studioma

Hi, this is my first post. I'm using Lightscape 3.2 and during a LSRAD process it will crash. It definitely seems related to the size or complexity of the model but I am not sure.

It will terminate the process and issue its usual text, but with some garbling:

"(471) 1.#QO % of the initial energy has been distributed; 186071 mesh elements; 166891 mesh vertices; 25.17 MB memory used
Preparing database. Please wait...
Solution has 12942 surfaces, 186071 elements, and 166891 vertices.
Memory allocated: 25.17 MB.
There have been 471 iterations completed with 1.#QO % of the initial energy still unshot.
Saving file cis-4.ls ...
Save complete."

The solution file will have large areas without any light on them and I can go no further.

Anyone have experience with this?

Pavel Roder

Do you have enough space on your harddrive ?

studioma

The free hard drive space is 35GB. The system has 1GB of RAM.

Ernest Burden

That is odd. What OS? We have been working on a theory that LS and XP don't get along.

There could be an object problem in the file. You got over 400 it's done. How many lights? You can try turning off all but one light and re-running, then the next light, etc. but that takes time.

Could the file have been opened by another instance of Lightscape during the process? I have used the GUI to look at a file being done by LSRAD and then had LSRAD be unable to save at the next checkpoint because the file was open.

Also try re-writing the .ls file from the prep stage. Maybe it just didn't write right.

Then you get to meshing parameters and lots of other possible issues. Re-post any new information that may narrow it down.

__________________
Ernest Burden III
AcmeDigital
architectural rendering

Jeff Mottle

Well that error is definetly one for the books, but I am no strager to LS files that crash. In my case it was geometry that triggered the crash. If you can split your LS file into multiple files and process each one seperately you might be able to see where or what groups of objects contains the problem. It will probably be something really stupid. I had a chair that if assigned a wood textured would crash. Never did figure out why.

How big is your LS and LP file, how many polgons and what OS are you running?

__________________
Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com

studioma

Thanks to all for their interest in helping. Actually, when I re-process via the "Wizard" with a quality of 2, it's alright. At quality 3 or higher it crashes anywhere between 90% and 100%. This is not unique to any one machine here...Windows 2000 Pro or 2003 Server.

Creating checkpoints, I can see that a large part of the model is in fact receiving light but after it gives the error, the light data is gone (for a portion of the model).

I am only using one light source...the sun. And one object...it's an exterior of a building. One question I would have for the group is, isn't it advisable to perform a boolean union on all the objects before bringing into Lightscape? If I do not, I get the shadow problem at corners where objects overlap.

Jeff Mottle

I've never used Booleans enough to have had to worry about that, but yes overlapping and coinciding faces in LS is a VERY bad thing, especially large ones. A number of errors can be experienced if you do this, the least of which will be shadow leaks.

__________________
Jeff Mottle
CGarchitect.com