Runtime Error, Free Memory Is Low :(

[andarthiel]

I'm working on an animation at the moment but one of the scenes I was working just suddenly decided not to let me render, giving me a Runtime error message saying that I've run out of memory and immediately crashing. Now I know that's a lie because I've got a 6GB paging file and 4GB RAM(registers as 3.25GB in XP). This is with Maya software so I am using the right renderer. After my first try to render the scene I tried to open the scene again but now it doesn't even let me do that either, crashing while trying to open the .mb file

Here are my computer specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ ~2.8 GhZ
4GB RAM(3.25 in XP)
512MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
Windows XP SP3

My Maya version is 2009 Unlimited

I've read on one of the other posts here that it could be faulty memory.
I really need to get this animation finished ASAP, it's for my class assignment, can anyone please help?

[user_deleted]

First off find out if it's faulty memory by downloading a RAM burn-in tester and letting it run overnight tonight. If it runs all night and reports no errors in the morning your memory should be fine.

Secondly. If your scene has texture files, esp. large ones, I recommend that you temporarily move or rename the folder containing those textures so that Maya fails to find them when you open your scene. That should tell you if that's the problem. OpenGL may be trying to display textures in your viewport and that causes quite a bit of crashing for me.

If it isn't your textures, I don't know what it could be.
But if it is your textures (higher than 4000x4000, or just a lot of textures even if they are smaller) there are two solutions.

1) resize them to a smaller size, which is not a great solution
2) use the BOT format, this has solved my crashes systematically. you have to find and convert your textures to BOT with one of maya's mel commands, look it up in the docs.

[andarthiel]

QUOTE(holographix @ 06/18/09, 03:47 PM) [snapback]309714[/snapback]
First off find out if it's faulty memory by downloading a RAM burn-in tester and letting it run overnight tonight. If it runs all night and reports no errors in the morning your memory should be fine.

Secondly. If your scene has texture files, esp. large ones, I recommend that you temporarily move or rename the folder containing those textures so that Maya fails to find them when you open your scene. That should tell you if that's the problem. OpenGL may be trying to display textures in your viewport and that causes quite a bit of crashing for me.

If it isn't your textures, I don't know what it could be.
But if it is your textures (higher than 4000x4000, or just a lot of textures even if they are smaller) there are two solutions.

1) resize them to a smaller size, which is not a great solution
2) use the BOT format, this has solved my crashes systematically. you have to find and convert your textures to BOT with one of maya's mel commands, look it up in the docs.

Well I moved the textures and I was able to open the file but I still can't render it.
I tried the BOT procedure but about halfway through it stopped with an error message saying "Unknown Object: Brush" and that's it. I checked the file and there' wasn't a material or object called "Brush".

[gmask]

If you on 32 bit windows it won't matter how big your swap file is or how much ram as the program will only use 1.5 GB of ram unless you turn on the large memory address flag in your boot.ini which is /3GB then it will use almost 3gb memory.

If you need to do a batch render it's best to do it from the commandline.

It does sound like it may be a problem with your graphics card as well because you have a geforce and not a quadro.

It doesn't sound to me like you are using the makebot command correctly.. the command works on specific image files not the scene file and if it is a problem with your display card I don't think it will make a difference if they are bot or not until you render.

[deke-kincaid]

Your running a 32 bit program in a 32 bit OS which means under Windows you can only allocate 1.5-2.5 gig per process. Doesn't matter if you have 20 gigs, 32 bit Windows can only see 4 gig of it. You have to upgrade to a 64 bit OS in order to see and use that full 6 gig.

Another temporary option which will give Maya a little more ram is to enable the /3gb switch in Windows, this will allow your apps to use 2.5 gig of ram instead of the default of 1.5gig. Just google for "/3gb" to see how to do it.

[deke-kincaid]

woops, didn't refresh before posting, gmask beat me to it.

[andarthiel]

Well I managed to solve the problem in a different way. Although I can't use the quick render or IPR Render, Batch Render seems to work fine but it doesn't seem to like one of my textures so I changed it and it worked(albeit render times are slower) but I can deal with that).
The fact that Maya doesn't support GeForce cards seems silly to me. Lots of people(at least half of all people who have graphics cards use Nvidia), so there is a demand for it. Also 3DS Max supports it so why can't Maya.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Andarthiel @ 06/19/09, 03:18 PM) [snapback]309793[/snapback]
The fact that Maya doesn't support GeForce cards seems silly to me. Lots of people(at least half of all people who have graphics cards use Nvidia), so there is a demand for it. Also 3DS Max supports it so why can't Maya.

I use NVIDIA but not Gforce. The support is simply not there because maya uses overlays. And consumer cards do not implement foll set of openGL, wich includes overlays. So tehy cant say everything works perfectly right.

QUOTE
at least half of all people who have graphics cards use Nvidia

Yes but this si professional versus consumer cards. Maya also does not support standard ATI cards either, just fireGL range.

So only the professional range of either NVIDIA or ATI is supported. AN GFORCE is the name of Nvidias cheap cards range. And QUADRO is Nvidias pro range.

This is a concious design form the card wendeors part so just blame apti and NVIDIA for this. As theres not much you can do abbout this.

QUOTE
Also 3DS Max supports it so why can't Maya.

Actually is does not support them any better, they just dont say things as forcibly as it relies much less on overlays. Maya makers just in general care to say that hey you can use it but we arent responssible for the issues. In any case this si wa to keep mayas price lower.