I've almost given up on this one. It won't save (Out of memory error) and keeps losing bits of characters like the fairy in the bottom right corner!
The lighting is horrendous(SS)and it's becoming a huge headache.
If you guys have any ideas I'd love to hear them...

31 poser charecters. 680mb Br5.5 file.

Message edited on: 07/04/2005 09:09

Thats quite a little menagerie you've got going there :)

render it in layers... makes it much easier and less troublesome (though it'll still take forever to render).

At the risk of crippling your pc, I think it needs some more "stuff" (maybe even just more distance)between the foreground circle and the background mountains to help push the mountains further into the distance, but still, I like where this is going.

Message edited on: 07/04/2005 09:50

I have had the dreaded 'Out of Memory' window a few times and the way i got around it is to use a memory booster. I have 'GoodMem' and often watch the memory drain down to 8MB before when i have over 1.1152GB. As soon as i start it to recoop the memory it gets it back to around 995MB and thats when i retry the render and it does work.
Its from MSI (MSI.com) and came with my computer's motherboard. Its a 200KB file but i could 'lend' it to you if you think it might help?
E-mail me at marcfx@ntlworld.com. Or go to this site and its the second from bottom, GoodMem. Download from there :)

Message edited on: 07/04/2005 10:26

spilt into a couple of renders and stitch together in a paint package?

I think it's the Poser characters. I get up to about 16 before they become unmanageable..;) Of course, I only have 512 meg..;) If there's a way to substitute (and hey, at that range, you can get away with it) simpler Poser characters (say V1 for V3, or even use Posette, and there was an unposeable dragon in freestuff, can't remember who made it..etc) that might help some. Or just drop some of the extra characters..should help

I should have said that it's a WIP. Sorry about that.
I want at least another 10 characers before it'll make sense. And yes, I want to add 'stuff' in the middleground too.
I don't know about 'layers'. I think Flak is the expert on this subject. I've been thinking that I could split it into 2 halves, with each half getting about 30 characters each, render them and join in psp7. (I don't do PS)
Up until now I've been learning a lot about poser. Which is great. I've been 'building' each character in poser 5, loading up Bryce and posing the 'menagerie' in Daz/Studio.
This has been working out just fine, because character morphs are a pain to apply (I think) in poser, whereas Daz/Studio lists them for you and they're a doddle to adjust.
Then, I go back into Bryce (new page) and save as OBP ready for dropping into the main render - see above pic.
The trick of course is knowing exactly what pose you need each piece to have.

Well up 'til now it's been working for me.
Thanks for the advice, Guys!
Oh, and I have 1gig of ram.

Message edited on: 07/04/2005 11:39

If you used the GoodMem when you think things are slowing up, I bet you your Memory is around 100MB or less!......Would like to here about it.

You may remember that Daz indicated that, in certain circumstances, Bryce 5.5 renders would actually take longer - not be faster... I have noticed that this tends to be the case when 1) you have lots of terrains, and 2) if you are using a lot of lights for simulated radiosity.

You say yourself that 'the lighing is horrendous', and it certainly looks like you have a fair few lights to get the effect you have there...

I don't use many poser characters imported in to Bryce so can't comment here - but along with Pakleds comments, it sounds like you may have a double whammy!

Perhaps you could quickly create a version with just the lighting setup and backdrop to check the render time?

BTW - good to see the Welsh flag flying there!

Garry: Fair play! I'm not worried about render times. It can take all week for all I care. My main problem is that I can't load up more charecters or objects into the scene, nor will the scene save as is.
In fact, apart from the sun, the main lights are a single radial at about eye-level with the creatures and a negative spot just above the floor of the arena used to try to kill the reflectivity of the floor which is way too bright. And yes, I've tried to reduce the reflectivity of the floor mat.

LOL Oh yes! And I'm thinking of replacing the Welsh flag with something more in keeping withthe scene.

Message edited on: 07/04/2005 14:43

Yes - re-reading your post your issues are clear!!! DOH! So, I suspect that GoodMem needs a restart after install anyway (can Marcfx confirm?) which is useless to you... I can't see a way out except as Flak suggests - do it layers... Use delete and 'Undo' to create two versions? One last suggestion - you obviously saved sucesfully to a point in time: try deleting characters (or whatever) that you added after the last succesful save, try saving after each delete... Perhaps one of them came in corrupted? Good luck! Garry

Perhaps one of them came in corrupted? Garry: You could have a point here. I have been having trouble with one particular character......

Gary, could you just explain which needs a restart after an install, Bryce or Goodmem? GoodMem can be running in the background or clicked when needed. When I'm making the images in Bryce, GoodMem is off, it is only when the Bryce screen is full of objects/lights/terrains that I notice Bryce slowing, then I click GoodMem and it shows me that bryce has sucked my memory almost dry........a few seconds of GoodMem recharges the memory to its maximum (less the memory of background programmes). You dont need to re-install anything, when your maximum is reached, just click it off until needed again and Bryce and your computer will behave a lot better. Marc

Marc: That's re-assuring! I was worried that Goodmem was something that got embedded in the registry and would be a bugger to un-install if it start causing problems.

