Memory Allocation Problems

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hi all hope some one can help me out here
this is my first post here so i hope its the right forum

at the moment i got a proble i think with the way max handle my memory

at the moment im using max 9
i got 3 Gig of RAM
dual Xeon 3.06 with hyperthreading
240 GIGs split over 3 hrad drives
and a Quadro 1000

now the first problem is the material editor
i could be working for a while and all of a sudden when the materal does not show up in the viewport and looks white, when i then go inot the material editor to and try and open the material the following msg comes up

now thiis usually happens with textures morte than 3000 by 3000 sometimes 2500 by 2500

i then have to cloths max down and open it again to solve the problem

im guessing this is a realted proble so ill post it in the same thread

i have so may problmes rendeing hair, with setting that arnt that high

settings that render in scan line harly render in mental ray

once i put up root splay i think it is it crashes..

and once i find a seeting which is low enough to render and i add a light in the scene either it crashes (and then i hae to lower settings more) or the character ans shadow of the Hair renders but not the Hair

here are the error mesgs i usually get (Ignore the 1st 2 error mesg they are from previous render)

then this but not all the time most of the time it just closes down

now ive increased the Page file
i used to have " Gigs oof RAm , so i bought an extra Gig and it still dint work
ive tried closing down all other programs
ive tried rendering Hair in Geometry- but nothing renders out
ive tried using the place holder option

can some one pls pls help me
is there a way to allocate more memory to max or ask max to use more memory

with 3gigs of kingston RAm i dont see why i should be having theis problem

by the way i just had my PC fully serviced so i am not sure it is a hardware problem

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QUOTE(I_am @ 04/17/07, 03:02 PM) [snapback]264214[/snapback]
with 3gigs of kingston RAm i dont see why i should be having theis problem

Thats because theres a limitation to how much memory a 32 bit operating system can eat. And that is sonmewhere around 1.5 gigs (on windows on linuxc its closer to 2 gb). This means when mr hits 1.5 gigabytes of memory use it will get killed by the opearating sytem with no available way to break out. (a pointer has a limit to how much it can show thus this is the cap of a singe application)

Now you can increase this limitation to 3 gigabytes by fiddling with your xp pros startup flags and setting a /3 gb switch on. this will increase the memory cap per application, this slows the computer down a tad. However i this only helps on applications that are built /3g switch aware, and i don't think the bundled mr is (but standalone is, this is a way to force you to buy real software)

Now the other option is to set the memry usage cap for mentakray and tuning the bsp so small it never exceeds this OR turn on large bsp model. This too slows down your render times.

And no 3gb isnt very much, i just recently maxed out 64 G, anyway trick is not to get systems wih lot of memory but never to use more than needed. Wich i something you need to learn by experience, and knowlege of how rendering works.

this does not mean the extra 1.5 gb isnt usefull, it is but not in the way you think it allows the os to reside there aswell as other apps

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thanks a million mate

ill go home and try it now

a bit technical but ill go do some research

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by the way how would u put a memeory cap on Mental ray and what does bsp stand for

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one more thing to try if the 3GB switch does not work. on XP's virtual memory. disable "system managed size", use "custom size", set it to a max allowed size. XP usually gives too little virtual memory.