I have a D|S crash bug that seems to manifest with files of moderate complexity/texture usage - usually 2-3 figures and a prop set. It's been VERY frustrating as I usually have no idea if a file will render properly until I'm done with hours of modeling. It crashes in the rendering phase, not in the shadow map calculation. Once I know a file is crash-prone I can reproduce it with 100% success. The log file has been little help, simply indicating that the last recorded instruction was to initiate the 3Delight renderer. I also sometimes get a Windows app error box, which will state "The instruction at "XXX" referenced memory at "YYY". The memory can not be read." I checked the RAM for errors back in Jan. as one of my first troubleshooting sets. It came up fine.

I ran D|S for almost 12 months without this bug showing up. I think it started with v.1.46, but I'm not sure that was it as I put in the mirrored drives about the same time.

I'm running D|S 1.5 under XP on a 3GHz P4 with 3GB RAM. My hard drive config. is a 300GB serial ATA hard drive with a RAID mirror duplicate. I have third ATA serial drive, non-mirrored, and have assigned the system pagefile to it. The video card is on the motherboard. Specs from the log file show the following stats:

    OpenGL provider: Intel
    OpenGL renderer: Intel 915G
    OpenGL version: 1.4.0 - Build 4.14.10.3847
    Maximum number of lights: 16
    Number of auxiliary buffers: 0
    Number of texture units: 8
    Depth buffer bit resolution: 16
    Maximum OpenGL texture size: 2048 x 2048
    Current OpenGL Texture Quality Setting: Best Quality
    RGBA color bitplane resolutions: 8 8 8 8
    GLSL not supported
    Shadow mapping supported

I'm really getting desperate to solve this and am rapidly running out of ideas. If anyone has any suggestions (or more questions to ask before speculating), PLEASE chime in. I'd also love to hear if anyone out there is seeing a similar thing.

--R

Quote - 3MB RAM

Is this a typo? Im not sure on how much ram is required to run D|S, but 3 MB is pretty low

Yeah, typo. I meant 3GB :-)

Ohhh LOL Good deal then

Im not sure what could be causing the crash..have you tried reinstalling D|S? Or maybe rendering at a lower quality?

Yes and yes. Just did a fresh reinstall today. Been playing the render options over the last three days. No change so far.

Did you by any chance upgrade from that previous version you had {1.46?} to 1.5? If so, here is what is said on Daz about the update

DAZ|Studio 1.5
This patch will upgrade DAZ|Studio 1.4.16 to version 1.5. This patch is only for version 1.4.16 and will not function corrrectly if used with a different version of DAZ|Studio.

Im stumped pretty much about what could be causing the crash...but it sounds memory related somehow.

Hopefully the guru's will walk in here soon and can help you get this one figured out.

Yep, I upgraded from that previous version. The crash actually started with the previous version and continues with 1.5.

Ohh....well how about trying to uninstall it completely, and then DL'ing the 1.5 and installing it straight in instead of doing an update..see if that works or not...worth a shot?

1.5 is a patch, not a complete version. I've tried fresh DL's and installs on both, already, as well as the content packs.

Do you remember the XXX and YYY in: "The instruction at "XXX" referenced memory at "YYY". The memory can not be read."? That seems to be quite a frequent error in windows and is not hardware related. The only common thing seems to be programmes using names that are too long for the memory allocated to them. Here are some more things to try... :biggrin: Have you emptied your temp folders? Have you moved them out of the windows folder? In studio, have you got the "check for updates" set to "never"? Have you deleted that "What's new at DAZ" TAB?

No to the first two (but I can easily do that when I get home tonight) and yes to the second two. I'm not sure how likely these are, but anything's worth trying. I hope to update my video drivers tonight. Right now I think it's the best candidate, although I'm not holding my breath. I thought changed the drive for the pagefile would have nailed it. It sounded good on paper!

(...heavy sigh...)

D|S 1.5 comes as a patch for 1.4.16 and a full package. {68.54 MB}

LINK

have you got an onboard graphics card or separate one? if the latter, try reseating the card - clean the fans in the computer tower and make sure pc is well ventilated. I used to get this error when my graphics card was seriously overheating.

It's an integrated card, right now. An interesting thought, but I think it can be discounted as there's no randomness once the bug arises. It crashes a given file in the same place each time. And sometimes long renders with relatively simple scenes will go fine. Thanks for teh suggestion, though.

ok thanks for giving a bit more info  on this. :)

what exactly is the item being rendered at the time of the crash? if you load it on its own, does it give you the same  error?

maybe if you try deleting the relevant objects from  DAZ|Studio data folder then reloading each object and saving it in a test project. that will resave the details in the data folder and might resolve the issue.

There's no common component, nor does it seem that any one component is the problem. It seems to have more to do with the complexity of a scene. I've had scenes that rendered fine until an additional figure was added. That figure will render just fine on its own, so it seems to be a file "quantity" over "quality" issue. However I still haven't figured out a solid "file size line" that, when crossed, will create the problem.

Ya know, I just had to update my girls computer with another graphics card as theirs was integrated as well..I always install another card because integrated will give you all kinds of problems when they start going bad...might want to try getting another and see if it clears your problem...

Thanks. Yeah, that's my current plan. I've eliminated just about all the other usual suspects.

yep was also going to suggest that - a new graphics card. or try getting the latest drivers for the integrated one (although integrated is usually not as good as stand-alone item). Also look out for the latest DirectX version available.

We updated the integrated drivers last week, to no avail. So it's onto a new card, which I probably need for Bryce work anyway.

WOO-HOO! Problem seems to be fixed. Upgraded my video card, bypassing the onboard video in favor of a PNY 7300GT. My test subject rendered fine - it's crashed on all previous attempts. So I suspect the culprit was D|S's increasing demands for Open GL support.

Man - it feels good to have this behind me after almost six months of wrestling.

--Rob

excellent news arcas!! Happy rendering!!!

:biggrin:  :biggrin: 

One other thing that was crashing my renderings are reflective surfaces with reflection maps, not all the time; but fairly common.
You may try and remove them and see if the renderings don't hesitste/crash as much unless you are using them.

Also 3GB, in standard windows D|S is maxing at 2GB and wont see past it until there is a 64bit version of Studio for 64 bit windows.

Great news Arcas! :thumbupboth: