Maxwell Render | Official public forum

My Mac Pro is crashing this morning. 3 times in the last 10 minutes or so. Using the new Grass modifier, while tweaking parameters. Anyone else having this happen?

Same here. Seems to crash mostly while adjusting grass length on a large model. The mxs file somehow becomes corrupted and crashes studio on re-open. I've had to rewrite the mxs to get going again. Seems to only happen on files with large number of materials. Works fine on smaller files. Even so, it's a great addition to Maxwell, having a lot of fun testing it..

D

Are you running FIRE at the same time as adjusting those parameters?

Maybe Fire was in continuous update mode.

I should say, though, the Grass mod is quite amazing!!

same here... yes with fire running

I'm having a similar problem. OS Win XP.
I've opened a scene from Maxwell 2.5 (I'm working with Studio importing geometry via 3DS) with the updated Studio 2.7. Everything worked fine, first. Then I applied the Grass modifier to a surface. After some crashes I learned how to use it (first, I had used too many grass blades). Everythinge rendered fine.
Then I saved+closed the scene. On next open of that scene, Maxwell crashed immediately just after having completely loaded the scene into Studio. So, the MXS file seems to be corrupted, it's impossible to re-open. I've got no backup, that's really bad! Is there a chance to re-open that file? I can send you the crash info if necessary.
This problem only occurs with the grass modifier being used.
Thanks,
Peter.

First, please save a copy of the crashing MXS, in case it might be useful for debugging. Then, before doing anything else, you might also want to check in your temp folder and see if there are any files in the maxwellstudiotmp folder there. Depending on how you were rendering, there might be, and they might be earlier versions of the problem file.

Then, you can try renaming the /extensions folder in your Maxwell folder, so that Studio can't find the extensions when it opens a file that calls for them. This should tell you whether the file is corrupt, or is failing to load due to the presence of extensions. If it loads, you could then delete the grass modifiers you had previously applied: they will still show up in the Object Parameters window, on the objects to which they were attached, but they will have no parameters (the UI for the grass will just be empty), since the extension libraries are not able to be found.

At least, this might get you back to where you were (provided the file is not actually corrupt). My guess, with you being on XP, is that you are running out of memory during the opening of the file. If you are able to use the above steps to 'clean' the file, you can then again un-rename your /extensions folder, and try applying grass again, using lower values for the Display attributes of the grass modifier (try Display Percent: 0%).

Renaming the extensions folder didn't help.
maxwellstudiotmp doesn't exist (don't know where to search).
BUT
I found a solution.
Starting Studio, then I chose Import and imported the selected MXM. Opening it leads into a crash, importing it will work. Then I could delete the grass modifier, and everything is fine. Doing experiments, I really found that playing with the grass parameters causes the crashes.
Unfortunately, importing instead of opening mxs works only with some of the files, others won't even import.

Can you check while you open the scene, how much RAM Studio is using? What system are you running, and how much installed RAM do you have?

Also, try this: If you have FIRE running, and you want to move the camera in the viewport, click first in the viewport, wait for FIRE to revoxelise, then move the camera.

I'm working under Win XP Professional Version 2002 SP3 32-bit with 3,25 GB RAM
While opening the scene, Studio is using about 175 MB. MXS file size is 3,6 MB.
Studion continues crashing, importing instead of opening the MXS helps sometimes, but not always.

hello.
I am having the same problem.Can not reopen Studio file with Grass created.And it doesn't work for me, if I open Studio first and import that file. I have created a carpet,which can be reopened, but more complex files with multiple textures
will open and then crash immediately.
thanks
tony

hi, i'm facing also the problem, now for the second time, second project. tried to reopen the crashed mxs files (this time around 22.300kb) on several machines (all win7 pro 64 bit, 8 to 16 gb ram, intel i7 2600 or 3770K) - with no success. also the further mentioned "reimport"-trick does not work, it saved my life while working on the last project . applying the grass-mod + saving the file also in my case sometimes seems to activate the "mechanism" because in some cases i worked on with the saved file without any problems, but after closing studio manually (no crash occured) reopening the file on next day wont work. but in most cases studio crashed while changing parameters of the mod - or applying maps to it.

btw.
- never used fire while crash occured
- always working with 0% displayed grass in viewport

hope there will be a fix soon, 'cause the maxwell grass mod is a huge benefit to us! thanks to the maxwell team! *thumbsup*

cheers - joern

edit: forgot to mention one fact. i could open some of the "corrupted" files with maxwell.exe (i didn't try all of them - but should work for all)

If you can, please send me the files that won't open anymore along with any textures/her they may be using. Upload the scene somewhere and PM me the links.

I have the same problem here as I make some grass ( which by the way is really great )
I can save but reopen causes the studio to crash down.. I thought that this problem would be
solved with the last patch but it is not..

I work on OSX and my collegues have the same trouble so please let us play with the grass without the crash..