Hey guys, hope things are going better for you than me...

I have been having SERIOUS trouble w/ frequent and constant crashing during my renderings using C7.1.1Pro...

Maybe you guys could give me some hints, tips and pointers on things to be careful of, or settings that can be adjusted to make things run smoother?!? I dont usually have problems w/ my renders, but lately Ive been doing some stuff thats "not my usual style", and so my scenes are being set up somewhat different to what Im used too, still, I didnt think it was anything major to have such dramatic crashing come about...

1st off, my system is far from the greatest. An AMD Sempron 2400, w/ 2 GB of memory, 40GB hdd (but I use an external of 300GB) running XP Pro. No video card (but thats never been a problem before?!?), and nothing else fancy or worth mentioning...

I have my scratch disk set to 100MB, and my virtual memory/paging file set to 4096. Im assuming that those are common/correct settings? As far as my renders go, I dont think anything is wrong per say with the textures or objects. Unused shaders and objects have been removed from the scene, and textures have been consolidated. My render settings are at a bare minimum, so I cant possibly downplay the settings w/o loss of output quality... I can only render but so small, so am unable to render at a lower size (heck, Im only trying to get a 500x375 for crying out loud)...

I got so desperate I even set up the network rendering, and while it works and even quite fast, if the main system crashes, all is lost... I did find that you can pause/resume a render if one of the nodes fail or crash on the other systems, but there isnt no way of recoving the partial render from the crash of the main system...

I am going BONKERS over here... If I thought a new, more powerful system would help, Id get a new one 10 minutes ago, but I hear so many others having similar problems (albeit maybe not as often?!?), but it happens on powerful systems all the same...

Is there anything I could do, I really need to finish this project up, but have been totally unable to get my renders completed and its KILLING me!!!

If anyone could offer some advice, Id be greatly appreciative, thanks for lending me your ear to vent.....

mat, take a printscreen from your render settings.

Scratch that, time for an upgrade/new pc...

Im so far behind the times it isnt funny, was too comfortable w/ that AMD Sempron 2400 from I dont even know how long ago...

What suggestions do you guys have?!? Im not in the loop, whats good nowadays, specifically for running Carrara, Hexagon and Poser smoothly?!?

Get the best you can pay! A good processor (core 2 duo or core 2 quad or i7) and a good Nvidia video card.

VERY frustrating to say the least...

Does this happen in the better/faster systems too?!?

Is that from worst/slowest to best/fastest?!?

Its a very simple scene to get crashes... are you using Poser content? If so try to remove one by one and render, somtimes I got error and crashes because Poser content in scenes. I have a big problem with my last image and could only finish it before get a new core2quad with 4 GB RAM.
Some people ask to defrag your HD and clean your temporary folders. Another tip that sometimes work is to delete your virtual memory file and let windows create  a new one.

I've run into memory issues a few times. Only thing I can suggest is saving the scene for batch render and  using smaller tiles. Then run the batch and if memory usage goes too high (paging memory goes past what's available and starts hitting virtual memory), pause it and then restart after the memory use settles down. (If you're using nodes, perhaps they need more memory too?)

I'm not sure if that's your problem or not. But it helped for my renders, might be worth a shot.

No, its my own content =B

But I think I just need a new system. AMD Semprons were so NOT meant for graphics in the 1st place, and I know I can really push my system. I think a new PC will be a new breath of fresh air, but Ill be so mad if that doesnt fix the probelm =P

Core2Quad seems to be the way to go, I dont think in all my years of messing around w/ graphics have I ever had "standard level" equiptment, and its KILLING me, sitting back watching those 100x75's take eons to render is like waiting for seasons to change, time so wasted and unproductive, and it kills ones workflow for sure... I go for the "visuals", so I need quick and constant feedback when scenebuilding, and not having something at least close to real time feedback is like being stabbed w/ a spoon...

And what of my settings, any thing there that would help at all?!?

Anyways, thanks for the advice, off to newegg I go.....

I was using batch for the network renders (not before, admittedly) and still they got crashes. After checking, the other systems the nodes were on were worse than mine =P

I saw your post before about watching the task manager, but even as I watched I saw no indication of something "about to be wrong"... Wrong would happen, and then you see the task manager go into a frenzy... Nothing really to pinpoint a "why"... As Carrara would crash, so would the task manager show "things". This was simultaneous all the times it happened...

Im curious Paul, what kind of system do you have and what are its specs (Im wondering if thats a personal question, if so, no offense =D)...

