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HAIR and FUR Totally Unstable When Rendering Dynamics

26 REPLIES 26
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Message 1 of 27
Anonymous
617 Views, 26 Replies

HAIR and FUR Totally Unstable When Rendering Dynamics

Hi -this is a new thread as I couldnt post a reply to my prior thread " RE : error "HAIR ATMOSPHERIC" IS NOT SUPPORTED (while rendering message)".Author who posted was MK 3D on that thread - My hair and fur settings are the same as in the BMP screen shots contained in that thread which may be useful again.

Ok I a new problem now.

Im doing dyamics tests and want to render out a 200 frame sequence which is just the head moving right to left and a geosphere flowing around the maim of hair just to see how the maim animates and reactes/collisions with a wind and motion etc... as you do

To cut a long story short, it just keeps crashing out after a few frames, 10-20 frames if im lucky, when rendering from a stat file. This is using Mr Prim hair render , with lights as before ,( see prior Screen shots) but also when i set it to buffer mode and composite method - normal , to see if it makes a difference the same happens.

This is just a standard crash error, "3ds max has an error and will now shut down" ok not quite like that but very similar; its not specific why. Just your standard error.

Right now, i just need to render something stable, i dont care what it looks like anymore, i need to know what i should be rendering in, like maybe i should use scanline and composite and render hair seperately because its just not stable enough for me to do even test renders at the moment for animation/dynamics wise.

You mentioned before about rendering with matte objects, can you elaborate on this?I can compositte in combustion I know about alpha channels , RPF and targas but my knowledge on what to render to in max for hair, put it together ,and how I exactly make a object matte is minimal-none..

One other thing everytime i do a dynamics test and regrow the hair after i have changed a setting, other than styling the hair with spline i also do a bit in style mode, is there anyway i can save my hair style so i dont have to keep tweaking in style mode after I re-grow from splines?

So any advice as before again would be greatly appreciated

I look forward to your comments
(apologies for the long post : )
Regards
Ben
intel Q9550
4gig Ram(3.50)
32bit Win XP
3dsmax 2009 SP1 + hair hotfix
26 REPLIES 26
Message 2 of 27
Steve_Curley
in reply to: Anonymous

Would you try replying to the other thread again please? Just a quick post to see if you can. If you can, I'll move this thread to the original for you (better to keep it all in one place). If you can't, report it in the Website support forum.

Max 2016 (SP1/EXT1)
Win7Pro x64 (SP1). i5-3570K @ 4.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX11.
nVidia GTX760 (2GB) (Driver 430.86).

Message 3 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

just tried , it just says : Error Message: Unable to receive your submission at this time - will advise website support forum as advised
Message 4 of 27
Steve_Curley
in reply to: Anonymous

Curious - I can reply to the other thread no problem. Report it anyway.

Max 2016 (SP1/EXT1)
Win7Pro x64 (SP1). i5-3570K @ 4.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX11.
nVidia GTX760 (2GB) (Driver 430.86).

Message 5 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

i have mate, all done. its gone in support forums just checked , but its also displayed above this thread too?? dontknow if thats right either
Message 6 of 27
krueger_1
in reply to: Anonymous

Since Ben's been having troubles with the other thread, I'll post on this one and maybe they can get consolidated later...

To cut a long story short, it just keeps crashing out after a few frames, 10-20 frames if im lucky, when rendering from a stat file. This is using Mr Prim hair render , with lights as before ,( see prior Screen shots) but also when i set it to buffer mode and composite method - normal , to see if it makes a difference the same happens.

This is just a standard crash error, "3ds max has an error and will now shut down" ok not quite like that but very similar; its not specific why. Just your standard error.

Are you rendering to an image sequence or one file (avi, mov, etc)? Did you try rendering in scanline to see if it works?

Right now, i just need to render something stable, i dont care what it looks like anymore, i need to know what i should be rendering in, like maybe i should use scanline and composite and render hair seperately because its just not stable enough for me to do even test renders at the moment for animation/dynamics wise.

You mentioned before about rendering with matte objects, can you elaborate on this?I can compositte in combustion I know about alpha channels , RPF and targas but my knowledge on what to render to in max for hair, put it together ,and how I exactly make a object matte is minimal-none..

You basically take anything that gets affected by your hair (with shadows, reflections or whatever) and assign it a Matte material. I would save it into a seperate scene and delete everything else that's not important. You can also use scanline if you want to speed up your rendering time, but you would have to probably redo your lighting...

Edit: I forgot to mention saving out to whatever file format you prefer that supports alpha channels (targa, png, etc...)

One other thing everytime i do a dynamics test and regrow the hair after i have changed a setting, other than styling the hair with spline i also do a bit in style mode, is there anyway i can save my hair style so i dont have to keep tweaking in style mode after I re-grow from splines?

