Has anyone sucessfully rendered a scene using GI and anything grows? I'm still having some problems with a scene and I'm trying to track down the cause.

It's working here. There is an intermittent issue with Anything GLOWS though that Eric is fixing. What is the problem you are experiencing?

Rendering starts sometimes and then cuts out - but other times just hangs and I have to Ctr/Alt/Del Carrara out. it doesn't matter what rendering settings. I really can't figure out the problem - it's a complex scene - it renders in C1 ok but not in C2. - as a matter of fact - it appears that I can't even get it to render with the raytracers in c2 either. I need to do a bit more investigation into this problem - it's anoying the hell out of me!

I've had some crashes like that but each was caused by something different. The original one was a bug with timeline controls. A bezier tweener would crash the scene in C2 in the manner that you've described. (You won't want to hear this) The second crash like yours was a model I had built in C1 that for some reason didn't make the jump to C2 when I opened the file directly in C2. I took each object and copied it into the Object Browser and then reassembled the scene in C2. It worked fine after that Also, if have Anything Glows and your using the SMP (dual processor) function during render you might see a crash like this but not always. Disable SMP and see if that fixes it or update the AGlows module with one that Eric posted a couple of weeks ago at Digital Carvers Guild. Every now and then, the updated AGlows module will still crash the file but Eric is working on that fix. Otherwise, you definately have a new C2 issue! Go to the Eovia site and report the bug under the support section. They may request the file to find out what the problem is. They've been great at getting back to me on funky C2 problems like this and usually let me know what it is they found. Sorry I don't have a silver bullet...

You're right - I didn't want to hear that!! I started deleating models from the scene to see if it made a difference - looks like I'm goign to be doing some bug huntin' tonight! Thanks Mark.

Harbinger, If you do narrow it down to grows, please forward the file my way if you can and I'll see if I can fix the problem. Thanks, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Yup - narrowed to down to grows - the scene in C1 contains about 35 instances of a patch of grass with 10000 strands - it's a lot of processing power - but it renders ok. C2 - I narrowed the render problem to the AG - so I cut it down to 1 patch and it rendered - I can get up to about 4 patches until it freezes up. It's a bigggg file, I'll see if I can send it to you Eric - thanks!

harbringer, One thing you might want to test before bundling it up is if it's really hung or just working hard. GI and high polygon counts don't play well with each other and grows does generate some high poly counts. The way to check is do this: when you are on a spot that seems to be hung, make sure your zoom mode is at 100% and then walk away for a half hour or so. Come back and resize the window with the rendering image. If it's still working, you'll see little blocks fill in with image, even if the big blocks aren't fully complete yet. The reason I ask for you to check is because I got caught by the same thing. I have one scene takes about 30secs with the ray tracers, but under GI takes about 24 hours. It's got a few high resolution grooves objects and a couple of grows objects. At first I thought it was hanging at about the 8 hour mark, but when I did the resize test, I could see it was still working, just very slowly. GI chokes on lots of polygons. Thanks, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Eric - it's not even working with the ray tracers -

Okay, please send me the file at ewinemiller@digitalcarversguild.com if you can, that will help me track down the problem. I just did a test here and it rendered 36-10k strand agro primitives without a problem, but I may not be stressing it the right way. If the whole file is a problem, see if you can strip it down to just the Anything Grows objects, no textures, etc. That should make the file size small. Thanks, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins