Not enough memory

[leonardo]

Hi all,

I have this scene to render, but I get all sorts of error messages, like:

not enough memory for bounding box setting
not enough memory for segment buffers
not enough memory for center arrays

Can someone explain to this beginner what is happening here? And what can I do about it?

Thank you very much for your help

[Aegis]

Umm... you're all out of memory? :D

How much RAM have you got in your PC? 256mb is the bare minimum for running LightWave and 512mb is highly recommended (most users here seem to have have 1gb or more).

If you press 'w' you'll bring up statistics for you scene which will show you how much memory the scene occupies.

Try reducing your render resolution, the amount of image maps / geometry in the scene - close all background tasks that may be running and reduce your segment memory setting in the camera properties.

[leonardo]

Well, Aegis, I've got 2 Gb RAM, and some more coming in today. I'm hopeful that will help, but I'm going to check your suggestions out. The RAM is obvious, that's why I was hoping for some not-so-obvious hints. And now I've got some ;) . Thank you so much

[Gabe]

In Layout, select your camera and then choose 'options'. Click the button that says 'Segment Memory Limit' and raise the number to something much higher than the default 8 megs. This should solve your render problems.

[Adrian@Stufish]

If your getting those messages with 2 Gb of RAM then you must have something pretty wierd going on - that can usually cope with an enormous scene.
Run task manager with the performance tab selected and watch whats happening.
Does your computer actually see all that memory to start with ?

or have you perhaps set segment memory far to high - if you had accidentaly set segment memory to 1.5 GB then LW would try to reserve that amount of space when a render started, and you'd have problems.

[Lynx3d]

Aegis' first sentence reminds me of those stupid IBM commercials over here...something like:
a woman at the psychiatrist
"i have nightmares...we float on the water, i feel lost, lonely and need help...what does it mean?"
"you are lost, lonely and need help..."

Anyway, i hate to ask this, but what OS are you using? I hope it's NT-based otherwise it's worthless discussing about possible causes...
some other scene statistics? Image maps, shadow maps etc?

[madrenderman]

segment memory limits is the right way.
this value is how many memory lw use to render this image or sequence. less memory, many strip to render this image, more memory less strip and more speed.
If you find problem, you can split render in many section with limited area (automatized by frenchware plugin, check on flay.com with limited area word), then start with 50 mb in segment memory limits and try to render, if lw start, try to increase by 10 mb at time).
If not start, try to decrease this memory, if lw find a small number it only build more strip, but it is not limited on rendering, and leave more memory to build buffer and general optimizing buffe.

with these tips i render images at 10000 x 12000 with complex reflection, refraction, and many area light or radiosity.

this is tip until newtek decide to add a more optimized memory working and stocking by lw.

have nice day.

[nerdyguy227]

Try to reduce the amount of rendering threds you use.

[da_duke]

could be based on a lightwave bug too. when using high res images (textures, environment), lightwave tends to allocate much more memory than necessary. i've had this problem with many projects. sometimes it is fine and often it crash because of not enough memory. clicking on each image in image editor and on every surface to get a preview helps often. when using a surface with a lot of images, it was also a solution to start a render without images (create a surface without the images, save it, load it befor rendering, if render starts, hit cancel, load old surface, render). if everything fails, render using the screamer node, so lightwave doesn't load the scene into layout. it's my favourite solution for high res renderings.
greetings
da_duke