Radiosity

[ThinkTank]

Hi guys, me again...
Just wondering if any of you guys no what I'm going on about, and How i can solve it....

OK.... I understand how to use Advanced Lighting, (Radiosity)etc... And i've decided its the lighting I want for my final animaiton for the five floor aprtments i'm doing. The thing is....

It's ok to calculate an empty room, but when I try to caluclate a room full of things WHAM! sorry no memory, I have 1.3 Gig of ddr ram in this computer, with a 3000 AMD XP Processor. (Yes my computer specs say other wise, but I'm not getting that computer for another two weeks :-()

How can I get Max to...not run out of memory? :-) if that makes sense, how do I make it not crash :-)

Some screen shots Below (btw wish we could upload a slightly larger image, less than a 100k! come on ...):o

[ThinkTank]

THE WARNING!!!

[ARTillery]

do you use meshing??if you're using meshing try to decrease the size of the meshing..or cancell it altogether and use final gathering..

[ThinkTank]

Thanks for reply, I tryed using Final Gathering, thats a no go too :-( I can't reduce poloy count for scene because theres to much in there. I'm talking very detail, like a house with everything in there, phone, tele, wardrobes, the whole lot, and I need to get this project finished, What i'm really sayin is, that If It doesent run on this computer will it render on my new computer? (specs in my name below)... I know people can make really realistic lighting with normal lighting (omni's and spots) but I don't think I would be able to do that because of the size of the scenne, and I prefer the radioisty look. Will 6 Gig DDR ram be enough, and two dual AMD's Opteron 250's be enough?....

Any more comments welcome :D

[dazilla]

I have to mention this: How are you gonna run 6 sticks of 1GB memory on 1 mobo? Most mobo's don't support more than 3 RAM sticks, and 32-bit windows doesn't support more than 4 GB of RAM.

Btw, when ARTillery said meshing, he's talking about meshing on the radiosity settings. If you have meshing size too low, then it'll try to make too many radiosity elements that won't fit into your RAM.

[ThinkTank]

Thanks for clearing up the meshin part, BUt with the 6 gig DDR RAM, what are you talking about?!!?!?!?!? this mobo can support up to 12 gig DDR!!!

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8s.html

And i applogise about the 1 gig sticks, there going to be 2 gig sticks x 3.

Computers costing me £6462.50, But it's going to be worth it ;)

[dazilla]

Hmm...sounds good then. But your OS still won't be able to address more than 4GB of RAM (due to the limitations of 32-bit registers). If you plan on running 64-bit windows, as Opterons are 64-bit; it won't help max at all, since max is only 32-bit. I'm just wondering how you can make use of more than 4GB of RAM.

[ThinkTank]

AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH what am i gonna do then?!?!!?! When Will discreet bring out a 64bit version?!!?!?!?!?!? I'm screwed!!!!

Does that mean I can't run 3d max on my new system? isnt there some sort of program that imitates another OS?

BAH HUMBUG!

[dazilla]

You can run it just the same, it's just that the extra 2 gigs will be useless.

Edit: the purpose of the 64-bit mobo and having more than 4GB of accessible RAM is that some machines use 64-bit linux or Unix. These computers have server and database software written for them that may use more than 4GB of RAM.

[Desmark]

Have you thought about rendering in stages?
i.e. Render your radiosity pass for just the main items, architecture or large furniture items, then burn that pass onto the texture much like they do for realtime stuff.
Then perhaps you could use more subtle lighting for the remaining items?
Not sure about the ins and outs but I figure its the only way you can reduce the memory usage.

Des

[LatinJones]

Maybe you need to increase the size of your pagefile? If you are using windows 2000 or XP it's pretty easy to do. When max runs out of physical ram to chew on it will start eating up your pagefile and when that runs out you'll get that nice error.

I would try increasing your pagefile to maybe 4GB if you have the diskspace......Just keep bumping it up. I'm not sure if there is a pagefile limitation in XP or 2000.