OS X 10.8.2, C8.5-172, very slow renders and crash
thoromyr
Posts: 452
I recently got an iMac and have been using Carrara on it. This has been very nice because it renders four times faster than my old system, but I have encountered a problem with my latest scene.
The scene isn't particularly complex with two props, m4, v4 and conforming clothing. And dynamic hair for grass -- but that's nothing compared to a recent scene with numerous objects, high counts for dynamic hair (three sets), etc., etc. The current scene rendered fine when I did tests to see how it looked, but when I went to do a final render I noticed it was going very slowly -- the CPU was at 25% utilization! (reported as 200%, out of 800% due to four core with hyper threading). Normally it is around 750% utilization so I looked for causes and tweaked the render settings.
There's no disk access going on with plenty of free memory. No other processes are taking up much CPU. I went back to the previous settings and with other tweaking managed to get a little more utilization (reported as 250%). Well, I let it run and did some editing in a text file so I wasn't watching and don't know how far it got, but not very far based on time elapsed, when Carrara crashed.
I can't really see anything to either cause a low CPU utilization render or to induce a crash. I've been on 10.8.2 for nearly as long as I've had the computer and have rendered for ~8 days solid (batch of multiple scenes) without mishap. So I'm at a loss.
I'll be trying the render again in a bit, but it will take a while due to the slowness to discover anything. Anyone else on OS X experiencing these sort of issues?
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Carrara on newer versions of OS X can be a bit problematic, although I haven't seen the exact behavior that you describe.
Please go to the DAZ Bug Reporter and file a bug report with as much detail as you can manage, as this will help DAZ sort out the problems before C8.5 ships.
If you are on 64-bit, then turn off texture spooling. (File | Preferences, Imaging and Scratch Disk, uncheck "spool texture on disk"). Texture spooling on 64-bit Carrara causes symptoms like you describe.
Carrara on newer versions of OS X can be a bit problematic, although I haven't seen the exact behavior that you describe.
Please go to the DAZ Bug Reporter and file a bug report with as much detail as you can manage, as this will help DAZ sort out the problems before C8.5 ships.
Well, if it was reproducible (even intermittently) I'd certainly do so. I started the render again and it goes slow but it got much further without crashing (I aborted because I discovered a mistake). I certainly want to get bugs reported before they stop the beta...
Ah hah! Interesting. It also causes problems when running Carrara in Wine. Thanks and done!
I know it's an old thread, but I always look on goggle when I have a problem cause it finds threads in carrara forum about the subject.
I was having lots of crashes in a simple render to, using a very recent mac and 64 bits carrara. Already turn off texture spooling... Let's see if it works...
Thank you
Isn't C8.5-172 one of the old betas. It may have bugs. C8.5-245 is the most recent version.
It is a thread brought back from the dead! ;-)
Well, if my render doesn't crash again... it's proven that the problem persist... If it crashes again... well, in the thread I created about this there's lot's of other solutions. :)
I actually didn't even realized this is about an older version... just look for everything to solve a problem... as I said before I searched through google "carrara render crashes) and it brought me here :P When I saw this thread I hadn't find anything better yet. Anyway after the first crash at 50% rendering I was being unable to do much more than 5%... now is rendering fine for more than 6 hours... :)
Even though it is an old thread, I do still have occasional problems when rendering on a Mac.
To reduce problems, I have a procedure which I follow before a large render starts.
-Go through all "remove unused objects/consolidate duplicate shaders/remove unused shaders."
- Save the file
-quit Carrara (Do this separately from saving, as sometimes a save "fails." If you quite and choose "save" from the dialog, a "fail" will cause you to lose changes.
- Reopen Carrara, open the file and render
- If rendering an animation, _always_ render as some sort of sequenced image. When Carrara crashes, you don't lose the frames already rendered. Rendering as a movie file means you have to start over if there is a crash.
Crashes are much less frequent with the current version, but they are still there. I seem to have the most problems when rendering a long animation, or after rendering several things. While much better now, I can also see how render time for later animation frames are longer than early frames. Even the first frame renders quicker when Carrara is first opened (per above procedure) as opposed to having Carrara open and working for a while.
Hope this helps.
Thank you. It does help.
I'm rendering a single image, not an animation, but it's a long one cause it is with high resolution.
Actually the render crashed just in the beginning when I had carrara open a long time, and almost in the middle when I just opened carrara. Didn't saw the relation, but now that you've mentioned it...
I'm now trying to do a thing EP told me. I rendered in low res and saved the irradiance map. Now I'm rendering in high res but using this map. It really bumps up the speed render... it's amazing...
I will keep in mind that thing about unused shaders!!
I have to say, really love carrara!! Although I'm very new at it, I will keep using it. But it's starting to appear to me that daz don't give it enough credit. I mean, ds is always having updates... and carrara?? It's an amazing software!!! It's a paid software! And for what I see there's a lot of things that could be worked so that it handle better with the features it have. I see there are stability problems that should be fixed... Like the saving failing lots of times... some crashes over nothing... really over nothing, not in the renders... I know ds is a great platform for selling content... but carrara IS a great great software... They would be smart it they payed it the attention it deserves...
The neat thing about the low-res irradiance map trick, is that the IR map is that it is for the whole scene. You could change up your camera angles with no need to recalculate. If you change the lighting or move or add an object, then you would need a new map.
