Daz Studio has stopped working message.

kane809

Anyone else get this message when trying to render a product ( http://www.daz3d.com/miranda-s-ice-cream-parlor ) that has both IRAY and 3Delight rendering options? Well I do. I'm running Daz 4.7 and haven't been able to render this product either (  http://www.daz3d.com/vintage-ice-cream-van ) Can't say that I'm doing anthing other than loading the default 3delight materials then proceed to render then I get this "Daz has stopped working" pop up that has rendered these 2 purchases useless.Any help would be greatly appreciated

Richard Haseltine

4.7 is older than the product you are using, it is possible you are seeing an issue with its version of 3delight that is not present in more recent builds. Of course they may simply be too demanding for your system - what are the specifications?

kane809

First, thanks Richard  for taking the time to answer my humble inquiry, and second my main reason for not upgrading to a newer version of studio was my graphix cards not being Nvidias latest and greatest. My computer has pumped out some pretty demanding scenes in the past,animation included and I couldn't quite figure out what surfaces on the mentioned items where causing the crash. I did notice the Ice Cream truck had light emmiters. Anyway I'm still at a loss as what to do with these products an my version of daz.

Richard Haseltine

Well, there certainly shouldn't be an issue with system resources there (he says, enviously). Your GPU should be able to do useful work foir Iray - I have a 750GTi which works adequately as long as I don't look at the benchmarks for better cards - and in any event you don't have to use Iray in 4.9.x, nor do you absolutely need an nVidia GPU if you do use Iray. I would certainly advise you to make a back-up of your current DS installer (and plug-in installers), and export your userdata as in the threads on 4.9.x, in case of problems but I would then suggest trying the to update to 4.9.2.70.

Tobor

With nVidia drivers, a heavy load on the GPU in your nVidia graphics card, when that card is also used to power your monitor, can cause timeout issues. The card can become momentarily unresponsive, and Windows shuts 'er down. This is a Windows protective mechanism, and you may get a spate of error messages, from Windows, from the nVidia driver, and from D|S itself.

As a BTW, when this happens, it's best to restart your computer afterward. The graphics driver can get hammered during this error, and it's best to simply restart.

Tobor

I just noticed from your screen shot your nVidia drivers might be too old for Iray processing, even if you use 4.8, the first version with Iray. If you ever do move up,  you can still get the timeout error, which is why it can be helpful to add a second cheap card to run your monitor.

Since you can rollback drivers, you might try updating to the next-to-latest. In the scheme of the universe, your driver is by now pretty old and outdated.

 

kane809

Sweet. Tobor you pretty much nailed it on the monitor going nuts when I'm in studio and trying to render. I didn't know the card was getting maxed out cuz I'm always just watching how much ram I'm burning through at any given time.Gentleman it probably is time for some upgrading on my part, but how is a person supposed to know this stuff before making a purchase in the Daz store that may or may not work with they're version of studio. Really was in the mood for some Ice Cream too. Thanks

Tobor

I think the answe is, "it depends."

Just yesterday I had a heck of a time with some Iray shaders from a very well respected vendor here. *On my system* the shaders are just north of being too complex for the slower clock in the card that I use for my monitor. It would get to about 10-12 sampling iterations (in Iray, the whole scene renders at once, but only a field of pixels at a time), and then BAM!

I could do one of two things:

1) Turn off that card in the renderer, which is something Iray lets you do. That left my other nVidia card to handle the Iray processing

2) Re-shade everything. I resisted this method, as these particular shaders are 'da bomb,' as they say, and I liked the look they were imparting.

I'm not sure how much of the card 3DL uses, but a tool like GPU-Z also reports this. It might be interesting to see what you get.

As for what to buy, I know the answer to that one: "The best you can afford." Assuming you want to eventually step up to Iray, the higher-end boards -- $350+ -- do a remarkable job. For Iray, you need a healthy combination of CUDA cores, RAM (no less than 4GB, to get the denser scenes out there), and fast RAM and processor. All of these are listed in the Specifications for the card on the nVidia site, though do keep in mind that the specs from the various brands can differ to some degree. The specifications nVidia provides are for reference boards. Makers like EVGA and Asus are welcome to go beyond those specs.

kane809

Wow. I knew Iray was demanding just not that demanding. In general I've noticed the more texture maps in most scenes the harder my system has to work, so cut back on the shaders,normal maps,displacement,bump,etc...except for the up close shots. Is it even possible to render big scenes? Lol you seem to be finding that sweet spot that just keeps getting away from me when it comes to managing all the elements involved.

Tobor

Iray can be demanding, but like 3DL, it depends on how the surface shaders have been constructed. For nearly all stuff from Daz, every shader is based on a very complex resource, the Uber Iray Shader. With this thing, making selections turns features on and off, and it's possible to activate so many settings that the calculations to resolve a surface skyrockets exponentially. Just because a setting *can* be made, doesn't mean it *should*. Some settings, particularly those related to creating emissive objects, are at odds with others, and produce either negative effects, or make systems crawl to a stand-still.

Many of the vendors here have higher-end systems, because they create this stuff for a living, and need to. So they're unaware these issues exist. Even though most of my work is commercial, rendering is only part of it,  with income having to get spread out among many expenses. My machine is satisfactory for general art tasks, but I wouldn't call it top-of-the-line, and is near the bottom for using a quasi-unbiased renderer like Iray. So I encounter a lot of these edge cases that, for modest systems, become front and center. 

Mind you, I'm not castigating any vendor for wanting to produce stellar work. It's up to me to improve my system so that it can accommodate this new technology. But it is a reminder that we're bleeding edge in many ways. We stress out these cards in ways nVidia doesn't always consider, especially since in their mindset, we should all be using Quadro cards for rendering. GeForce cards are for home gaming, after all.