This one was good maybe 6 years ago, but now, I should be ashamed to have C7Pro on it...

GKD, do you have crashes at all on your newer system?!?

Hi MatCreator,
Your render settings are actually very, very mild. What settings are you using for your lights?
Carrara is the most stable 3D app I use and I use quite a few :)
You'll be good to go with any mid-range quad-core, 4gigs of RAM, an entry-level video card, and a decent power supply. $600-$700 will definitely get you into a solid Carrara machine.
On a side note, I've experienced more crashes with C7.11 than C7.0, if that makes any sense.

My system is ancient by contemporary standards, but it's what I've got and have to get by on until I can get some kind of paying work lined up. It's an AMD Barton 2900XP with 1GB. I'm also on an older version of Carrara, but I figure some of the same bugs may still be floating around.

And I know what you mean about the wait. It's hard to tell what you're going to get with settings sometimes, but the time involved to see what the result is tends to kill the rewarding aspect. Especially when you need settings turned up to see the result, and it's just some minor adjustments needed for things to be "just right".

Anyhow, lemme guess. Once the task manager goes crazy, you're seeing zig-zags on the CPU usage and if you watch the process list (sorted by CPU usage) you'll see Carrara and System Idle playing ping-pong with each other. Usually I don't see that until memory gets to just about .20 over a GB on mine. (I figure there may be a little bit of a buffer with video mem somehow.) But once it starts the craziness it's hitting the HDD pretty hard, so I know there's some virtual-mem thing going on.

Are you also using the large address aware hack for Carrara? I've noticed it mentioned a few times, but I don't have the system for it. If I did, I'd definitely check that out. You might be ping-ponging because you're hitting a ceiling in the software rather than the hardware.

I got my system from cyberpowerpc about a year ago.  Its a quad system, I put vista64 on it with 8 gigs of ram (put the ram in myself after market was cheaper, but went with fast ram) and a 8800GT  though for the same you could now get more computer for the same bang.  They are nice you start with your basic and configure everything (though you have to watch your own, that would be nice addonitis ).  I haven't had any issues.  Start with one with free shipping, then adjust in the configurator, it will say core2duo but you can change the MB and Processor in the selection. 

I think the lights are rather mild too. Dont get me wrong, there is PLENTY to go wrong in the scene, transmaps, dismaps, gloss, anything glows, reflection, etc...

But its that its not anything C7 cant handle........

Im upset, as I feel the only place to point the finger of blame is my system =(

I know I needed a new system for the longest (heck, it was outdated when I bought it 6 years ago), but I guess Im just "cheap"... However I just cant take it anymore... My last product is so far behind, and if the culprit is indeed my system, the issue needs to be remedied...

Its funny, Ive dealt w/ it so long, and to go through some of the threads and see people complaining that their core2quad 10GB of memory system isnt good enough is, for me at least, hilarious.......

I'm also experiencing troubles with C7. Try to free system resources such as wifi network connexions or whatever...

Mat, did you tried to render without the Indirect Light on?? You said something about anything glows, displacement maps...some combinations sometimes make Carrara crash...

Im not at home now, and wont be for the next few days =(

But to answer your question GKD, no, I did not. I tried keeping everything scene wise "as is", and focused on the render settings... Slight changes to the lights cause dramatic undesirable effects, took a real long time getting that room to have that "look"... It took eons of adjustments (mind you it takes alot of slow renders and crashes before getting the lighting the way you want =P) to get it where it is...

Im gonna get a new pc and hope that that solves my problems.

Hmm.. I tried Carrara 7.1.1 and it crashed on my first render, It was a simple scene with a m4 and a hair. I think it can be something with the transparency, because one of the cores just stopped on the hair, and when the other core was done carrara crashed and shut down. Or perhaps its a amd dualcore problem, Im on a amd athlon 4200+ with 3.25 gig of accessable ram. Other than this C7 felt sluggish on my system. Never had this sort of problem in C5, just the "run out of memory" problem and I guess theres just not much they can do about that. Hope you get things sorted out, perhaps C7 just like new systems better.

Unfortunately, Carrara is still only a 32-bit application. It can theoretically only use 2 GB of RAM. In practice, it will use less than that. Until Carrara becomes a 64-bit program, I'll be spending no more money on "upgrades" (I'm still with 6.2.1). The more advanced features that are added, the more unstable Carrara becomes in its 32-bit form.
Daz obviously could care less about advancing Carrara into the 64-bit world. They seem to only consider it a vehicle for their (mostly mediocre) content.

