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3DSMax Render Problems

animatoranimator0 Posts: 0Member
edited June 2009 in Technical Questions and Answers #1
Hi Everyone,

The latest random and frustrating anomaly to appear in 3DSMax is perhaps the most perplexing yet.

Whilst working on a recreation of a ST:XI scene, I rendered a 25 second (760 frame) video, uncompressed. After 1.5 hours of rendering, the resulting video was only 291 frames in length (9 seconds). Working under the assumption that I had made a simple mistake in settings, I did a recheck and began a new render. The very same problem occurred. I know for a fact that it did render all 760 frames, as I watched the scanline preview and status window.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what may be causing this, or how I can resolve the issue?

Thanks,

animator,
Post edited by animator on

Posts

  • BerkutBerkut1 Posts: 0Member
    #2
    You probably checked this already, but do you have enough space on your hard drive? Also are you absolutely sure it rendered all the 760 frames though? It's possible that it gets to 291 frames and at frame 292 it stops due to some problem. Can you try and see what happends if you apply the standard basic grey texture to the whole scene (high res textures may cause crashes when the ram gets filled up) delete all lights, turn off all effects and render it. See if it's 25 seconds then.

    Oh yea, also I HIGHLY doubt this is the problem, but what file format is the hard drive you're saving to, FAT32 or NTFS?
  • animatoranimator0 Posts: 0Member
    #3
    I have plenty of HDD space (over 850GB), and it definitely rendered everything. The HDD is NTFS.

    Last night, while experimenting to find the cause of the problem, I noticed that when I decreased the render output resolution from 1280x720 to 120x96, the result was a 25 second video file (the correct length).

    Is it possible that I might somehow be running out of RAM, or could Max be crashing due to some kind of bug in Windows 7? I doubt it is the RAM, as I am running 8GB of it.
  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #4
    Since you watched it render every single frame, the problem has to be connected to rendering as a video.

    I'd suggest you try rendering to single frames, PNG/TGA or something like that.
    That way, you also won't have to re-render all frames if it still doesn't work for some reason.

    Also, you can assemble the frames to an uncompressed video really fast with VirtualDub.

    Edit: Also, what version of max are you using?
  • animatoranimator0 Posts: 0Member
    #5
    I'm running 2009 x64 edition.

    And thanks, I'll give that a try.

    EDIT: Great suggestion, Melak, worked perfectly! :D

    Finished Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTZja1Ms0W4
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9920 Posts: 5,337Member
    #6
    I wouldn't rule out the fact your using a beta or R/C OS. I have found 64bit annoying too with video. Vdub for example the 64bit versions will NOT pick up modern codecs, so your options to encode with are junk.

    As a patch, split the job into separate files and merge them together in vdub or similar app. Vdub will direct stream so you wont be loosing anything for it.
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • animatoranimator0 Posts: 0Member
    #7
    Yes, that is most definitely a possibility. 2009 seems to be very fond of random crashes and file corruption in Win 7. I'll probably go to down to XP 64 eventually.

    For the moment, my workflow will have to be Max > VirtualDub > Vegas 9. Not really ideal, but it does the job.
  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #8
    My VDub (or at least VDubMod) picks up ffdshow encoders, but I use MeGui to encode to H.264 MKV.
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9920 Posts: 5,337Member
    #9
    Not in 64bit version of the app. All that shows up are useless codecs such as microsoft video 1 RLE etc. I think it has to do with 32bit encoders, the 32bit versions 01.8.8 or 01.9.2 work just fine.

    Oh and vdubMOD, heh thats a hack of like vdub 1.4? so yeah, last I looked it has no 64bit version of the app. Used to use mod to extract embedded data out of wonk containers.
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • tippy1000tippy10000 Posts: 0Member
    #10
    Great job. The video came out great
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