issue. If not, set it back the way you had it and move on to Object/Shadow Accuracy and just try them at 2 and 4 respectively - just to try it.

DUDU

Normally, if your HDD is formatted in NTFS, you should not have of weight limit of file.
Too many people let start of some programs and services unnecessarily in Windows, it is necessary to clean all that and to put in "Manual" all the services which work for nothing and consume a lot of memory and resources of the processor and also can cause errors in the recording of the files (especially the compressed files .car).
Sometimes I have also some crashes during the render, that arrives to me with sequences which require many calculations (volumetric clouds, lights in transparency, Global illumination etc…) and it is for that I always make sequences of images to be able to start again after a crash without losing the already made images.

Dartanbeck

Great point DUDU!
My main reason for building a Carrara workstation was to keep my habits away from my Carrara endeavors. I have a large screen laptop sitting just below the monitor of my workstation for the purposes of multitasking. My eight core workstation can multitask better than anything I've got, but I never do that while I'm rendering.

Mosk the Scribe

THanks for the replies. I went back to an earlier version of that scene, made some limited adjustments, and am now rendering ok (just doing one character with rest set to invisible). Maybe something was corrupted in the more recent file, because I couldn't doget this rendering done at all.

Not ideal, but if I can render this piecemeal I can get by for what I'm working on - and can recheck the problem file later.

I had tried removing unused objects and consolidating and getting rid of extra shaders.
My alias/object and shadow accuracy settings were on Fast / 2pixels/4 pixels - and I didn't have any volumetric clouds or effects in the scene. And I'm rendering as png sequence with Full Ray Tracing, Shadows, Reflections, Refraction, Bump, Transparency, and Light through transparency on -
Just noticed my Maximum Ray Depth is set to 8 - I don't have anything fancy in scene, but do have characters (and I think you need transparency, light through trans for eyes to look right?)

In terms of computer, I do have NTSF, have Carrara program on my c drive and rendering to E drive (both 1 TB, 7200 rpm).
Didn't look like I had much going on in terms of resourcees in background, though I do have Carbonite Backup and a much despised (by me) Norton Antiviral/antispyware etc running.

Is there a simple way to temporarily deactivate extra programs running in background? I'm reluctant to just disable stuff from starting automatically since it's not always clear which are required by Windows 7 and which are extra.

Thanks.

DUDU

You are right Dart !
It is the ideal to have its computer to work and especially… no connection with the Internet (except for the update of the antivirus and the drivers).

Mosk, Norton AV has the reputation to be “heavy”, I use NOD32 and I say to him not to control the files .car (it is useless because it is you who did them).
I will try but it is my translation of my computer which is in French…
You will begin on “Start” /Execute, and typ “msconfig”.
You open the miter “Starting” and you unsheck all the programs which start unnecessarily, by ex: Quick Time, Adobe Reader (all from Adobe), etc…
Don't be afraid to select the things which you do not know, you will be able to go back, but you must leave your drivers of graphics card, the SSD, Anti-virus and all Windows programs.
Afterwards, you restart your computer.
For the services: Configuration Panel/Administration tools and shortcut “Services”.
There, you try to see what you can put in “Manual” rather than “Automatic”…
I thus don't know the composition of your PC it is difficult for me to advise you…
But you must see the services which should not turn without being called.
Make also a regular cleaning of the register (Regcleaner…), there is also the manual cleaning of the register but if you do not know yourself there, does not go there!
Do not forget the traditional cleaning of the disks.
I hope that will understand me, sorry for my English...

Dartanbeck

Mosk the Scribe said:

I had tried removing unused objects and consolidating and getting rid of extra shaders.

...and that didn't help? It would be interesting to see if it at least reduced the number of master shaders. That can be a real killer sometimes - having the file weighted down with vast numbers of shaders.

It might just be that something got corrupted along the way. It's a bummer when it happens, and I'm not sure how it happens (not very often - in my experience - but sometimes) but it does :down:
At least you had an earlier save to go back to. I wonder if the earlier one will let you render the whole thing - perhaps after a shader consolidation/removal.

evilproducer

If you're not doing it, try rendering through the Batch Queue. That can save on overhead. You mentioned that it crashed when focusing on one character in particular? That would be where I would start to look for SSS.

