Paint Effects Crashes Maya 7

[jacquesbroquard]

Hello all,
I am experiencing crashes in maya using paint effects.

My workflow so far:
1. bird polygon model
2. map UVs to 0to1 space
3. make paintable
4. adjust brush settings
4a. I am using a flattened, single tube brush with a 2d file texture applied to it as a feather. (900Kb)
4b. brush stamp settings are set to create only one tube per stroke (complete control of feather placement)
3. paint about 300 strokes, shaded mode, wireframe on shaded,
4. crash

Windows memory manager shows a memory creep, heading toward 1.6gigabytes before crashing out. Maya scene is only 2MB, each file feather texture only 900kb.

I have tried:
1. turning off draw as mesh
2. saving constantly
3. reducing undo queue to finite>100
4. deleting all history
5. decreasing sample density on all strokes to 0.05
6. simplifying strokes (three iterations)

Control:
1. Edit>SelectAllByType>Strokes>Delete
2. Edit>SelectAllByType>Brushes>Delete
3. Scene stable, no memory leak;
3a. Shaded[5] 211Mb Memory Manager
3b. Textured[6] 251Mb Memory Manager

System:
Boxxtech 3dBoxx-R4
Dual AMD Opteron 240
2GB Ram
Nvidia QuadroFX 500; AGP8x 128Mb
WinXP Pro 2002 Service Pack 1

Model HUD Specification:
Verts: 5 034
Edges: 10 064
Faces: 5 032
UVs: 5 181

If you would like to, please feel free to email me directly, and I can post any results as an answer. This is my first post on this forum, so if this is a FAQ, please direct mee to the relevant post, I have tried searching, but haven't been able to find anything.

Best,
Jacques Broquard

[drblacksnake]

hard to guess just from actions alone. this could be because of painting on polys. are UVs set?

[joojaa]

Ahh yeah did you know that once you hit the 1.4-1.5 gig memory barrier yyou will crash! use the /gb swithc if your on windows.

Its totlay possible thet drawing of the things uses memory tough from your description it souds like something else. YOu could try to dorp the preview level down.

What graphics card ist possible thet drawing on screen might caiuse it to leak.

[duncanbrinsmead]

Perhaps there is a memory leak in the paint effects on poly code. This might show up if you had a lot of cvs per stroke.

Does memory continually go up with each refresh or during playback? If so please submit a bug file with the problem to Alias.

You can test different elements if the memory is leaking by eliminating bits from the scene until the leak no longer occurs. If it does not happen when you turn off pfx stroke display then it is definitely pfx related.

If it is something to do with paint effect curves on the poly mesh then something that can help to minimize the leak is to select the stroke then do "pfx->simplify stroke path curves" a couple of times. This will dramatically reduce the number of cvs. You might also try lowering the stroke sample density values.

Duncan

[jacquesbroquard]

Duncan,
I am honored that you have replied to this query on Highend3d, I appreciate your feedback and have implemented it. It does not seem to fix the issue that I am facing, perhaps my edited original post, and the following breakdown will help more.

Control: Scene Without Paint Effects [Stable]
1. Edit>SelectAllByType>Strokes>Delete
2. Edit>SelectAllByType>Brushes>Delete
3. No paint effects left, Scene Stable
4. Memory Usage Shaded:211MB Textured:251MB

Scene With Strokes:
1. 536 Strokes visible, 284 Strokes Hidden
2. Sample Density:1.0
3. Memory Usage: 1.4GB

Scene After Simplify Curves
1. pfx>CurveUtilities>SimplifyStrokePathCurves
2. Iterate Three Times, 50-100 strokes at a time, (memory goes up and crashes if too many are selected at once)
3. MemoryUsage: 1.39GB (after quit and reloading of scene)
4. Revealing hidden strokes increases MemoryUsage>Crash

Scene After Sample Density:
1. SelectStrokes>Channel Box>SampleDensity>0.05
2. MemoryUsage: 1.27GB (after quit and reloading of scene)
3. Revealing hidden strokes increases MemoryUsage>Crash

I am sure you will be able to help with this post further, and I apprecaite any thoughts you may have on this topic. Once we get to the bottom of this, we can post the results here for future reference.
Best,
Jacques Broquard

[duncanbrinsmead]

Perhaps you have unused nodes kicking around. You could try "optimize scene size", particularily on the file where you did the simplifyPathCurves, to see if this gets you any more memory. Also sharing brushes where possible (then doing optimize scene size) may free up some brush memory.

What do you have for the feathers? If you simplify the strokes to each have

Also as a test try the following:

delete ls -type curveFromMesh;

Then save, restart Maya and reload. If this fixes the memory issue then it is related to pfx curve on poly. If not it is something else. If this is the problem and you do not need your surface to deform you could parent the strokes to the objects they had been attached to(before the delete of curveFromMesh nodes).
However for a bird I'm assuming you are relying on deformations.

Another option to try might be to use a hair system instead of pfx strokes on the surface. Just assign your brush to the hair system and position the follicles instead of painting strokes. (you can also get dynamics this way) If you don't want the dynamics you could delete all the hairsystem curves and the hairSystem node, leaving just the follicle nodes. These have a transform that is relative to the surface position. One could then use these for instances of a feather. (instancing would be more memory efficient than parenting several feathers or strokes to the follicle nodes).

Duncan

[jacquesbroquard]

Hello Duncan,

Thank you for your detailed input. In the past week I have gone ahead and implemented your suggestions. Using hair as a method of placing feathers is a great idea and works very well. Since the hair system is very robust, it doesn't seem to crash Maya out.

However, there are some problems that occur when styling the hair. After attaching the feather paintFX brush to the hair, some of the feathers lie flat to the surface, while some of the feathers lie edge-on to the surface.

I know that you can modify the clump twist, but this attribute affects the entire hair system, causing some paintFX strokes to lie flat once adjusted, and others, that were flat, now get twisted to lie edge-on to the surface.

Workflow:
1. SelectSurface>CreateHair
2. StyleWithDynamics>
3. SelectHairShape>Hair>SetStartPosition>FromCurrent
4. GetBrush from Shelf or Visor
5. SelectPFXHairNode>Hair>AssignPFXBrushToHair
6. Render (observe orientation on feathers)

I have tried:
1. Clump Twist (on hair node)
2. Clump Flatness (on hair node)

Theory:
Would overriding the hair node's clump twist attribute using a per follicle override on clump twist offset attribute solve this?

Thanks again for your help Duncan,
Jacques Broquard

[duncanbrinsmead]

Simply use the clumpTwistOffset on the follicle of problem clumps.

Duncan