Scene doesn't render!

[zhenka22]

I have used a sattelite photo as a displecement map for a plane in my scene. It is a 77 000 poly plane as a result. It has been rendering fine, if a bit slow. Today i added a spotlight and it still rendered. Then I went ahead and added a texture and suddenly it could not cope. Nothing happens in the render window, Maya just falls asleep. I have then force quit and opened the scene again without the texture but now it won't render even with the default lambert on.

I am running a dual Pentium 3.2 Ghz, 2 Gig RAM, Quadro FX 540. Surely this system must be able to handle this scene. Yesterday I even pumped out heaps of renders with paint fx in this scene and it was fine.

Please help ASAP!

Thanks

[zhenka22]

PS. I have tried to import it into a new scene but the results are the same unfortunately...

[sriram viswanathan]

Hi..

Well i dont have a solution to the render issue.. but i have tried a tool which will show the status of the memory and stuff like that.. you can use this tool to find out the amount of Ram available when u r working with heavy scene files... but pls save ur work and run this... cause when u hit 'flush undo' .. it clears all undo's from that scene.. if u click save and reopen .. it overwrites the existing file and reopens it for improving reponse rate....

//--------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Memory Analysis Tool - Uses maya's Inbuild Commands to know the status of the Main Memory
// Sriram Viswanathan
// Ver 1.0
// Source this script for the UI. Use it @ your own risk


proc meminfo()
{

float $heep[];
float $free[];
float $phy[];


int $pf[];
int $pr[];
int $sw[];
int $swf[];
int $swm[];
int $swv[];
int $swp[];
int $swl[];

string $sum[];

float $heep[]=`memory -he`;
floatField -e -v $heep[0] heapinfo;

float $free[]=`memory -fr`;
floatField -e -v $free[0] freemem;

float $phy[]=`memory -phy`;
floatField -e -v $phy[0] phyinfo;

int $pf[]=`memory -pf`;
intField -e -v $pf[0] pgfaults;

int $pr[]=`memory -pr`;
intField -e -v $pr[0] pgreclaims;

int $sw[]=`memory -sw`;
intField -e -v $sw[0] swap;

int $swf[]=`memory -swf`;
intField -e -v $swf[0] freeswap;

int $swm[]=`memory -swm`;
intField -e -v $swm[0] maxswapsize;


int $swv[]=`memory -swv`;
intField -e -v $swv[0] vswap;

int $swp[]=`memory -swp`;
intField -e -v $swp[0] pswap;

int $swl[]=`memory -swl`;
intField -e -v $swl[0] lswap;

string $sum[]=`memory -sum`;
string $wholeSum="";

for ($each in $sum)
{
$wholeSum+=($each+ " " );
}
scrollField -e -text $wholeSum summ;

}

proc flundo()
{
flushUndo;
}

proc reopen()
{
string $filesav;
string $filesav=`file -f -save -options "v=0" -type "mayaBinary"`;
file -f -o $filesav;
}


// UI stuff

if (`window -q -exists memtools`)
{
deleteUI memtools;
}
window -rtf 1 -title "Memory Analyser" memtools;
columnLayout -adj 1;

separator -height 10 -style "out";
button -l "Free Memory by Clearing All Undo's" -c "flundo()";

separator -height 10 -style "out";
button -l "Save and ReOpen the Current File" -c "reopen()";

separator -height 10 -style "out";
button -l "Analyse (Main n Swap Memory) " -c "meminfo()";

separator -height 10 -style "out";
text -align "center" -l "Summary of Memory";
scrollField -ed 0 -h 120 summ;

rowColumnLayout -nc 2 ;
text -align "left" -l "Memory Heap";
floatField -w 30 -h 25 heapinfo;

text -align "left" -l "Free Memory";
floatField -w 30 -h 25 freemem;

text -align "left" -l "Physical Memory";
floatField -w 30 -h 25 phyinfo;

text -align "left" -l "Page Faults";
intField -w 30 -h 25 pgfaults;

text -align "left" -l "Page Reclaims";
intField -w 30 -h 25 pgreclaims;

text -align "left" -l "No of Swaps";
intField -w 30 -h 25 swap;

text -align "left" -l "No of Free Swap";
intField -w 30 -h 25 freeswap;

text -align "left" -l "Max Swap Size";
intField -w 30 -h 25 maxswapsize;

text -align "left" -l "Virtual Swap";
intField -w 30 -h 25 vswap;

text -align "left" -l "Physical Swap";
intField -w 30 -h 25 pswap;

text -align "left" -l "Logical Swap";
intField -w 30 -h 25 lswap;

showWindow memtools;


meminfo();

// End of script
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[zhenka22]

Thanks for your advice, I will try this soon. Meanwhile, I have redone the scene by simply applying the displacement map to a nurbs plane. It now renders very quickly wothout too many issues.

Previously, after reading a tutorial, i converted the displacement to polygons, resulting in a ridiculously complex mesh. I guess this was not necessary at all for what i need...although i would be interested to know what advantages that would provide as it was done in that tutorial (from highend3d).

Also if after using your script, i discover that Maya is not being allocated enough processing power, are there any settings like in After Effects where you can control how much RAM is given to MAYA?

Thanks

[Jak_Carver]

Are you using Mental Ray? If you are, try optimizing your BSP tree and also set a lower limit for the memory consumption. That might just let you render the scene. You may also want to convert your scenes images to .map files to further optimize your rendering. Good luck.

[sriram viswanathan]

Hi...

I dont think u can set the allocation of main memory to maya using maya's setting...

But u can try the following to improve navigation and render performance while rendering heavy scenes or super duper simulations...( these are my observations, try it @ ur own risk)...

1. In window ----> preferences ---set the undo limit to 10 or 20..

2. run this cmd when u dont want the history stuff... -->
constructionHistory -toggle false;

3. Once u make a save as file copy .. run ---->flushUndo;

4. Optimize ur scene size from the file menu ...

5. Clean up the file and delete all unneccesary nodes. Try to optimize ur whole scene by minimising the number of constrains, calculations etc.

6. Try to bake all animations to joints for characters and try to bake all fur animations, simulations, etc and then render.

7. In max there is a option called point cache which bakes all deformation information to vertex and its a faster way to render.. but this thing is there in maya 8 features, which i m unsure of its performance as i have not downloaded the Maya 8 PLE... but if you can get some plugins which can do this job the rendering becomes faster...

8. u can do layered rendering... and composite later...

.... etc ..