Chris, I'm sorry I didnt explain it a bit clearer. You can un-install the programme when you dont want to use it anymore, but by having it ready for use at any time is a huge benefit. Just go to your 'Control panel' then choose the 'Install/Uninstall' if you find its hopeless for your needs. Its my biggest helper when using the likes of Bryce, Poser and sometimes Photoshop when using some powerful plugins. I dont think you would use it for anything else. Once installed you can put it in your quick start menu and once clicked the icon numbers will appear in your systems tray. Just right click to 'Auto free' or 'Free Once'to enter an amount. (You will see your memory grow). Right click again to view the 'Exit' and off it goes. I do hope this is a little clearer. Marc

Hi Marc.. I was assuming that after installing Goodmem you would need to restart you PC - many applications that provide system level info install .dlls (or at least something in your Windows folder) and therefore need a restart for these to kick-in... My point was that if Bryster can't save his file, he obviously doesn't want to have to restart to use any other app... If that's not the case - brilliant!! From your description, sounds like Bryce 5.5 has a nasty memory leak - have you logged this at Daz? Garry

Hi Gary, Now i understand, sorry my brain isnt what it used to be ;).......I must admit I've had this little programme for a long time and it 'maybe' a restarter. Regarding the error window of Bryce when it has no memory left to render and the 'Crash' window, I have used the 'Ctrl+ a' to select all and then 'Ctrl+ s' to save and managed to get Bryce to save before I needed to reboot to get it to work again properly, but, GoodMem has stopped the 'Memory error' window from opening. Regarding the Memory leak, I thought it was just me and my models that made it leak so much. My present image is 5613816 polys and i need to use GoodMem every 15 mins or so.

OK, I know it's stating the obvious, (but sometimes the obvious can be overlooked), but before you imported the characters, you did delete all the bits that can't be seen (example, most of the body of the character in the bottom-left, which is hidden by the dress..) from the file? Yeah, OK I know, you did. And it still exceeds limits. Just trying to point out possibilities for others in the same situation..:-) Cheers, Diolma

Are they going to be roasting Marshmallows in that scene? ;) Very nice image.

Analogue: LOL! No, but they might be roasting the accused! Diolma: mmmmm....trouble is...that's just about the only figure where your suggestion would work...maybe the three figures behind the woman in the dress also but the diff would be minimal. Marc: Thanks for the more detailed explaination. That sure helps! I've even tried installing a stripped-down version of BR5.5 but I don't think it's helped. I'm afraid this one is going to take a lot longer to finish than I'd hoped. I'm running out of time on it and real-life is beginning to encroach on my virtual world. Sigh.;-( Many, many thanks for all your helpful tips and suggestions. I really appreciates all your help. Thank you!

My approach would be to render the background terrains as an image and then past that on a 2d image object. Save the file as name00.br5 and delete the background terrains. Use trees, shrubbery and rocks to hid the image object edge. Add several figures in one area, render and save as name01.br5. Delete those figures and add a bunch more, plop render them in, re-save as name02.br5 and so on. This should solve your memory issue.

I don't know if you did this but this is a trick I used to use then I did use poser before. Before you export the figure select each of the parts of the body that will not be seen. Then mark them as invisible then the mesh for those parts will not be exported. If you do this it will save thousands of polygons. Why import the polygons for hte girl in the dress's hips when they won't be seen. Use less lights I liek dramatic shadows and tend to use less lights than most. You can probably get a good pic with 1 light and a sky dome.

Marc you are a god send. My other half plays a couple of games that chew the ram up after a while. she installed goodmem on her pc and after playing one game for 2 hours she used goodmem to restore the ram. Now that she is happy again i will have some peace and quiet from her whinging all the time.

Keith, I'm happy that I've helped someone :) Its got me out of a few jams too!.

As Baldrick would say, "I have a cunning plan.." Thanks to all you guys brainstorming this problem I now have a working solution. I figure that I can fill up say the right side of the 'arena' with the figures I need, render, save and then delete and start again on the left side...... There are about 31 figures so far. The most I'll need are another 15. I realised that I can avoid shadow problems by careful planning. The landscape, apart from the volcano (rear-centre) is one piece - a Bryce Island - so I can't really mess with it. It also provides some great shadows and I don't want to screw those up either. This could be fun after-all! Thanks, guys!

1 gig of ram and a 680MB br5 file sounds pretty tight. Are you hitting the hard drive during rendering and things?

The big thing to make sure when you're setting your sub-groups (of poser figures) up is to make sure that the shadows from one group of figures wouldn't fall on the figures of another. Also, make use of object masks when you have groups that lie behind each other - makes it much easier to build the scene up. But if you use object masks, make sure that you alter the object mask to make sure that shadows from the figures end up being transferred into the final composite render.( blah blah blah ;) )

Message edited on: 07/05/2005 07:40

Well it looks like this one is corrupt...;-( I guess I'm gonna have to start again. I keep deleting figures and trying to save but it doesn't want to know. It's gonna take months to get this one to work and I've finally run out of time. They're coming tomorrow (Wed) to put in loft insulation and fill the cavity-walls.......

Yeap, I've had that same problem with some of my really big files - as soon as you change a texture or delete something, you can no longer save the file. I'm not sure if the file is corrupt, or if bryce is having too much trouble dealing with the changes in its temporary spool file it makes when it runs out of ram when you delete things. Try deleting the most recent things you added to your scene (only one at a time) and then saving that scene less the one object. No idea if that'll work, but its all I can think of at the moment.

I think the mountains could have their resolution taken up a notch. Just try to do that safely enough for your computer.