United3dArtists Archive

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 25 Aug 2012, 14:41

Hello all,

I am currently running rather large truespace files that are around 123mb in size.

When I am in the process of rendering them, I get the 1/4 screen rendered and then the last 3/4 ends up black.

I watch my memory usage during that time with windows task manager and see the memory top out at around 1.5gb.

I have 4gb currently maxing out my motherboard now and am using ts7.61 on windows XP. I was thinking maybe trying them on ts6.6 if that might help.

Without buying a new motherboard, what tricks can I use to free up the maximum amount of memory so truespace can get closer to the 4gb I have on my computer?

Thanks for any insight..maybe I have to turn off some other proceses on my computer? Is there a less resource intensive render setting?

Regards,
Jeff H.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 26 Aug 2012, 12:03

How many polygons have this scene ?
Just to know if the problem is elsewhere. Several solutions.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 26 Aug 2012, 12:56

I know this problem very well.

Lightworks can't handle very heavy scenes (in megabytes), and even large scenes (in meters). If the scene is too heavy it stops rendering (the rest is black), and if the scene is too large, like a neighborhood scene superior to 500 m x 500 m, it does not even start rendering.

The trick with large scenes is to reduce the size : select all objects in scene and scale it down 10x. Therefore, a 500 m x 500 m area will become a 50 m x 50 m place.

With heavy scene, it is more problematic. You will notice that if you render at a lower resolution, tS can complete the rendering.
So a workaround is to render portions of the screen, and next to re-assemble the portions in Photoshop (or else).
Try this :
- Clic the Render_a_portion_of_the_screen icon, then move the cursor at 0,0, press Ctrl key and drag the mouse to select the top 1/3 of the screen. This will render to file the first 1/3 of your image.
- Next, do the same and drag the mouse in order to select the second 1/3 of the screen. Make sure you clic in a position that was already in the first 1/3 so the portions will overlap. Overwise you may miss some lines of your render.
- Same thing for the last 1/3.
With this trick I was able to render a >100 Mb scene in 8000 x 8000 pixels.

It is important to avoid going to such big scenes. Always try to optimize polygons, especially on objects that are far from the camera. Here you can use the LOD tool (or a tSX made for GameSpace that does the same job - but sorry I don't remember its name).

I hope this will help

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 26 Aug 2012, 13:01

Ah, and about the memory, having a super motherboard with plenty of ram doesn't help.
I am currently running tS on an Asus P6T with an i7 (6 cores) and 8 Gb of ram + Windows XP PRo 64.
TrueSpace is a 32 app ; it will only use a maximum of 2 Gb of ram

... and lightworks will probably stop rendering if tS's own memory use exceeds 1 or 1.5 Gb.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 26 Aug 2012, 14:00

Emmanuel,

Thanks soooo much for that simple idea.

I never really ever used the render protion of the scene option but after your description, it seems obvious!

I will give it a try.

I was going to try something similar by turning on and off layers in the model and rendering...but the shading and shadows would have been wrong between objects.

Marcel...I will get that polygon count for you also. I have most objects reduced with the polygon reduction already.

Thanks again,
Jeff H.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 30 Aug 2012, 15:52

Update.....

I finally got ts6.6 reloaded and tried to open the giant file which was bogging down and giving me a 1/4 rendered screen in ts7.61.

It seemed to be working fine...even with me playing music and surfing the web at the same time....which I was unable to do due to resource usage.

ts6.6 renedered the entire image fine ....except.....l.

Only wierd part was that the colors I had add to the objects in ts7.61 were all gone and it only had standard gray for the entire model.

Any idea why? I was just using basic colors with the luminosity turned up in ts7.61.......with no other shaders involved.

Thanks,
Jeff

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 30 Aug 2012, 16:29

Just thinking and you'll probably get better answers from those with knowledge or experience with these issues.

TS 6.6 (stand alone, not TS 7.6 model side = 6.6+) likely uses much less memory than TS 7.6 since it has no workspace. It is not two programs in one. Using less memory means more for the render so the big file could render.

If the texture problem isn't a bug then maybe it is a backward compatibility problem. Maybe TS 7.6 textures/colors are slightly different than TS 6.6.
Test: save a simple scene from TS 7.6 the same way you saved the big one and see if the colors are OK in TS 6.6.
Possible Sloution: be sure to save the scene from TS 7.6 in TS 6.6 format. The save dialog box has a list.

