Solved - Problem with rendering - carrara crashes
MysticWings
Posts: 226
Hello friends!!
I'm trying to make a render... for almost a week... And carrara it's not cooperating with me...
It's a render with a sky, volumetric clouds, a character and a prop.
First it was more cause I'm a little obsessed with high quality final images... so I set everything to maximum quality... the render was so slow I had to give up... my fault on these...
Then I down some settings, made the size of image and dpi a little smaller and things were going good... 3 days render, more or less, but I don't care about it - really want printing quality.
But carrara started to crash... for no apparent reason. First time (it was rendering for more than 24 hours) I thought it was like a part of the image that it was giving error on calculation for some reason. Even though I restarted the render as it was... 1 hour latter it crashed again... in a part of the render that it has done with no problems the first time...
I have had some problems with carrara crashing from time to time. And that make me thought in one thing:
I normally have my working files in an external HD and work through this HD. Could this make carrara more unstable? I mean, could be possible that if I work from files in the main HD where carrara is installed make it more stable?
I'm asking cause after the second crash I rebooted my mac, passed the file to the main HD, opened from there and started the render again. The render is going just for 2 hours so don't know if it will crash or not, but some errors that always happened since I have carrara disappeared (the most obvious, I'm finally able to minimize carrara, could never do it without giving error).
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Ok, it crashed again :( It seems I'm unable to do this render... Just would like to understand what it's happening... cause in the first render with this settings it went until like 50%, and now it's crashing before 10%, so it's not a problem with the settings... I think....
I was looking through google and read something about turning off spooling texture in 64 bits version. Can this be related?
It can't be hardware cause it already made that part of the render and with me working on other graphic software at the same time...
Can you do the render in multiple passes? I'm sure Phil mentioned it was possible in one of his videos (although I admit I was only half watching at the time)
The longest render I've done was just under 5 hours, and i was chomping at the bit! I don't think I could stand tying up my iMac for multiple days. About the only thing I know that make Carrara crash is multiple cmd-Z undo commands - it seems to be very flaky with undo!
I don't think it matters where your project files are stored, once it has loaded it into memory. The significant location will be where your temporary files are stored (Preferences -> Imaging, Scratch disk. No idea about texture spooling, but it's on the same preferences pane, so I suspect they will be related somehow.
I've never been able to minimise Carrara without something screwy happening, although it doesn't actually crash as such.
I've already made 20 hours renders in carrara, so don't think is the problem since it was crashing on hour 2.
I don't think I've ever made a final render with less then 10 hours.
The only difference here is that I have atmosphere...
And actually, I can still use my mac while I'm rendering... and I can go draw to... and clean the house... it also need... so... no problem with making my mac work. I have a nice cooling table for it ;)
The most stupid thing is that it never crashes when I'm working on mac, always when I'm not around...
As to minimize, in my case it didn't crashed, just didn't minimize... but now it does... :)
The temporary files are in the specific folder - carrara one.
To look at small squares of color which moves on the screen, it is very relaxing! :-)
I believe that you have too many things which turn at the same time on your computer, even if you don't know it (too many useless services activated by default).
To work on line on an external HD, it is not the ideal either.
To be connected at the same time on the Internet, it is the catastrophe, therefore disconnect and your antivirus also because it supervises each data which walks in your computer.
Also, if you can arrange your volumetric clouds and make post-work if possible, that would accelerate much the render.
Just as a test, select all of your volumetric clouds and deselect 'visible'. Now your render should be done in minutes, if it's indeed the clouds that are causing it.
Some things to check when you're having problems with super long-term renders like that:
Shut down your computer and make sure that all cooling heat sinks and fans, etc., are very clean and that nothing is blocking the air flow. Rendering cranks the core to wide open for the duration of the render. An overheat issue can cause any app to crash - especially the one that needs all the juice.
