FP3 Ati Users?

[CAClark]

Ok, I have a major problem going on with FP3, and i need ATi users to confirm their experience.

I can occasionally get it to render fully, but mmost often it crashes out very soon after start to render 9either interactive or the render option). Higher poly scenes make the problem worse it seems.

I really need soem input because i am full ahead stop with FP3 right now, which I am not ecstatic about having paid $400 to get the benefit of it.

Steve Worley has looked in to the problem some, and I am a few days now waiting to hear back further, so in the meantime, figured i would try and harvest more info.

Cheers!

[Intuition]

Hey Craig,

When you say Ati users are you referring to the vid card or something else?

[CAClark]

Oh hey, sorry, shoulda been clearer, I mean vid cards at the moment. I'm guessing at vid cards as a possible issue, but I sent me scene setup/models to Steve Worely and he was able to render AOK, though I am not certain as to what his machine spec is, but OPenGL does have an impact on fprime apparantly.

Cheers!

[Intuition]

hmm. I have an ATI in my old p4 3.2 and an nvidia in the quad opteron.

No probs, sorry I can't be of more help. Is it more stable in 32bit flavor or just crashy in both? I was crashing 64bit a lot but 32 works great. Yet, 64bit is the future sos I hope Worley can get the bugs out.

[Sensei]

Oh hey, sorry, shoulda been clearer, I mean vid cards at the moment. I'm guessing at vid cards as a possible issue, but I sent me scene setup/models to Steve Worely and he was able to render AOK, though I am not certain as to what his machine spec is, but OPenGL does have an impact on fprime apparantly.

The question is did he render in the same 32/64 bit mode as you.. ? Do you have any non-standard plug-ins used in the scene? Perhaps Steve have them in different versions.. ?
I don't think so video cards and OpenGL have any impact on real-time previewers.. They basically don't use it.. Especially in render-only mode without preview window..

[CAClark]

OPenGL does have an impact on interactive preview, but NOT the render to file option, so Steve actually ruled that out in his email i got this morning.... so that rules out any worth in my vid card inquiries.

It would seem to be specific to my hardware/software setup. But 64bit has very few plugins installed.... in fact VB2 may be the only third party 64bit one..... but I'll wipe them all out tonight when I test the stuff I have been asked to try.

Fingers crossed :)

[Andy Webb]

Have you checked your RAM usage while rendering, I've noticed that the closer it get to maxing out the more unstable FPrime seems to be.

I've got an Intel Dual Core 64bit machine running Vista Ultimate.

LW 32bit causes the most crashes and also the most crashes with FPrime. Running LW 64bit seems the most stable by far, unfortunately using FPrime with it's 'no lights with LW material nodes' bug makes it a problem with nodes but I digress.

Andy

[Phil]

Only recently been running it in OSX on the MBP (ATI X1600 built-in) and had crash issues when nodal with SimpleSkin is present and the object is cleared from the scene. It's not fully reproducible yet and I've not had the time to pin this down to a specific sequence. As soon as I can, I will push the whole thing to Steve.

Not as much experience on the Win32 side on the same MBP yet. Later today, I hope.

[CAClark]

Ram use typically get to about 2.5gb, and I have 4gb installed, so it didn't ought to be ram related. I haven't tried it on my MBP yet, but the copy of the scene setup I sent steve works fine on his hardware, and he tested it on xeons, AMD X2, and mac G5..... so beyond being specific to me setup, it's a mystery.

Liek I said, next step should be to loose ALL non standard plugins, and see what happens.

Cheers!

Have you checked your RAM usage while rendering, I've noticed that the closer it get to maxing out the more unstable FPrime seems to be.

I've got an Intel Dual Core 64bit machine running Vista Ultimate.

LW 32bit causes the most crashes and also the most crashes with FPrime. Running LW 64bit seems the most stable by far, unfortunately using FPrime with it's 'no lights with LW material nodes' bug makes it a problem with nodes but I digress.

Andy

[Andy Webb]

It would be hand to know what the solution is just in case it's something that could affect us all 8~

Lets hope you get a result!

Andy

[CAClark]

Indeed, I hope so. Steve is on the case, so I am hopeful :)

[Lost_Soul]

The crashes I've experienced seem to have been when FPrime is writing the image file. I believe it crashed when writing LW 32 tga files. I started testing all the image formats, but havent finished yet. Not sure if this could be the same problem your experiencing, but you could try a different save option with the same scene and see what happens.

[digitaljim]

Hello. I was reading this thread and thought I would tell what has been happening to me. XP64, AMDFX-62, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 7800, Asus MOBO, current 9.2 beta... I am trying to render a large scene 1280x720 HD, underwater, with ice, a submarine, water, fog, ocean floor, no radiosity... tons of polys. I can do a preview without any problem, zoom in out, pan left to right, scrub timeline... when I try to render the scene - starts out fine, when it hits frame 8 it crashes. Frame 8 is pretty much the same as the frames before and after. I tried a "classic" non-refine render, and same thing, crashes around or at frame 8. Now, I have noticed that LW will crash... the XP "your program crashed" box comes up but the Fprime box continues to render, until it reaches the point where it is supposed to save, and then freezes. I click out of the XP "your program crashed" box and everything dissappears, like it normally would after a crash. Maybe this info will help???? I would just like to finish my render!

I have also tried several file saving methods: LW_tga, tga, bmp, tif - all do the same thing. Also tried w/ and wo/ saving with an alpha layer.

I have also tried to reduce size of the LW interface, selecting none for the view, making the window as small as possible, closing other LW windows... no luck.

Hope this helps (me or you)!

[Andy Webb]

- starts out fine, when it hits frame 8 it crashes. Frame 8 is pretty much the same as the frames before and after.


Try starting the render at frame 9 and see if the same problem arises after 8 frames.

If it does then it could be something like a memory leak that accumulates over 8 frames.

[digitaljim]

Try starting the render at frame 9 and see if the same problem arises after 8 frames.

If it does then it could be something like a memory leak that accumulates over 8 frames.

Yeah, I already tried that, started/tested the render at various frames to no avail. I spent about 4 hours trying various ways to make my render work. Arrr. maybe I need a better workstation? - who doesn't...

I also wanted to add that I found with all of my tests that if I: open LW, open my scene, go directly to Fprime render... it will misplace/move objects in the scene/render. If I open LW, open my scene, render a Fp preview, close that, then do a Fprime render, the items in the scene are fine. Weird, but may be it's a reported bug that I am overlooking??? or Maybe I am loosing my mind???

I also wanted to add that my machine running LW64 only has LW on it, nothing else, the computer is strictly for LW. So there are no other programs running in the background, no virus scan, nothing. - besides system stuff.

I wonder if using vista would be any better???

[digitaljim]

Upgraded mobo bios, got the new 9.2 rc1, Fprime is working super now!

[Larry_g1s]

I just changed to 9.2 x64 about a week ago, and just today fPrime 3 x64. THe preview works fine, but when I try to render a scene I can see it calculating it, and a couple of seconds after trying to save it, it crashes. Anyone know what gives? I've been trying to save it as a .tga

Upgraded mobo bios, got the new 9.2 rc1, Fprime is working super now!What do you mean when you said upgraded mother board bios with the 9.2 rc1?

[digitaljim]

I just changed to 9.2 x64 about a week ago, and just today fPrime 3 x64. THe preview works fine, but when I try to render a scene I can see it calculating it, and a couple of seconds after trying to save it, it crashes. Anyone know what gives? I've been trying to save it as a .tga

What do you mean when you said upgraded mother board bios with the 9.2 rc1?

That was a little bit ago.... if my memory serves me right... delete all the config files, and restart. I believe my problem, even after my last post, had to do with the config files. Maybe this will help.

My system is working good now - Athlon FX62 4GB Ram Nvidia 8900, LW9.264bit, FP 3.02