[seurban]

When I try to render a certain scene, Maxwell appears to load everything correctly, goes through voxelization (reaches 100%), then throws up an error:

The exception unknown software exception (0x40000015) occurred in the application at location 0x7857bea4.

I have the option to say "ok" and terminate or "cancel" to debug, but cancel just appears to terminate as well.

So far, this appears to happen when I add additional lights to the scene. I had a plane (primitive from library) with a custom emitter applied to it, and when I deleted this it started to render. Put it back, changed to a preset emitter: same error. Tried replacing the plane with a light from the library: same error. Strangely, I do have a light from the library in the scene which doesn't cause a problem (was added before the plane, but that shouldn't matter?).

I also tried just adding a primitive cube from the library to see if adding anything caused the error. This started to render without a problem with a non-emitter material already in the scene. Assigned the emitter material from the existing light: started to render, though the two lights are joined in multi-light. But assigning the emitter material from the imported light, or a copy of the material from the existing light: same error.

I just installed v2 and this is my first project with it, so I don't know if this happens in other situations as well. Does anyone know what might be going on?

[tom]

OK, my questions are:

1) Are you using 32 or 64 bit version?

If you say 32 --- then switch to 64.
If you say 64 --- Proceed to next question.

2) Do you use Multilight feature?

If you say YES --- Proceed to next question.
If you say NO --- Proceed to skip next question.

3) How many emitter materials do you have?

If you have many --- Try grouping emitters or decrease render resolution.
If you have a few --- Proceed to next question.

4) What's the render resolution?

If it's high --- Try decreasing it and see if it still crashes.
If if's not high --- Send us the scene.

[seurban]

Thanks for the quick reply.

1) I'm using 32. I'll definitely switch to 64 in about 2 weeks when my new computer arrives (that's not sarcasm, we placed the order today )

But until then...

2) Disabling Multilight fixes the issue. Also, using just intensity works as well, which is good because I use it every single render (I think it'd triple my man-hrs without it), so no multilight is a bit of a non-starter. I do like to be able to adjust the color as well, but that's less critical.

3) I only had an HDRI and 2 emitters (including the troubled one), so that wasn't likely the problem.

4) My output resolution was 1800x2250, which I didn't think was all that high (is it?). However, reducing this to 450x563 solved the problem (but that's not really a usable res). There's probably a middle ground that'll work, but at least this will render fast and allow me to tweak emitter color (full multilight works at this res) before rendering full resolution.

Also, how would I go about sending this (or something else) to you?

[tom]

1) For using color multilight at that resolution, you should definitely use 64 bit.

2) Color ML allocates 8x more memory than Intensity does. So, you should either do Intensity OR use a lower resolution OR reduce the number of emitters.

3) In your case it seems like pushing limits of 32 bit with color ml at that resolution.

4) Here's a rough table showing memory consumption so you can build your strategy around it.
Let's say your resolution is X*Y, so:

No ML = ~Res * 32 bytes
ML = # of emitters * No ML
Color ML = # of emitters * No ML * 8

In this case, I don't need the scene. I think now you also know the reason.

[seurban]

Thanks for your help. That's a pretty useful reference for understanding memory allocation. I hadn't realized multilight increases the memory as much as it does, but it is worth it. The color factor is pretty intense, perhaps even with my new computer I will only do low res test renders to work out color, then do full renders with just intensity. It definitely makes sense that 64bit is going to help though.