What is the giant scene? Why is it so big?

spacekdet · Post by **spacekdet** » 30 Aug 2012, 16:37

Rhino169 wrote: the colors I had add to the objects in ts7.61 were all gone and it only had standard gray for the entire model.
Any idea why?

There's probably a technical explanation involving a lot of mumbo-jumbo and spaghetti, but basically it's due to their having 2 different render methods.
(real-time vs. a render engine) You have to commit to one or the other and texture accordingly.

In the mood for a little more experimentation? If your 7.61 version has Model side, turn on bridge, switch to Model, and save as *.scn format using the Model side file menu. Give it a different file name just to be safe.
This might work, it might not, the troll that lives under the bridge loves to gobble up textures.

BTW, I've done the 'area render+stitch together afterwards' trick and it works.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 30 Aug 2012, 17:02

spacekdet wrote:real-time vs. a render engine

Oh! I thought you were using 7.6x model side.

spacekdet · Post by **spacekdet** » 30 Aug 2012, 17:35

He may have been. I can't keep all the 7.x flavors straight.

v3rd3 · Post by **v3rd3** » 30 Aug 2012, 18:45

When it comes to textures, materials and lighting I use the tools in model side for model side renders and workspace for workspace.

Plain color settings to work ok from one side to the other but anything else there are some variations that end up needing to be tweeked.

One thing I do to manage memory is I turn off the bridge when I render in modelside ... this seems to be key to successfully rendering larger scenes.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 31 Aug 2012, 05:03

As far as size in vertices and polygons...my file is:

905764 vertices

1.78179e+006 polygons

I reopened the same file in ts7.61 under the model side and the colors reappeared. Most be an oddity as described by spacekadet.

Bridge off in 7.61 model side....freezes at 1/4 screen.

So my next question is...how do I do the render area of screen so that it saves the outputs as .jpg, .bmp etc.. so I can stitch them together in a image editing program? Currently the render ends up on the screen which then I assume I would have to do a print screen and save. This would limit my resolution I believe.

Thanks for the help so far.

spacekdet · Post by **spacekdet** » 31 Aug 2012, 17:26

See attached image below.

Click render to Screen/ Render To File and choose 'Render To File' icon (marked #1)

Click 'render a portion of the screen' icon. (#2)

Draw bounding box around area that you want rendered.

A dialog box will pop up where you choose location, format, and file name. (#3)

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 31 Aug 2012, 18:22

spacekdet wrote:See attached image below.

Click render to Screen/ Render To File and choose 'Render To File' icon (marked #1)

Click 'render a portion of the screen' icon. (#2)

Draw bounding box around area that you want rendered.

A dialog box will pop up where you choose location, format, and file name. (#3)

area_render_2_file_minitut.jpg

Or press the Ctrl key when clicking the Render Portion Of Screen icon, as I said in the earlier post.

Regarding your problem with textures being replaced with plain grey color, this was a known memory bug in tS7.5 that should have been fixed in tS7.6, and should never happen if Bridge is turned OFF.
It also comes if you try to open tS7.6 cob or scn files in earlier versions.

I never encountered this issue in other situations though.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 02 Sep 2012, 16:43

Spacekadet,
Thanks for the extra bit of guidance. I assumed it was possiblr to do a partial screen render...just didn't know the extra steps involved!

I will try and post a picture when I get finished.

One thing I do notice is that the file while in ts6.6 is much more stable and has only given me one error so far when I tried to clear an animation, while in scene editor, that I fat fingered onto an object. I have no animation in the scene.

With 7.61, I was getting erros daily...the one that asks you if you want to try and recover your file,....and this was causing me to save every chance I could get.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 05 Dec 2013, 16:30

For those who read my initial issue with this file:

123 mb

905764 vertices

1.78179e+006 polygons

I was unable to render it fully. The screen would render about 1/4 of the way down to where the heavy geometry in my model was located and then would show black for the rest of the screen.

Most of the gang figured it was because of system capacity issues. I had 4GB of RAM and it showed that I was at 100% memory usage during he render while watching task manager.

