Toon always causes Carrara to shut down (no error messages) when I try to render a TIFF image at 3200X2400. Any fix for this? I can't assign more RAM to the Toon extension AFAIK. 1600X1200 isn't big enough for an 18X24 poster at 150 dpi, according to Kinko's. (Mac OS 9.0.4, G3, 400 MHz, 220 MB physical RAM for Carrara.)

try one of these: 1) move the preferences of Carrara out of his folder or to the trash 2) In some rare cases the Carrara files it can be damaged (don't ask me why). In this situation you can copy all in from your scene (included cameras and lights) and paste it on a new document. 3) if this did not have to work, drinks a coffee and smokes one cigarette:) TOXE

 

nyar1ath0tep, I did a quick test render on Windows 2000, not the same but memory usage should be similiar. At 3200x2400, with Toon! Carrara shoots above 220 meg several times during the render, peaking at about 285 meg even with a very simple scene. Behind the scenes, Toon! uses a bunch of the gbuffers (even ones that aren't available to the end user) to calculate it's effect so it takes more memory than just a straight render. Granted, Toon! should fail gracefully when it runs out of memory, and I will look at that in the next revision of the DCG version of Toon!, but even that won't solve the problem. Try allocating more memory to Carrara (Toon! takes from the same pool). If there is no more memory to allocate, try rendering chunks of the image and stitching them together in a 2D app. Another option is, if you are comfortable sharing your scene and it's small enough, pop it into a SIT or ZIP file and send it to me. I can render it and somehow get you the output as a JPG or burn a CD and send if you are in the US. Good Luck, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Thanks for the tips, Eric and TOXE. I forgot to mention that the same scene, rendered without Toon, works o.k. at 3200X2400 as TIFF, with "mask" checked in the g-buffer list. But I get the feeling that even if I turn off "mask", it will still use the same amount of memory during a Toon render. The scene is for a paying client, and I don't have permission to send it out. I will try going to 300 MB, which may not work, since I only have 256 MB physical RAM. I can stitch them in Photoshop, but how do I set up the quarter-renders of the full scene without introducing various parallax errors? In this case, there's a character right in the middle, so how would I avoid seams and splits?

nyar1ath0tep, To set up the quarter renders, set your render size to 2000x1000 (so you have a little overlap to play with), turn on Show Production Frame. Now grab the production frame at the corners and resize it so it's about 25% bigger than 1/4 your original production frame. Grab the middle of the production frame and drag it to the top left corner of where you want rendered. Do this for each corner. By moving the production frame around, without touching the camera, you can render chunks without changing your perspective. If you want to keep the character in the middle whole, do a render of the center and then stitch the edges on to it. Good Luck, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins