Iray renders hanging mid-render
valdiusmacto
Posts: 9
Okay, I'm sure this has come up before...but the search feature for the forums in terrible and I can't find a solution T-T. So, sorry for repeating this if it's a common thing.
Essentailly, what is happening is thus. I start an Iray render, it renders between 33-60%...and then Daz releases all of the RAM it was using and just spins uselessly for hours, with the render not progressing any farther. The render is still visibally grainy (I'd post it, but I'm afraid it's somewhat NSFW) so I know it didn't actually finish. But, after repeatedly trying to render the same thing, it hangs in the same general place.
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Things I've already tried:
1)The Iray Scene works, as I've tried rendering it on another machine just to make sure. Unfortunately, that machine is tied up on another project and can't be used to render all the other poses/camera angles needed.
2)Graphics driver updates. Just in case there was an issue with the old driver that had been fixed.
3)Changing the Instancing Optimization for Iray to 'speed.' This was a solution I saw in another thread about renders freezeing...unfortuantely, it actually made it WORSE. It got stuck at 18% instead of 33-60%.
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I'm used this computer (a fairly powerful gaming laptop) for secondary projects before, rendering Iray without any difficulty (even if it's obviously slower than my dedicated rendering desktop). As such, I'm stumped why it's suddenly refusing to fully render a Iray scene, just hanging mid-process like this. Help please?
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Comments
When it hangs is it still working (CPU/GPU activity)? If this was a GPU render do both machines have the same memory capacity on the GPU? How do the rest of their specs compare? Have you looked at the log file (Help>Troubleshooting>View Log File)?
When it hangs, it releases the CPU/GPU assets it was using, and just sits there counting time. It is a GPU render. The computer that is hanging admittely has a significantly less powerful GPU, though technically only slightly less memory capacity (6GB vs 8GB). Again, though, I've used both machiens to render Iray scenes before, it simply takes longer on the machine that is currently hanging. I've currently got it running another attempt with a few tweaks to the actual scene designed to lower the total ram need, so I don't dare touch the log at the moment. I don't expect it to matter, since I've rendered much larger/more demanding scenes than this before with this machine. Assuming it hangs again, I'll post the log file results.
So, lowering the total volume of content in the scene, combined with drastically increasing the render time allowed (despite the fact that it wasn't actually reaching max render time), seems to have allowed that specific scene to render? What the actual heck. This isn't even a heavy scene, compared to others I've rendered on the same system. And I have no idea why giving it more render time that it didn't actually use had any impact at all -_-.
The computer that is crashing, is it giving any error? How much RAM is on that computer? What GPU do you have? How much RAM does GPU have? Have you checked the temp of the processor to determine if it's over heating? Does the scene have and trans maps? As Richard said go to Help>Troubleshooting>View Log File and post the warnings here. With any luck it will tell you what file is causing it so we can help you better.
What do you use to measure "Larger/more demanding", there are whole forests with leaves and grass that are less demanding than a pair of boots
The Logfile is the best source of troubleshooting information.
After farther poking and prodding, I determined that what actually fixed the issue was changing the Iray Instancing Optimization setting from 'Auto' to 'Speed.' My first attempt at that actually seems to have run into an entirely different issue, one that I've run into in the past, where Daz3d refuses to actually obey the Max Time setting. It hit the max time, released all assets...and the timer kept going anyway -_-. THAT is an issue I've had on and off for years and it's why increasing the Max Time between the first attempt after changing the optimization setting and the second attempt fixed things.
However, this doesn't actually mean I know what the heck was wrong, since I have zero clue what that optimization setting actually DOES. So, if you think you can figure it out, you're welcome to puzzle on it. I can tell you for sure that it's not a Ram issue (I upgraded this system to have a full 32gb), and that it's not a temp issue either (I use HWMonitor to track temps on both my systems). As for the GPU, it's a Geforce 1060 (6GB model). Older at this point (I use a 2060 Super in my main rendering rig), but still resonablly powerful for basic scenes like what I was working on. The machine never gave an error, nor did it having any warnings in the log file. Once I got it working, I hammered through several of the same scene (with pose changes), making the current full log file a bit obtuse. As such, I attached just the log section from one of the times it hung in the 30% area.
As for the transmap thing, I'm afraid I have no idea. Like most people using Daz (I think), I'm entirely self taught and that's something I haven't touched. I did see from a few posts on similar subjects that there at least used to be an issue with intersecting transmaps. Which is actually why I updated the driver, hoping that (given the age of those posts) Nvidia had fixed that particular issue at some point. I should also note that your use of the word 'crashing' isn't really accurate. Neither Daz nor the machine ever FROZE/crashed, it just stopped working on the render and spun it's heels forever. I actually let it run for twelve hours the first time, just to make sure it really was hanging.
Given that I eventually got the scene to render, even if I don't understand why. Please don't feel you need to spend a lot of time on this! It would be nice to know what the heck happened, so I can prevent it happening again or fix it if it does occur. But I'm sure there are others with more pressing issues, given that I did manage to get a finished render in the end.
Based on the logfile, the rendering ran out of VRAM but it almost looks like it could have just made it without post prosessing having set.
Otherwise I think rendering on a laptop with the assets saved on onedrive may also be contributing.
It should have fallened back to CPU rendering if it ran out of VRAM though?
Also, the laptop hasn't been an issue for a lot of other renders, including some more heavier scenes rendered in full 4k. And the one drive bit is dying to you -_-. The result of my active attempts to get One Drive off my laptop at once point (the bloody thing is a $#^@#$^@$ parasite) resulted in a directory named that way, but which isn't actually linked to the the one drive software. All of the assets are actually hosted locally on a SATA drive. Or, at least, they should be (see previous parasite comment). Either way, all the assets are hosts in the same directory and I've now done a full two dozen renders since the one that caused the issue, none of which had a problem. I even reverted the changed Optimization setting back to auto and no hanging at all. Bizzare and annoying, but I'm caulked it up to 'unexplainable software instability' for now.
The render did fall back to CPU according to your logfile.
You haven't explained how you measure "heavier scenes".
Higher Ram requirement.
Maybe it's just bad lighting your using, i used to think the render stopped, the render can be completed in minutes depending on the level of focus & detail your trying to render. I recommend learning how to use Light & Shadows effectively not just shine a light on the subject, if you know how to apply shadows according to the light source you can produce a clean highly detailed render in short time frames even in high poly count scenes.
The higher the detail in the textures can take a little longer too render but overall having the right kind of light matters and how that light produces shadows if they pixelate or not. Have a look at the tutorial for the creation of mesh lights i find that discribes the use of shadows broadcast from light created using a mesh you create much better then i can articulate.
Just lighting something up with emission light isn't always the fastest or best render solution to lighting up environments it creates a fuzzy haze of firefly with white dots in places you don't want giving you that unfinished render look.
I have my PC tempreture set so i can tell when a render starts & stops, it's only when it's really cold my CPU & GPU runs at the same colour so i can tell the rendering process just by looking at my unit in most cases, it's colour tells me when the render is finished because the CPU,& GPU are no longer running to produce heat, same with my liquid cooler it will change colour according to heat it's producing, if i'm running all 10 cores at 4.5ghz on 256gb then shes running hot which is rarely the case most times it will use maybe 2.5ghz & maybe add 10 degrees while rendering normal default settings barely breaking a sweat, you can tweak the render options & increase quality this will spike up cpu & gpu usage make things a bit hotter but i don't find the long render times worth the quality increase and increased power usage required for something when you scale up the quality bar, it just increases render time and cpu usage with no real effect where using the right light & shadow in scenes make best & quickest renders at high detail.