NOW:

I have a new I7 6x3940 core with 32mb memory and a nvidia 780 evga video card....plenty of power to handle this file......I had hoped....except........

It does the exact same thing!!

..except while in task manager, I see only 10% of the memory being used while rendering. 1/4 screen rendered - 3/4 screen black.

Does anybody have another thought on this?...to me, it is either truespace 7.61 or the file or model itself. I am rendering from modelside.

Thanks,
Jeff

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 05 Dec 2013, 21:00

Having 4 or 32 Mb of RAM does not change anything for trueSpace.
TrueSpace is a 32 bits program. It will not make use of your extra RAM, even in a 64bits system.

Again, to prevent to get into this situation, you have to optimize your scene during the building of the objects/textures/scene.
Recently, I found that I could render V-Ray scenes in higher resolution simply by using Clinton's PolyCombiner plugin. PolyCombiner converts glued objects into a single mesh. The number of vertices does not change, but it helps trueSpace's calculations a lot by simplifying the number of objects.
PolyCombiner generates a copy of your glued object, so you have to erase the glued object after the conversion. Before erasing the glued object, try to render the combined object first to check if the conversion generates some changes in the geometry. I noticed that the conversion may fill holes in some objects, depending on the geometry. It is easy to learn how to make good use of it though and avoid problematic holes.

clintonman · Post by **clintonman** » 05 Dec 2013, 22:10

Also try the MeshCollapse plugin. The advantage is that it deletes the original meshes so you don't have to. I didn't know it existed when I wrote the Polycombine plugin because it was in the gamespace section of the website. It can be found on the wayback machine

https://web.archive.org/web/20051125210 ... ources.asp"

Edit: One more thing, the meshcollapse might be included in tS7.61 so if you have that maybe you don't need to download it.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 06 Dec 2013, 13:41

So what your telling me is that there is a mythical end or limit to the size of a model truespace can handle due to it's architecture or being 32bit?

SO I then have a question or 2...

What is this limit?

The file size? 132mb
Amount of vertices or polygons or objects? Could textures/shaders be a factor? ( I used none in this model)

To me...and excuse my lack of knowledge on what is really going on inside my computer.....I do not believe it to be any of those factors. I think it has to do with truespace and displaying that model or rendering that model.

As far as model size/vertices/polygons/objects, I think the model can be unlimited. It is the displaying or rendering of the model that is the issue.
My thought is that I can have things on layers and do in this model. When I have all layers showing, the model is slow to rotate and gives me the previous mentioned problem when being rendered. HOWEVER, when I turn off some layers, and reduce the visual content displayed on my screen, I am able to rotate faster and render. The model has not changed in size just what is being displayed. The overall polygons, vertices and objects are still the same. The difference is the amount of the model displayed on my screen is less.

So this means that there is a limit of sorts. Somewhere along the line your model will reach a point where you can build it bigger and bigger, only you will be unable to render it as a whole.

I will try to use the reduction tools Clintonman and Emmanuel mentioned to see if I can shrink things down even more to get my model size under this "threshold".(the point where the whole model is not able to be rendered as a whole)

Am I way off in this or does this seem to be reality?

I guess what I am ultimately looking for is a parameter to go by. Some number I can keep an eye on so I don't go beyond that.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 06 Dec 2013, 16:04

With a layer turned off I think the renderer doesn't consider the objects in it so that's fewer polys, textures, and such. Maybe you could use layering to create your image in separate components to be blended in Photoshop into the final product.

Of course the correct solution to the problem is to use other software that can handle this. At least export the model to render in something else.

trueBlue · Post by **trueBlue** » 06 Dec 2013, 16:51

Can Workspace handle your scene?

Just some thoughts that may help in Model.
1.)Read the Appendix A Seal of Good Modeling
2.)Render Options:
Turn off Cast and Receive Shadows.
3.)Render to regions. There is a plugin for this from Johnny

Layers in trueSpace are used to group elements together without actually gluing them.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 06 Dec 2013, 16:57

Finis,

That is the dreaded question I have been afraid to ask....what other software would you suggest?

A low cost solution that can handle large models?

Or

An any cost software that can do the job?

I really have a need to make very large models that I can render.
Thanks for anyone's help in advance!

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 06 Dec 2013, 16:58

Thanks trueblue...I will look into these options you have mentioned as well.

Emmanuel · Post by **Emmanuel** » 06 Dec 2013, 17:03

Rhino169 wrote: The file size? 132mb
Amount of vertices or polygons or objects? Could textures/shaders be a factor? ( I used none in this model)

TrueSpace fills the memory during your work. If a render fails, you can try to close tS, then restart, reload the scene and hit the render button. Sometimes, it works.
Remember, if a render fails, you have to exit tS and restart it before trying a different setting.
A black screen is always a sign that the memory is full, and any other tests after a black render are likely to fail also.

Now, regarding the factors leading to a rendering failure, they are cumulative.
The amount of objects, the amount of vertices, the size of textures, the lights settings, the shaders in use, and the render size in pixels are all factors.
A render can fail at 8000x6000 pixels but complete at a lower resolution.
A render can fail if you have a ton of 2048x2048 bitmap textures but complete if you reduce the size of the textures.

A 132 mb scene is too much for tS (and also for several 3D apps).
From my experience, scenes bigger than 40 or 50 mb often lead to errors.
During my work I always try to optimize the weight of the scene. Sometimes you can use textures rather than objects (that's especially true for trees). You can also reduce the number of vertex on objects that are far from the camera.
Lightworks does not like transparency and reflectance. It increases the calculations and memory use. Some shaders are more demanding.

It is sad to say, but only experience teaches all these tricks.

Could you upload your scene in some server to let us try to render it ? Perhaps we will find a workaround.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 06 Dec 2013, 17:13

Rendering: Kerkythea (free) or its big brother Thea (reasonable price). Good for realism. An odd and cheap or free renderer could be Bryce. It can handle bazillions of polys (more with instancing too). Marcel has done awesome renders with it. Goofy but usable interface. Rayman says Vue has a great renderer.

Rayman knows many of the pay/expensive options and sketchup. I think James has Lightwave and could advise about that and about Carrera.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 06 Dec 2013, 18:30

Emmanuel...

I will try to do so and send you a PM with a link. I have some space out there...but not sure how much. I must check first. Also thanks for the info. I believe I have been trying to push truespace to places it may not have been designed to go. I still see use for it as maybe an initial modeller and then export over to another software for larger model renderings.
I am not using any textures on this model ..only colors from the material editor. Also, I only have maybe 2 or 3 infinite lights in there as well. I also pre-reduced the polygon count with a truespace tool to the minimum and still maintain integrity of the first assembly I did prior to copying it 21 times.

I will try uploading the model tonight for you to play with.

Finis....

Thanks for those options, I will look into those. I do see that I would need something that doesn't really need to be a great renderer. Only someting that will render just simply colored objects without textures or bitmaps applied to them. I don't even care if there are shadows being cast really. I also need just basic lighting as well.

trueBlue · Post by **trueBlue** » 06 Dec 2013, 18:36

Rhino169 wrote: I also pre-reduced the polygon count with a truespace tool to the minimum and still maintain integrity of the first assembly I did prior to copying it 21 times.

What tool?
Can you upload this ONE object?
Have you tried Workspace for your whole scene?

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 06 Dec 2013, 20:26

Bryce is simpler that Kerkythea although its interface takes some getting used to. So does KT's. There are tons of tutorials for Bryce. It renders a little cartoonish or artistic (painterly) but Marcel has produced photo realism (see thirsty tree) with it. Bryce can import TS cob files. You might be able to use its instancing feature to duplicate those repeated parts but its instancing is not well developed. Intended for forests not for precision. $20 http://www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-pro/

Looked at Thea. Higher price than I thought.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 06 Dec 2013, 20:27

trueblue...

I am at work currently and will check for sure when I get home, but I believe the tool I used was "polygon reduction"?

After selecting the object, this tool would remove polygons...I remember it had a setting I think that you set for tolerance maybe?

I know if I was too aggressive, it would start distorting the model and joining details to try and reduce polygons...so there was a threshold there that I had to find. It actually did a great job shinking the polygon count down.

I used cylinders in my model, maybe there is a better object to use as a primitive?

I will try to get the one object uploaded tonight.

I will try workspace tonight as well.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 06 Dec 2013, 20:42

Finis....

it is funny that bryce is so cheap. I may give that a try just as another potential route without to much financial pain.

I am shocked at how cheap it is and that if I import my model there, that it would be a better renderer.

but I will give it a try! Thanks!!

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 06 Dec 2013, 21:27

Bryce is a 32 bit software but it can render big scene. Here is a sample with 75 000 000 polygons :
do ... &mode=view"

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 06 Dec 2013, 21:34

Another sample with free soft. Modeled with TS, imported to Sculptris to finish and rendered with Bryce (ambiance and dof). Import/export with COB.
do ... &mode=view"

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 06 Dec 2013, 21:54

You can combine two renders, Bryce for the background and TS for the model (modeled and render with hdri). Here is a sample :
do ... &mode=view"

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 06 Dec 2013, 22:01

Simple, easy and you don't need money.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 07 Dec 2013, 15:25

Marcel...wow those models are awesome Great work. I will get those 2 3d programs..Bryce ans Sculptris THANKS!

Knocking out one of trueblue's suggestions

Can I render the full scene in workspace?

YES! Render to file worked, but only up to a maximum WUXGA - 1920 x 1200 and also HDTV - 1080p 1920 x 1080.

Any higher and I got an error / warning message about reducing things down from TS7.61.

image below:

Draise · Post by **Draise** » 07 Dec 2013, 16:20

I find the DirexctX preview engine on WS to work nicely, I have rendered 4K images from it before. But that is cause the graphics card can hack it. I could not do 6-8K images.

For larger sizes, try the custom size and define the width and depth.

trueBlue · Post by **trueBlue** » 07 Dec 2013, 17:25

Here is another idea that may help.
3D Record your scene (Start and (Stop Record ASAP)) and save to your Library as a RsRcd file format.
Should reduce the file size by alot.
Always exit trueSpace7.61 with a clean (New Scene).

With a new trueSpace session:
Open your RsRcd file.
Can you Render to File at a larger image size?

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 07 Dec 2013, 21:31

Marcel,

Thanks for the info on Bryce....

YES! Bryce handles the model like it is a little sized model. Quick to render, easy to import & easy to move model.

I only need to learn the commands and interface..seems a bit different than truespace.

Next I will try the other software you mentioned.

Question: What is it about truespace that limits it from handling larger files like Bryce can?

Here is a quick render:

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 14 Dec 2013, 19:49

Ok...new question:

I am exporting out of Bryce into a .dxf format.

The imported model from truespace looks fine...exporting out makes my cylinders into what I believe is a triangulated mesh. So the sides of the cylinder go from 16 vertical resolution lines/faces into vertical triangular shapes.

Any idea how to keep the original truespace mesh?

trueBlue · Post by **trueBlue** » 15 Dec 2013, 03:37

I could be wrong but I think trueSpace hides the triangles, unless a user choses to show them.

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 15 Dec 2013, 12:52

TS can export without trianglulated mesh with obj, not dxf. But mesh are alway triangulated in the memory of the video card. Some software can show real quad or ngone face in realtime, other software like Bryce not.

Rhino169 · Post by **Rhino169** » 15 Dec 2013, 18:09

Thanks Marcel !

I figured that I was in trouble on this one. Below is what my mesh looks like close up at it's final destination.

I was trying to use truespace to model and the have Bryce import a .scn or .cob file and then export a .dxf to AutoCAD and then use a viewer to see result. I just didn't look at my mesh close enough when I was claiming victory before.

I'm trying to model in truespace because I know the program so well, without having to use the less than friendly acad 3d tools. Maybe there is another format out there that will import in and maintain the truespace model structure.

I also tried a cube, cone, sphere and a cylinder from truespace to Bryce and then into acad and it looked like the items were all inside out.

Please let me know if there is any other method out there.

Thanks!

marcel · Post by **marcel** » 15 Dec 2013, 18:37

Bryce create always triangles. No way to avoid that. But it is not a problem if you use it to render an object from TS. Bryce is not a real modeler but it can work with large scene, better than TS. That is why Bryce and TS can work together. Wireframe without triangles is useful for modeler only. You don't need to show the wireframe with Bryce if you don't like to see the triangle. Use a solid mode.

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