Lightwave render crash

[Jimzip]

Sorry to dampen the community once again, but I'm having a problem that's driving me crazy.
During renders especially, Lightwave just crashes. No reason, no error message and no warning, it just vanishes.
I have tried everything, and I'm out of options. Just wondering if anyone else is having the problem.

It's also a major scene, it's for my end of year animation and I can't work like this.
There are 144,982 polygons in the scene, but most of it is trees, and they're all on bounding box mode. So you see, it's rather a full scene.

Anyway, if anyone can help I would appreciate it greatly.

Jimzip :D

Oh, and system specs, Dual 1.25GHz G4, 1.5GB RAM, 64 MB ATi card. (Yeah the drivers are updated..)

[Phil]

I have found that checking the scene file over with a text editor can help. Any references to master plugins (spreadsheet) can bring down LW and also ScreamerNet at the startup of rendering (quite pathetic that this still exists despite numerous bug reports). Try removing them from the scene file (they won't show up in Layout) - they'll be towards the beginning of your scene file.

Another option is to use ScreamerNet in Mode 3 (i.e. purely local rendering). Given that you are on a Mac, I'm not sure how this is set up for you - check the manual. ScreamerNet will only render to still images (which is what you should be doing anyway), so bear that in mind.

If you are trying to render to an animation file, don't! Render to stills and then when finished, reload these stills into a new scene and use them as a background image sequence. You can then render to an animation (or post process) without risking losing hours of rendering.

[Jimzip]

Thanks Phil. Yeah, the problem is I'm only trying to render a small test-animation at a very small size. It gets about thirty frames in, and then does the Houdini..

I don't know. I'll try rendering out to stills. But the render animation function really should work more reliably. Anyway, I'm not going to fight it. Thanks for the reply.

Jimzip :D

[mlinde]

Hey Jim.
1) Are you rendering via F10/Layout, or Screamernet?
2) Do you have any custom plugins or effects, or something specific in the scene that is loading for the first time around the crashing frame (ie volumetrics are enveloped to start at that frame)?
3) Does it consistently crash at the same point?
4) Are you running other applications while rendering?
5) Do you have enough drive space to render the animation?

Sorry to pepper you with questions, I think more information is necessary to diagnose and solve your issue.