The problem with 64 bit is that they need to have a team to work for now in Win and MacOS version. When the 64bit comes to live they will need 4 team to work in Win and MaOS 32 and 64 bits version... and like you said you will not upgrade until they get the 64bit version... so they dont have the money to pay for the team. Another oint is that the 64bit users are less them 30% of Carrara users... its a very complicated task, but I am shure that they will do this.

Quote - Its a very simple scene to get crashes... are you using Poser content? If so try to remove one by one and render, sometimes I got error and crashes because Poser content in scenes. 

I agree, this one (DAZ product) is particulary getting me and my computer completely mad
http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/-/the-cathedral-remains?item=1667&_m=d

crashes + crashes and crashes :(

Dreadful indeed when you cant use Stonemasons stuff, lol...

Even still, you cant really blame the product because it may not work in Carrara, the fault must lie somewhere in Carrara itself... If we could determine exactly what causes the problem that would be real nice, but sadly thats never the case. Render settings, the objects themselves, light set ups, textures, surface replicator complexity, and the system we use could all be culprits, in whole or partially. Its common that we hear "start deleting objects to see which one causes the propblem", but Ive found that that just doesnt hold true... Crashes are like the Borg, resistance is futile.

One thing that totally sucks (and its not Carrara that has the grip on this issue, Bryce and others  too) is when you have a scene just the way you want it, but have to end up adjusting and making changes that you DONT like. I call it artistic settling, and loath it... I stopped using Bryce because of it.

Im really hoping the new system will solve my problems, but if it doesnt, I can see myself being VERY angry =P Im still trying to find the system I want, but soon we'll see if it fixes things a bit.

Im curious, are other Carrara users having the problem w/ the product by Stonemason?!? Id try seeing if Carrara or Hex could spot any bad geometry using their tools. Maybe its something fixable if indeed it is the object? Best of luck... I know I could use a bit myself.

I wish I had that so I could test it for you.. I haven't had any real crashes knock on wood but I haven't been using it enough either..

I have the tin can, with no problems other then having to adjust the textures, and faded industry no problem.  I am using vista 64 with 8 gigs of ram thought I know carrara is a 32bit app and only uses a portion of the memory

I dont want to hit the panic button just yet, but heres where Im at right now...

Picked up a new HP AMD Phenom X4 2.3GHz 8GB memory 720GB HDD w/ an ATI Radeon HD 3200 system, took 4 hours trying to get used to the installed Vista Home Premium just to install Carrara and my "stuff" into the new system just to have it crash on its 1st test...

I got a little excited, seeing 4 boxes working reaching 42% in 3 minutes (it was taking at least 45 minutes to get to that point on the other system) only to have vista tell me a program has crashed =P

Lets go slow and talk me through EVERYTHING like Ive never heard ANY of it before...

How best to set up my system and Vista to get this to stop happening?!? Is it Carrara and NOT my old pc?!? I just spent -enuff-, so am left clueless now... Maybe not top of the line, but definitely an improvement, so I dont know what to point the finger at.

But yes GKD, it renders fine when I turn the indirect light off... I still think the settings are rather mild, and cant really be cut down much.

Hit me fellas, what to do =)

And thanks so far for all the response... Its really appreciated.

And why do I have to keep putting the serial number in?!?

You need to turn off the User Account Control (UAC), so you can use better your Vista system.
Lets take a moment to better understand: somethings that you have in Carrara dont work very well when combined togheter with other features...GI have a lot of problems when using Anything Glows and other things... you need to test somethings to see if one is crashing Carrara using togheter with others...

yeah what GK said, either turn of UAC or run as admin.  Both lowers your security but more like XP.  UCA does funny things.

UAC is very boring... My advise about your scene now is: pack it all internal and send to the bug track, maybe they can find what is wrong and fix for the next release. Maybe you hit a new bug that others dont.

Still adjusting to the new os and trying to network the new and old pc's so I can grab my files off the old one, so havent had time to test as you say just yet. Im going to start by taking out the anything glows, and maybe the shaders associated w/ the objects. I havent thrown in the towel just yet... I think the speed of the new system will allow me to test things at a descent rate, so it shouldnt be such a problem...

Ive not had luck w/ the bug tracker since Bryce 5 =P

did you add any 3rd party addons to Carrara by chance?

If you are using GI to rende ryour scene, use Glow to create the Anythingglows lights, works in the same way... and maybe less buggy!

Here's the status now...