A little tip, to fake SSS, I sometimes copy the image map from the color channel and paste it into the glow channel. I turn the brightness slider down to around 10-12%. The whites of the eyes and the irises I tend to set around 15%. I don't add it to the inner mouth or teeth, but do add it to the lips. It's not perfect, but I think it helps make the skin look a bit more dynamic.

wetcircuit

evilproducer said:

If you're not doing it, try rendering through the Batch Queue. That can save on overhead. You mentioned that it crashed when focusing on one character in particular? That would be where I would start to look for SSS.

A little tip, to fake SSS, I sometimes copy the image map from the color channel and paste it into the glow channel. I turn the brightness slider down to around 10-12%. The whites of the eyes and the irises I tend to set around 15%. I don't add it to the inner mouth or teeth, but do add it to the lips. It's not perfect, but I think it helps make the skin look a bit more dynamic.

I also do this, but I use a falloff shader to mix in the glow. Sometimes I multiply the image map against a "fleshtone" kind of a peach-orange color. SSS is just too slow. The glow channel trick renders so much faster…

Falloff glow works on teeth too, but you can sometimes see molars, lol.

evilproducer

holly wetcircuit said:

evilproducer said:

If you're not doing it, try rendering through the Batch Queue. That can save on overhead. You mentioned that it crashed when focusing on one character in particular? That would be where I would start to look for SSS.

A little tip, to fake SSS, I sometimes copy the image map from the color channel and paste it into the glow channel. I turn the brightness slider down to around 10-12%. The whites of the eyes and the irises I tend to set around 15%. I don't add it to the inner mouth or teeth, but do add it to the lips. It's not perfect, but I think it helps make the skin look a bit more dynamic.

I also do this, but I use a falloff shader to mix in the glow. Sometimes I multiply the image map against a "fleshtone" kind of a peach-orange color. SSS is just too slow. The glow channel trick renders so much faster…

Falloff glow works on teeth too, but you can sometimes see molars, lol.

Great tip Holly! Is the falloff shader from a plugin, or is it something I've overlooked in the toolbox of included Carrara shader functions?

wetcircuit

a plugin. I use SHADER OPS Fake Fresnel shader from Digital Carver's Guild. It's a must have.

Dartanbeck

holly wetcircuit said:

a plugin. I use SHADER OPS Fake Fresnel shader from Digital Carver's Guild. It's a must have.

Can't wait to try it.
I feel like a kid at a new school all of a sudden, acquiring Shader Ops, Shader Ops 2, and Enhance C in one order, shortly after acquiring Inagoni's Advance Pack full of shader capabilities. Now I have all of these new and special nodes that I could call upon, if I wasn't:
A - such a bashful, new student in this school
B - so lacking in time to just sit tight and explore

One of the biggest reasons that it's going to be difficult for anyone to ever convince me to use an external render engine is my love for the Carrara Texture Room. What a great place! And with all of the incredible plugins available for it - it's simply and undeniably one powerful (and easy-to-use) way to address the appearance of everything in the scene. Beside the fact that I've spent the past few years getting a method down for lighting and shading versus rendering to be able to crank out my animation renders in a look that I find to be just right. This is a huge difference, from what I've been noticing, to what works best for still images. Where I'll have an animation that looks just the way I like it, I'd be inclined to make several changes to many things if I wanted to capture the essence of what's going on in a single frame from that animation. I've literally spent over a year without actually rendering any single framed images with the intention of keeping it - due to the fact that I was only working on motion footage. Where I wouldn't mind waiting hours or more for a still shot that I want to hang on the wall, I worked long and hard to find a look that I really like, that could render off a whole frame in mere seconds.

Photo realism footage at big time movie houses can take upwards of 72 hours or more on a single frame - if they didn't farm it out amongst nodes. I can totally understand and agree with the importance of that - but also used that as a harsh determination, early on that, because of that fact alone, I wanted to seek out a look. A look that I could make my own. You've seen some examples of it - but not many - as most are for my eyes only ;)