Also, "turning down" render quality doesn't really tell us anything when it comes to troubleshooting render-related crashes. For example, I could turn down the Object accuracy from .5 to 1, but leave Sky Light and Indirect Lighting and Caustics turned on. And have 1 pixel accuracy on the Indirect Lighting with Improved Edge turned on, along with Interpolation, etc., which would still make my beast of a workstation call me bad names when I leave the room ;)
So that being said, just check to see if there's something corrupt in the scene itself.
- Turn off visibility of clouds
- Render Room:
- Deselect Reflections, Refraction, and Depth of Field in the upper boxes
- Turn off Sky Light and Indirect Lighting
- Turn off Caustics
- Set render output resolution to 800 x 600 at 72 dpi
That should cause the render to complete before your eyes.
If it does finish, please tell us of your settings as you turn things back on.
If it doesn't finish, or takes a long period of time, please better describe to us what else is in that scene.
Yes for me as I only do stills, that does speed up a lot for me. I don't set indirect lighting or raise the size and ppi until I am really ready to wait for a render. Like go take a bath or something.
I have my working files on an external hard drive and programme on CPU. No problems so far.
Maybe you need more memory, Tania...I had to ramp mine up to the max. But I am on a PC. Before I had the minimum of 4GB ram, now I have 16GB.
Are you just getting App Hangs or are you getting error messages?
Hope you get some help from other Mac users. But upgrading memory changed a lot of performance things. Didn't change render speed though if I had a lot of bells and whistles set.
I learned something interesting though, when I get an App Hang and hadn't yet saved my scene, and the contest one was 500mb, I cannot get to the drop down menu to Save, but I CAN use Ctrl + S and it saves. I felt like I discovered sliced bread when that happened.
DUDU, really? Don't be on the internet???? Never thought of that. Hmmmmmmm.
:ohh: SileneUK
Clean out your temporary file directory. Hopefully some more seasoned Mac user can tell you where it is, but if it gets too many files or too much stuff in it, Carrara can get very weird.
Something you should know about volumetric clouds is that, in the cloud's setup room, the setting of Low to High quality does make a difference, but even low setting looks really good, and like a cloud, but while Extreme quality might not make the cloud look much different, it will be able to kill your computer during a render.
Just keep that in mind.
Now, if the clouds are to be the main focus of the image, take one of those clouds, perhaps two or three, and maybe make their settings a little higher if you really feel strongly about using higher settings. Otherwise, if the clouds are just part of the background, use the lowest setting - it will look great and still slow down your renders just fine! :) Because they are slow, by nature.
Something you should know about lights is that using Raytraced Soft Shadows on just one light in the scene can cause a lot of extra render time. This can often be necessary. But it is not something that should be used on a lot of lights. If you find that you need a whole bunch of lights, and that they all need soft shadows, try thinking of how you can eliminate some of the raytracing calculations. Like setting them to only include the character and the ground, for example.
Something you should know about volumetric clouds and lights together is that there is a setting at the top left of the cloud room for which lights are included. Whenever you're using a realistic sky, try using a sun light as your main source of illumination, and then try the Sunlight Only setting on the clouds. This will be faster and easier on your computer. But you might end up wanting to include all lights, which is really intensive on your computer and render times. So a good technique to practice, when using several volumetric clouds in one scene, is to use the Sunlight Only settings, and then set up both the clouds and the sunlight's direction until you get an acceptable result. Check to see the results on the rest of the scene. Just know that it can be much more efficient to add a cheat light here and there in the scene to enhance stuff that is not such an intense raytrace calculation, like having a bunch of lights, and all of them affect the clouds.
When I'm talking about faster and slower, slower setting might 'seem' to create a better render. True, it is causing for a lot more calculations to be made. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the overall render will look better. Try designing lights carefully. If you want to avoid designing with lights, try just using the sun light and global illumination. When going that route, spend some extra time with only that sun light. Adjust its rotation and watch carefully where the shadows are going, what needs more light, and so on... but try not to add any lights yet.