I've installed all my software and drivers, set up all my files (as in Ive taken my backup files off the other system, so everything is in one "home" now) and even reinstalled Poser and all my content brand spanking new (took eons, 1st resetting at Daz3d, then re-downloading and then reinstalling =B). So I was ready spaghetti to do some serious Carrara-ing...

When I opened Carrara, it acted VERY buggy. This was a clean install mind you, installed on the new system, then uninstalled and removed all files from hdd and cleaned my hdd and my registry. Then did another clean install...

Immediately I could see something wrong. It asked if I wanted to use my runtime, and pretty much froze from there. I went to the file menu and it gave me an error (while giving graphic "blobs" and pixelated spots), and crashes/freezes shorty after doing anything... Before it would let me enter my serial and carry on normally, not I cant do anything w/ it...

The last thing I did in Carrara before it went pineapple is that I did change the scratchdisk to 100MB, I was glancing through preferances making slight changes and then it all started and hasnt calmed even after the clean install to let me make heads or tails of the situation...

But to answer your questions, I did recently add Sparrowhawkes plugins to Carrara when it was on my other system, but honestly it never gave any issue or problem until I started rendering, and I seriously doubt the problem lies w/i those plug-ins...

As soon as I can get Carrara back up and running, Ill take out the anything glows lights... When you mention "add glow" are you refering to taking advanatge of the glow channel of the material of the glowing object w/o using anything glows lights?!?

All the help is great guys, thanks alot!

Yip indeed...

Carrara has become totally unusable, and opens in an unstable state showing signs of obvious and imminent crash. There just isn't anything "obvious" or common left for me to do...

Clean install, cleaned my disk drive and registry after uninstalling before reinstalling. Only basic content was installed, but this wasn't so the last 2 times (it crashed and behaved the same regardless)...

One thing I notice is that it doesn't ask for the serial again, and I'm under the impression it should. It opens w/ the tips showing, and closing it or anything else causes Carrara to go nuts. Top menu wont show, nothing is available (items highlight when the mouse passes over them normally, but not now) and w/i seconds I get a memory allocation error or something else...

Is this something for a new thread, the crashing and vista?!?

I updated to the sp2 and have vista fully updated now.

Any clues?!? Im going PINEAPPLE over here =/

If that is the cloth deformer plug in, remove it. 

As for the serial and preferences, It probably has things in the registry, or in its own preference file that didn't get removed on an uninstall. 

Here is what happened when I had the sparrowhawk cloth plug in if I created a vertex object it would hang and be gone.  I removed all the third party plug-ins and re-added them one at a time until that one came up.  Not sure why but its a beta so I left it out.  Let me know if it still happens after you remove that plug in, for now I would remove any other third party ones.  Lets get you stable then can add them back in one at a time.

No plugs-in were installed, either now or old system...

I managed to get C6 and C5 to work, so now Im thinking its something I did to screw things up. Seeing how well 7 worked before the freak-outs and how nice 6 and 5 run, Im really desperate to get it going.

Its really crazy! Never saw something like that...
Yes I was talking about using the glow channel. When you turn Indirect light with a glow objct it will be a self iluminated one, dont need anything glows.

Had to to a full system recovery (restored EVERYTHING back to factory defaults) so all is well now...

Well, as far as the off the hook crashing, but now back to work =P

4 hours updating Vista, 3 hours installing all my core software, 1 hour resetting all my Daz purchased items, 3 hours re-downloading all my items, and 7 hours reinstalling all my content back to Poser, so Im exhausted...

My new pc is running smoothly now... Im not even getting the "catalyst" error w/ my video card =)

Thanks for the help, but to coin a phrase:

"I'll be back"...

Great!

Before we go any further, how should I set my system to better operate for performance, especially w/ regards to Carrara, Hexagon, Poser and the like?!?

Paging File should be at what? What about Carrara preferences? Any video options I should be aware of? What about that LAA thing (way over my head)? How do I maximize my system to better suit my 3d graphics needs?!?

Going back to where the original problem began, I tried rendering the scene, and it crashes. Mind you the same scene rendered from the earlier post, but now C7 refuses to render it.

I tried removing ALL lights from the scene, and to my surprise, C7 CRASHED...

As I watch the task manager, I see no spike in memory usage (unlike before on the other system, I would see the percentage jump way up before a crash) and nothing else "obvious" that I could point out.

This is the new system, I thought Id be beyond this =/

Any clues, advice or ideas now?

And thanks for the help thus far, where would I be w/o you guys?!?

Can you save the file with all internal and send to me to test here?