HELP!! I JUST bought C8 from DAZ...

I was so happy with the default render of Howie's Stony Creek scene.... meaning I zoomed to the bridge, and I rendered at the 550x650 px with BEST aa..both with and without Ray Tracing and it was FAST and pretty! I got really excited...

But that is too small for an image with my figure in it, so I put it up to 1000 more pixels each way... got error...backed it down to JUST 1000x1000 (always 72 dpi) and tried... "an error has occured"

I had imported my V4 all dressed right into the scene and placed her on the bridge of Stony Creek... so I took HER OUT and tried again with the 1000x1000 "an error has occured"...

I found the temp files and deleted... so can someone tell me WHY I can't seem to render a scene JUST twice as large as the default for Howie's gorgeous scene? Is the FILE ITSELF NOW CORRUPT? I can see it fine in the assmeble room...

oh and my computer is:

Win7 32 bit - Ultimate Edition with Service pack 1
Video card: ati radeon HD 5850. W/1 gig GDDR5 ram
Processor: intel I-7 875. 7 core processor (unlocked). (that means that it over clocks itself)
Ram : 4 gigs DDR3 1600 MgH ( real fast )
Power : 850 watt modular power supply
Hard drive : western dig 1 tarabyte (sata 6.0)
Motherboard: azus atx m/b 12 USB ports 8 USB 2.0 - 4 USB 3.0 -
onboard high def sound and superfast 1000 megabit eathernet card.

Let's see, what else.. I did not install the content of my Poser 7 into cararra, but told it the path when importing. She looked right.

I just don't understand what I am doing wrong. Any suggestions would be so appreciated!

Lyne

Hi Lyne, 

Welcome to Carrara.

That is an error is typical when running out of RAM. Howie's scenes have very dense textures which eat RAM. Carrara does let you spool textures to another drive if you have an extra one around. 

As an FYI, doubling the size of an image will actually require 4 times as much RAM to run - it's simple geometric progression. Some ways to manage this better is to dial back the quality to good, reduce the ray count to 4 and keep the anti aliasing at 1 or larger. 

Hi res textures plus high res meshes like V4 can max out systems pretty fast. When dealing with high res, regardless of the software, things turn into a balancing act between system abilities and output needs. 

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks, I felt it was a ram thing...I am at present, rendering a Stony Creek scene with NO figure in it... I think it will work, I set it at 1000x1300, and it is humming along. I turned OFF Ray Tracing (I honestly cannot see the diff, between RT on and off, with BEST AA.... with water, I personally "must" have the best AA.... I plan on "asking" Cararra to go a tiny bit bigger with the same scene to try and get an idea of how large I can get with just his scenery... :)

My next question...er.. questions.. Is there something I should be doing to really "register" my Poser content (I have no external runtimes) with C8? I don't see the library objects in C8's "content"...and I can't find out how to do that in the pdf help... my thinking is that if it is in the content that C8 will be happier...

Secondly, I did open a NEW scene and I tried to import my same dressed V4.1 into the empty scene. C8 locked up tight. :(  My idea is that if I can somehow save the lighting and position of Howie's scene I can render what I want of it...and then render V4 in cararra with the same lighting and put her in, in post... I hate to give up using poser figures in C8...it's kind of what I bought it for... I feel it is a better landscaper than Vue.

What if i use V3, and her textures (V4 really IS getting so intensive that her skin and clothing can crash poser now!) ... so if I take your steps to help out C8, maybe using a "lesser" vicki might do it?

I really do want to get a book on C8, written by a USER, not the software code writers... any suggestions? I feel Cararra has SO MUCH to offer, I want to keep trying! :) Ultimately I may end up having to purchase more ram I guess. :/

Thank you so much for your reply!!

Lyne

PS no, no way to use two machines.

Hi Lyne, 

You can load an existing Runtime into Carrara's Browser so you can work directly with the content in Carrara itself. Much more fleet than Poser. Just click the "Content" tab in the Broswer, use the little document icon in the upper right of the Browser window, choose "Load Runtime" and Navigate to your existing Runtime. Pretty slick. 

If you are interested in some tutorials, you can give mine a try here. I've been doing them for years. Check them out and see if they're a good fit for how you learn. 

Mark

COOLNESS! :) Thanks! have bookmarked your site! Over at DAZ all they keep talking about is installing a 64 bit win7, but you are really helping in a way I CAN use! Thanks again!!!!

Lyne

Here's some more food for thought, Lyne:

Sometimes with AA, it's better to go with a low-quality setting and render your image at twice your intended size. When you re-size it in an image editor after the fact, the AA will automatically look nice and pretty. Obviously this may not work with the HF scene because of its size, but it's a nice trick to know and can actually give you better results in less time in some instances.

Now that you've switched to Carrara, you'll need to start thinking like a professional. (Poser and DS are more for the hobbyists) One big rookie mistake that we've all made is to create scenes that are beyond what our hardware can handle. Pros from ILM to Pixar almost always break larger scenes up into smaller, more manageable pieces and composite everything together in post. For example, the atmosphere, the terrain, the vegetation, and the character(s) could all be separate layers. Going this route gives you the option of using lower-quality render settings on the background layers where the viewer won't notice the difference, and cranking up the quality for the characters where you may want lots of detail. This requires a lot of planning in terms of establishing a working pipeline, but once you get the hang of it, there won't be anything you can't handle!

JT

Lynne:

You have jumped into the deep end - try some simple stuff and get to know Carrara, it's well worth it.

I just have to comment on your statement about ray tracing.  Put an object in a simple scene and shine two lights on it, angled from either side of your camera.  Render this with ray traced shadows and with shadow buffer.  You will immediately see the loss of dimension.  By using a detailed outside scene like Howies, you have happened upon a use for shadow buffer - where definition of a focal object is not important.  If you try that with a character, you will be very quickly disappointed.  Either that or you'll keep trying to make it look better, but the image will seem flat.

Ray tracing is your friend, and a strength of the Carrara render engine.

Klebnor

Hi... well I did successfully get a 1000x1000 scene of Howies rendered nicely ... so then I thought, ah ha! good deal... I will put in my ONE small OLD fox (morphed from the poser wolf with my Lyne's Creations map) and BOOM that one tiny diff crashed the render again. I keep thinking I must be doing something wrong....with HOW I get the fox FROM poser...and that C8 gets mixed up.... so going to load my content properly and try again...also I do know if I can delete the things of Howie's that are not in camera it will help... BUT I also asked my son about installing more ram!

yessss I did jump in the deep end... I could do that with Vue... but C8 is def a high end piece of software.... hmmm my problem is lack of time for it to render (my need to use my ONE computer for other important things) and wanting only the best... grin! I do have, in using Howie's stuff "instant backgrounds".... at the very least...so $80 is not much to pay for allowing me to do that... I do let the software teach me how to use it..."learn by doing"...and doing...and doing... ! :)

but the  LURE of being able to put a figure IN the scene to let the light and shadows play accuratly over the figure keeps me trying.... and so it goes... THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for your INPUT!!!! I really do appreciate it!!

Lyne