If you have volumetric clouds in the scene, try turning them invisible for a while so you can test to see what global illumination, gamma correction, and indirect lighting can do for those areas not lit by the sun light alone. You'll be amazed. Also know that, even if using a realistic sky, you may still use the background channel in the scene settings panel to add a color or bi-gradient to further enhance the effects of global illumination. Bright colors or grays with brighten global illumination, while darker shades will darken it, and so on. This is where the bi-gradient comes in handy.
When setting up Global Illumination and Indirect Lighting, try to always start with lower settings. Not intensity, however, I'm talking about the defaults. Try the default values first, then bring setting up a bit at a time until you get the settings you need. This stuff adds intense calculations to your renders. Every separate map that is being touched by any single ray is being opened into memory. So also make sure to Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders, or you'll be compounding the difficulties your computer is facing. Each light in the scene adds a new set of intense calculations. These rays get calculated as they take angles and shader considerations, colors and images, reflections and refraction, shadows and their softness, all into account. So the more efficient we design these scenes, the easier it will be on our computers and our personal frustration.
When using Indirect light, try to avoid cheat lights. Instead, use only the lights that have a very real reason for being there. This is not an absolute rule, of course, but IL adds a lot to the render job, and is meant to be a more real-world simulation of what real light does with your objects in the scene. It is intended to save us from having to imagine how these behaviors relate to our scene so that we can create these lighting effects using other types of lights. So we must decide, do we want to artistically create our lighting, or do we want the computer to simulate our lighting. Because when we combine the two methods, which we can do, we risk frying our computers by causing them to think far too hard for far too long of time.
And clouds really REALLY don't like overlapping: try not to ever have two clouds intersect.
Ok, lots of information!!!! :) thank you all!!
I'm going to try cover most of things:
First, I actually saw that there's lots of things turned on in the computer I don't really know what they are... Normal things in computers... Maybe that's why the render is more stable since I reboot the computer... No net??? At all... That sucks, but I will take your word.
About the time render, that's not the problem to me. The render is not test render, those where being made really fast and with no problems... He takes to much time mostly because of the size I'm making this image. When I put it in 700 x 500 px and the settings are in a lower quality (in the rendering tab and in raytraced soft shadow was in fast and now is in good or best) it goes greatly! No problem at all. Liked to have a beast workstation, but have just a lap top which is being cooled with a cooler table under it. It doesn't seems to be overeating, but is a good thing to have in mind. (And I think it call me bad names to :P )
I don't have error message, the software just closes unexpectadely. I have 8gb ram, which is more or less like having 16 on a pc... I will upgrade to 16gb as soon as possible anyway... I was actually buying this mac with 16gb, but there was a problem and the computer was not being delivered so after 15 days I just decided to buy the normal edition and then put more ram.
Cleaning up temporary files seems a great idea!!! Never thought of that... Will start doing it regularly!
About the lights and volumetric clouds: I have the sun light, the sky light and indirect light. Besides that have 2 spot lights just to enhance lights in the character, and I actually define them to only work on it and the prop so they don't mess up with the clouds (when I first used them that was happening and I thought it was not a good idea. But yeah... all raytrace soft shadows... I really have to explore that "sunlight only" setting. It seems very useful to scenes like this. I really didn't need the sky light and indirect light in the clouds... it made them more dark... I actually worked the sky before I had the character and prop since I wanted to learn a little. I didn't created the volumetric clouds, is a atmosphere created by Tim Payne that Phill uses in a tut. But I played a lot with it until I got the result I wanted for my scene (mostly with sun position and sky color cause I used a different camera view).
Thank for all that explanation on lights in carrara. I was very helpful Dartan.
And Fenric, thank for this last warning. This time the clouds are from Tim Payne as I said so I think there's no overlapping, but soon I'll be doing my owns off course, and that sound like something I would do...
For now the render is going without crashing for 3.30 hours... I want to see if this time is the one. There's some things in the net about this spooling textures giving render crashes in 64 bits version on mac, so I'm hoping... If it crashes again I will post here the settings of all to see where can I down the settings without lose much quality. I believe that in some settings higher quality does not really make enough difference to compensate the amount of calculous... just don't know which...
For now, it seems I have to turn net down :P
Thank you all for the answers my friends, will give news as soon as the render is done (or as soon as it crashes)... But you just taught me so many things that you made me almost want to abort render to try them... almost... :P But a part of me wants to see if now it works!!
Before going out of net, I don't know if you were joking or not, but I actually find relaxing watching the small squares of color moving on the screen... :P at least for some minutes... ;)
I can't remember where the default temp file is located on a Mac. Probably in Documents. I changed mine to a custom location a long time ago.
There are some things you can do to optimize the scene and render settings. Posting a screen shot of the render settings may help us to offer suggestions. On a Mac it is Command (Apple Key) + Shift + 3 for capturing the entire screen. For capturing an area you define, it is Command (Apple Key) + Shift + 4. A cross-hair will appear. Click and drag the mouse over the area to capture and release. There will be a camera shutter sound effect and the image should automatically be saved to the desktop.
Some other things to consider are to render using the Batch Queue, and to lower the tile size. Also, if you observe the crash, try to determine if it occurs in the same spot each time. Rendering through the Batch Queue is easier on the memory, than rendering with the full scene open. Plus, if you notice the computer slowing down, you can pause the render, quit Carrara and restart Carrara or the computer and pick up where you left off.
For clouds, try turning off the global illumination setting in the editor and see if the look is what you want. It can save a lot of time.
If you are using Skylight and Indirect light (GI), try turning on Save Irradiance Map (you will be prompted to save the map with a Save Dialogue, save it where you can find it), then render a very low resolution version of your scene. This will save the light calculations. Next, turn off the Save IR map function and instead turn on Use Saved Irradiance Map. You will get an Open File Dialogue. Find the map you saved above and select it. Next, set your resolution for the final final render back to where you want it and render. You will get an incredible speed bump in the Light Calculations.
Well, I can actually show the render settings now... don't have to stop the render for that...
The render never crashes on the same spot... Actually, this last time it crashed on a part that was really easy and fast in render and it was rendered before. It's a part of the sky in the top with mostly no clouds nor sunbeams, so it really goes fast.
Don't know about batch queue.
That last thing you said about saving the irradiance map seems very interesting... Have to try that. It seems a good way to keep good quality without overuse the computer capabilities...
This is a capture from my rendering settings. For now the render keeps going good, but the first time it crashed was just at +- 50%... Let's see...
Look at the path bar at the bottom of the window for the location of the temp files. I guess it's time for me to clean out my temp files as well.
Forgot to say... I know where the temp files... just didn't knew I should clean them. Sorry for that.
But actually don't have many... anyway, is great to know that cleaning the temp files is a good idea...
Your settings look fairly reasonable. If you have issues still, try lowering the lighting quality from Best to Good and see what that does. You can also turn off render functions you don't need, specifically the Shadows Compatibility Mode. That's for rendering scenes created in older versions of Carrara.
If you're not using the Depth of Field effect you can turn that off as well. If you are, but you hate the render time, use a depth pass and if you have Photoshop (as an example), you can use the Lens Blur filter to achieve the effect faster.
Many thanks EP!!! Let's see how it goes.
I'll let you all know what's happening to this render. :)
We need RenderCam... Live, up to the minute coverage; Video at 11....
;)
lololololololololol
I'm sure you would love to see the color square just going around the screen for hours :P
How about reducing "Maximum Ray Depth" to 4 from 8
Carrara crashed again during night... So I'm following your advices...
1- Cleaned all the temp files.
2- Turned off the things I wasn't using as EP said
3 - Went the the clouds room, changed the light to use to sun only. Also changed the quality from very very high to good. Actually it does not seems to change to much the render time, but I am now rendering in 700x500px just to try. maybe in a bigger size we can see the difference.
