Barry Milnes

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to using 3DS Max so please bear with me, its a huge learning curve. Its also my first posting here & I've never used a forum for help before so I'll try & write as many details down as I can so that, hopefully one of you guys will point me in the right direction, sorry if its long winded.

I'll set the scene first.
I've got a large internal atrium/circulation area for a school that we're working on, I've been asked to model a representation of an art installation which will be a fibre optic doodle which dangles from the roof down over 5 floors finishing at the second level but can be viewed from the ground floor, so that the architect & client can approve or reject the scheme.

For this I followed a CG Lighting books guide to modelling neon, which I've done & it looks fine (self illuminating material), but the rest of the scene was far too dark.
So I used some linear fittings which I downloaded from ERCO which comes with all the photometric data. I say some, but I had to stick loads in there as its a big area to light, 273 in total. I had the settings set so that the lightsource casts shadows, which were adv. Ray traced.
I set a camera up on the second floor looking up slightly into the wide open atrium at the installation, a railing with a glass fill between the posts in front of it. Because glass was involved I think I have to use radiosity solution for doing my render? (I tried doing a normal render before I added the erco fittings & the light installation looked all weird through the glass which leads me to believe I have to do it the radiosity way)

So I set the radiosity settings up in a way similar to another example in the book.
Initial Quality 85%
Refine iterations 2
Indirect light filtering 3
Direct Light Filtering 2
Exposure Control Logorithmic
Adaptive Subdivision Enabled
Max. Mesh size 500mm
Min. Mesh size 50mm
Contrast Threshold 75
Initial Meshing Size 150mm
Render Direct Illumination
Regather Indirect Illumination ON
Rays per sample 150
Filter Radius 10

I click the Start Calculation button & half a working day later it comes up with the message, "Radiosity ran out of memory while processing, the solution was reset".

The machine I'm running it on is as follows:
Intel Xeon CPU 3.20GHz
3.19GHz, 2.00GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI

I'm running 3DS Max 8, with Open GL Driver set.

Also while the Calculation was running I had the task manager running as well and some of the figures out of it are as follows:
CPU 100%
Physical Memory (k)
Total 2095192
Commit Charge (k)
Limit 5522440
Peak 2036980 (while running this)

Nothing else on my machine was open, no email, no messenger.Things in the taskbar that could interfere (which I can't do anything about as its works protocol) Sophos Anti-virus (though it wasn't actively running) and Marimba Tuner 6.2.0.1 (which shouldn't have been doing anything either).

So that leads me to my dilema, how do I get this to run?
Do I need a better machine?
Is my radiosity set up all wrong?
Am I asking my machine to do the impossible?

Any help you could give me would be appreciated.

Attached below is the normal render version of what I've done without any other lights in the scene apart from the self illuminating material so you can see what I'm trying to achieve.

Attached Images

DoodleR+B03.jpg (23.9 KB, 33 views)

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Barry Milnes

chuck

I'd start with the windows 3GB switch:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...AE/PAEmem.mspx

That will increase the ammount of ram windows can use for one app. It should help you even though you only have 2gb installed.

Chuck

prodham

it could also be something as simple as your model being the wrong size (or units) compared to your mesh size.

did you model this in max, or import from CAD ?

check to make sure your model is to scale and in the same units as your mesh (mm)

okmijun

OffTopic:

Switch viewport driver to MAXtreme 8 or D3D, from OpenGL you have right now.

eksg

I agree on this one.once your unit is wrong,it will calculate wrongly and would end up losing ram.

I would suggest also for you to turn off the adaptive subdivision first. And dont let your IES lights to cast shadows,and using too much of those IES lights eats a lot of memory(as to what I observed),play with your logarithmic exposure if your having problem with dark areas.85% initial quality is high,lower it to 10%,then going up until your computer can handle the highest render setting (though it would cause you some time).then also try everyones suggestion.hope it helps.

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Look dumb,think wise!

Barry Milnes

Thanks for the replies guys.

Firstly, yes this was drawn up in Cad, I've been a Cad monkey for a long time now & being new to 3DS Max I find it easier to do the architectural geometry in Cad as I'm used to entering precise measurements in. I find it real difficult to do this in Max using the AEC Wall commands etc.

It was all drawn in milimeters & imported into max into milimeters, but I think somewhere along the line it got converted to some other generic unit, but I converted it back to milimeters again as when I imported the erco lights in, I realised the scales had been screwed up. I've measured some of the known dimensions & they're checking out ok.

I've tried running it without the shadows on but hit the same problem. I'll try knocking some of the settings down like you said & see if it can cope with that.

I'm going to get IT to look into the 3GB switch as I'm not too well up on the hardware side of things & I'll see if they'll buy me one.

Also I'll give the MAXtreme driver a go as well, see if there's any difference. I'll see if I get any results out of my machine today & get back to you.

Thanks again.

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Barry Milnes

Barry Milnes

With the Maxtreme driver running, shadows turned off on all IES lights, using radiosity as before but with adaptive subdivision turned off it has worked but the image is still dark and not as ideal as I'd like it to be, but at least it will get the idea across.
What else could I do to improve this?
How could I lighten it all up? Why are all the walls rippled (is that because its come out of Cad?)
All advice appreciated thanks.

Attached Images

DoodleYellowFinal04.jpg (114.9 KB, 17 views)

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Barry Milnes

eksg

Probably coz of the maxtreme driver.Try using the Open GL,and play more on the logarithmic exposure,

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Look dumb,think wise!