I thought I missed something in this thread, but that trick must have been discussed elsewhere. I understand the concept, but would you mind providing some detail on how to do this? (or a link to the thread it was discussed).
Also, is the technique applicable for animations as well?
I thought I missed something in this thread, but that trick must have been discussed elsewhere. I understand the concept, but would you mind providing some detail on how to do this? (or a link to the thread it was discussed).
Also, is the technique applicable for animations as well?
Sorry about that! Sometimes I get forum schizophrenia!
It's the last paragraph of this post that you want to look at:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/40661/#595641
If you have any questions, just ask!
There was another discussion a short while ago about animating a figure with a static IR map. and I used the saved IR map trick to actually render a GI scene in a very reasonable amount of time. You can fly a camera around your scene as much as you want with a static map, but if you animate a figure or change the lighting, you'll have issues. You can't save an animated IR map, which is a bummer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLHnOrEyz3Y
Sorry about that... have to learn to leave links when I start messing up all the threads I'm talking about a thing... ;)
So the irradiance map is resolution independent? That's a useful trick to know.
It seems to be.
Also, I don't think it is saved until the render is completed- At least that has been my experience. If I interrupt the render after the lighting calculations are done, it doesn't appear where I chose to save it. That's in C7.2 Pro of course.
Of course I have questions. :)
Just so I understand correctly.
I set up a scene. To use round figures, let's say my final render will be 6000 x 4000 px. So I render at 600 x 400 and choose to save the IR map.
Then I change my render settings to the actual 6000 x4000 and choose to use the newly created IR map. Makes sense so far.
- Should the low-res map be a multiple of the final render? I am guessing it should have the same aspect ratio.
- On animations (which is why I have not looked into this trick in the past)... this should work if all my scene elements are static. But if I the only movement is the camera (such as a fly-through) this should work?
It would have to be, otherwise it'll need to recalculate for the parts of the picture that are missing from the original. (which probably means a complete recalc)
It seems to be.
Also, I don't think it is saved until the render is completed- At least that has been my experience. If I interrupt the render after the lighting calculations are done, it doesn't appear where I chose to save it. That's in C7.2 Pro of course.
The same in C8.5 Pro. Just in the end of the render the map is saved
Thank You for sharing all these very useful tips. This irradiance map technique is going to be a time saver for my long renders.
I'm using the IR map exactly how it was saved in the low res render and it's working perfectly... This IR map file is not an image file... Actually in my mac I don't have any program to open it... So I don't know how I could change it. But the render is going faster and it's looking pretty good.
Me to!!! It was a great tip from EP!! Still praying for my high res render don't crash again, but it proved to speed up things, no doubt.
Today I have 21% render done after 5.40h.
Yesterday I had 10% after 7 hours... We can say it's a difference...
It would have to be, otherwise it'll need to recalculate for the parts of the picture that are missing from the original. (which probably means a complete recalc)
According to the manual the IR map is the complete scene, so as long as there aren't animated objects or lights you can render the scene from any angle without having to redo the map. The manual says you could even animate a camera moving through the scene.
I don't know what an aspect change would do to the map. I haven't tested it. I usually just have proportions locked and reduce the scene resolution.
The video I linked to showing the artifacts caused by an animated walk cycle in a static map was rendered at 240X180 to generate the map, but then the finished the video was rendered at 640 X 480. First frame no artifacts.
That suggests it's independent of the production frame (I was assuming they were linked), so if you can move the camera, presumably you can also zoom it, so aspect ratio should also be safe. I wonder if that extends to multiple cameras...
There are some limits to this. I just did a check, hoping to reduce the render time of a particular scene. The scene is to be rendered at 3200x2400 so I reduced to 320x240, saved the irradiance map, then set to use the map changed the render resolution back to 3200x2400 and got numerous artifacts. I cancelled the render, but I've attached a clip to show some of the problems.
That's good to know about a limit. Are the artifacts the light effects or in the shadows? When you rendered the initial sample image, what was the lighting quality, photon count and map accuracy set to? I noticed that when using a saved map those options are disabled in the renderer.
That's good to know about a limit. Are the artifacts the light effects or in the shadows? When you rendered the initial sample image, what was the lighting quality, photon count and map accuracy set to? I noticed that when using a saved map those options are disabled in the renderer.
All the light blooms are erroneous. Mostly white, but I see four in the sample that are blue. The GI settings were defaults (I don't recall just what those values are). This particular scene takes a ridiculously long time to render (~20 days on my system) so I did drop not only the resolution but also the antialiasing, object accuracy and shadow accuracy (none, 4 pixels, 4 pixels). My normal settings are good, 1 pixel and 2 pixels. No other settings changed -- maybe the antialiasing or accuracy setting changes are responsible?
I put them back to what I used for creating the irradiance map and am trying again.
edited to add: I've checked "Use saved Map" and selected the saved irradiance map, but none of the settings are ghosted so it at least looks like I could change them.
edited again to say: it *has* been two years since I last touched this scene so I was assuming that it would render correctly at all -- but for all I know the current build has an issue. Although I could tweak things to improve the render time, this is a nasty image to render with refracted light passing through multiple planes and a large number of hairs (currently rendering so I can't get a count, but hundreds of thousands at the least I'm sure) with respectable segment count (can't check, but I'm pretty sure it was high to keep them as smooth and natural as possible).