4 - I am now going to try to make a render with just 700x500 px at 72 dpi with all other quality settings as they are just to see what happens. I'm also saving the irradiance map. If this smaller render goes fine I'm gonna try to do what EP said.
5 - put down the quality of soft shadows from high to good and reduced maximum ray depth to 4 (is actually what I use in ds).
Anyway, I think is more about the raytrace shadows... is in the shadow part that the render gets slower. So my question is - for me nice shadows are one of the most important part of the image quality, but is there such a big difference between best and good quality in the soft shadow tab and in maximum ray depth? I'm gonna try doing it for now, but in your experience, is there such a difference? I'm asking because I've already saw in ds that some settings that I just notice what difference makes when I do the render in high resolution. In all other renders I did in carrara, I always used this settings in lights and it never crashed, but I didn't have sun light... just spot lights... I actually did render with 3 spot light with shadows settings like this and indirect lights with maximum quality and I had no problems. What I also noticed is that the parts that have sun light shadows are the ones which go really slow... So maybe the big difference in this render is actually in the sun light.
So here is the render in low resolution (700x500 px at 72dpi). The shadows seem very good even with the reduction of quality.
I saved the irradiance map and am now starting the new render in high resolution using the irradiance map I saved.
Let's see if this time is the one...
Cool render!
Is that archway using a displacement, or does it just look like that? Very cool, nonetheless.
Yeah, try and be careful about cranking too much up at one time. HeadWax makes some huge images, as I think he prints them out. I'll be doing that too, but I dread the thought of a non-tower computer trying to do that. My high-end (then) laptop would get so hot I would fear for fire!
Extended long term renders will go better on your machine if there was a really good way to keep it cool. I have a really nice table fan for my laptop, but those cases (laptop/book) don't allow for the airflow that a tower system provides, and a lot of serious renderer towers even have liquid cooling plus huge airflow channeling. So if you're considering rendering super-large images, I would consider finding a render assistant of some sort. There are places that own render farms that will render your files for you, you can use render nodes and a network to get help from another machine in the house... whether using Carrara or any other render software, long term renders can make a lot of heat and start shutting things down.
Please keep in mind that this is just friend-to-friend talk... I have no IT knowledge or experience. Just a guy who has pushed some limits and backed off afterwards... due to my need to keep my computer(s) running for at least another year! ;)
Thank you Dartan
The archway has no displacement... It's really modeled this way. And it's a freebie I got in share CG. Really made a great search in there... It's a good way to have props and environments to use in my scenes while learning without bankrupt me. There's really cool stuff there... Depending on your style of course.
I know what your talking about when you speak about cooling... Friend to friend since I am no expert to ;) But for now I have to keep with my laptop... It took me lots of time to buy a good computer... and I needed a laptop... so... bought a good one... I also have a nice table fan, actually better than I thought. From time to time I come here to see if the computer is to warm, but is fine. Off course towers are always better for this huge renders... Renders are probably one of the things that most put a computer in the edge... Just never thought I would be doing so many things so quickly in 3D... Nor that 3D render were so powerful. Have some friends that work with video so they told me that this computer was great for renders... Of course, is their passion so they actually think their renders ask more of a computer than a still image render... :P Don't actually know for sure and it's not a competition... but I'm starting to think that 3D really pushes more the computer to the limit...
Never eared of render farms. What's that?? I would love to use render nodes... but this is the only computer in the house...
I had renders that took more time than this (at least until it crashes), so I think it's not so much about the time, but more about the calculations it does...
Also remembered something just a moment ago... So I'll share it.
In one video dreamlight teaches about a technic for still images with heavy renders. It's actually very simple (and it will be my last resource if this render crashes again):
- You prepare all your scene with all the lights and shadows as you like.
- Then you render the scene with only one light at a time (shut all the others down and render). You have to do this for every light so you will end up with as many renders as the lights you have.
- You then open them all on photoshop and change the layers mode to screen. All the lights and shadows will be there. You can even play with the opacity of each layer so you can make light adjustment.
I've done this once. And made a render with all the light of the same image to so I could compare. Could not see any difference in light quality.
More news... Carrara just crashed again... For the first time, just in front of my eyes....
Time for trying render 1 light at a time....
It's likely something within the Carrara scene... something... somewhere....
I know many people with fine Mac Books, and you're right (your friends, too) in that your book should really work good for rendering, but it will be lower than the studios for super high end render needs... sorry for my rants on all of that... I no longer think that this is computer heat related.
If it is working at lower settings, though, it must be something that does not play nicely with the higher settings you're using.
I do recall something about a redundancy in regards to changing to a high dpi and a high resolution dimension at the same time, as one is actually doing the same as the other... or some such. I probably have that messed up, but I do think that certain dimensions/dpi settings might not play nice, or a combination of too high of setting in both at the same time might be.... I don't know. It's actually that the number of pixel wide times the number of pixels high divided into the printed output that will give you dpi... but I'm not sure if there's anything in there to beware of. Wish I knew more.
Is this behavior happening on other scenes? If so, are you trying for the same higher results when that happens?
A render farm is a network of computers that all work together on different parts of each image. When you see those blocks on the screen during a render, each extra core added by a farm will add another block. This makes renders finish much faster, but each core still cranks wide open.
Before you go to that trouble, have you tried rendering using the Batch Queue or do you have your whole scene open?
You could also test to see what is causing the issue. If there is something you suspect may be the problem, try hiding it and rendering to see if it crashes still.
I know I had an issue once where I was trying to get a render. I just had one V4 inside a space ship. She was clothed. For some reason the render would crash. Over and over it would crash. My settings were no GI and 72 dpi at 2048 X 1036 or something. Finally in desperation I moved the camera very slightly back and no more crash. I can't explain it except that maybe there was some crazy geometry or a reflection or something that cause the render engine to freak out and when I moved the camera ever so slightly it was no longer in frame or hidden due to a perspective shift.
You don't have to say sorry. Your warnings really putted me checking for high temperature. I could not say it wasn't if I hadn't done it.
You are right. It has to be something in the scene, something that does not work well in higher settings... The only thing I can think is this nice arch and stone prop... Maybe something about the textures that it has... I'm saying this cause there is some strange effect happening on it in higher resolution.
This never happened before. I made the 3 renders you saw in the other thread, all with the same resolution and all with maximum quality levels both in soft shadow and in indirect light.
I'm now trying render each light at a time... let's see how it work... It's been a week now... want to get back to my learning... but am so stubborn to give up..
I love my mac, but I will have a beast of a workstation... one day... :P
Before you go to that trouble, have you tried rendering using the Batch Queue or do you have your whole scene open?
You could also test to see what is causing the issue. If there is something you suspect may be the problem, try hiding it and rendering to see if it crashes still.
I know I had an issue once where I was trying to get a render. I just had one V4 inside a space ship. She was clothed. For some reason the render would crash. Over and over it would crash. My settings were no GI and 72 dpi at 2048 X 1036 or something. Finally in desperation I moved the camera very slightly back and no more crash. I can't explain it except that maybe there was some crazy geometry or a reflection or something that cause the render engine to freak out and when I moved the camera ever so slightly it was no longer in frame or hidden due to a perspective shift.
I really don't know how to do batch queue render... or what it is...
Trying to test every things in the scene is a nice idea... but it would also take lots of time, since this just happen in high res and normally hours after the render start... but... I'm for everything now...
I've already started the first render... so I'll leave it through the night. If I wake up and it had crashed I will try that camera trick... It makes some sense... 3d softwares are strange beings... we never know what can make them freak out... Will try to leave the testing of all things in the scenes for last recourse...