What kind of settings are you talking about modifying? Can you save the presets or copy the hairdo under the tools rollout?
3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC
Message 7 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

Hi

I rendered to JPEGS in all tests, always bombing out in every test . I get about 8 frames out in PAL D1 768x576 in buffer mode, and Mr Prim. the lower the resolution the more frames that will render but still talking like 20 out of 200.This is using mental ray. Yet to try scanline as the whole lighting messes up.

I think this is part of my confusion. Should i be sticking to one renderer overall and keeping the lighting compatible with the environment and hair and fur? or can i mental ray the environment and scanline the H& F?
In addition if the fur is rendered out seperately , the rest of the geometry how do i render that out so there is no H & F and in what format??

I have tried buffer mode and composite set to none while in mental ray, I have atached a print screen cos it doesn`t look right to me it looks like the render is unfinished but that could be me??( the maim is fine there is a sphere on the right set as a collision object so the circular cut out i know is fine) but i havent tried this with the same sequence yet as it looks completelywrong.

regarding the hair styling- i use the scale tool on the very top of the maim tip to make it longer than the spline can carry it in that one place to give it a kiinda mohawk. I have saved it to a pre-set but it doesn`tit hold the extra scaleing info when i load it back in. I have altered the splines also to emphasise the mohawk , but it doesnt carry much of the hair, but in styling it seems to grab a good bunch of hairs i can shift upwards.

cheers

Message 8 of 27
krueger_1
in reply to: Anonymous

I rendered to JPEGS in all tests, always bombing out in every test . I get about 8 frames out in PAL D1 768x576 in buffer mode, and Mr Prim. the lower the resolution the more frames that will render but still talking like 20 out of 200.This is using mental ray. Yet to try scanline as the whole lighting messes up.

Does it give you a memory issue when it crashes? It can't hurt to increase the memory limit under Translator Options in the Processing tab of the render setup anyway.

I think this is part of my confusion. Should i be sticking to one renderer overall and keeping the lighting compatible with the environment and hair and fur? or can i mental ray the environment and scanline the H& F?
In addition if the fur is rendered out seperately , the rest of the geometry how do i render that out so there is no H & F and in what format??

Choosing which way you want to render is up to you. You can try and do it all in mental ray, but you can also set up the hair to render with scanline and composite later. Since you're having a good amount of problems getting the H&F to work with mr, you might consider rendering it out with scanline.

If you choose to split it up between the two, you can either turn off the H&F for the scene rendering with mental ray in the Effects panel (uncheck Active at the top), or just delete the effect and keep the H&F in it's own scene.
3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC
Message 9 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

no memory issue when it crashes, thats whats strange, as i had that before back in the old days when i put the fur on a object with turbosmooth on, thats now removed and i made the proxy growth object with barely any polys, so i havent got a memory issue since.its the bog standard msg u get with no explanation. However I will certainly give ramping the memory limit up to see if it helps.

could you comment on my attachment though, has it rendered correctly as some random buckets of background can be seen yet its suposed to just render the hair right? (mental ray render again though ;P)

can I just clarify , if i use buffer for hair, STICK TO SCANLINE right and use selected lights which only affects the hair?

anytihg else like the environment rendered seperately i can do that whatever i like?

cheers for your help you have def thrown some light on this , i have some things to think about and try out now
Message 10 of 27
krueger_1
in reply to: Anonymous

could you comment on my attachment though, has it rendered correctly as some random buckets of background can be seen yet its suposed to just render the hair right? (mental ray render again though ;P)

I get the same thing when setting None as my composite method. It seems to only remove the background from the buckets that have hair in them.

You can also look into the Render Elements tab in the renderer setup. There you can go to Add... and select Hair & Fur. What this does is renders out a seperate image with just the h&f with an alpha channel so you can composite it later. If you do this, you can add a Shadow element as well. Now you have your h&f on one pass and the shadows from your hair on another pass so you can composite them independently.

can I just clarify , if i use buffer for hair, STICK TO SCANLINE right and use selected lights which only affects the hair?
anytihg else like the environment rendered seperately i can do that whatever i like?

That's correct, but you want to make sure you have any other object that gets affected by the hairs in the same scene with the hairs so you can get the appropriate shadows, reflections, or whatever else may get affected.

Let me know if this all makes sense 🙂
3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC
Message 11 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

Hi

Ok things are working very well now and i think im pretty much there with your help im now compositing 3 layers, looks tons better , renders tons quicker. But I got just a couple of more questions, im confused on

FYI:rendered 3 layers seperately - file attached
Shadows =render to element tab shadow added only , rendered with mr, with H&F set to Active but composite mode - off) 1mn-50
Environment =,mr, NO SHADOWS (turned off in light lister)and H&F not active, 7secs
H&F layer = scanline, buffer mode composite set to None, and H&F added to render elements. 50secs
(render times are now super fast with increase quality as i have headroom to ramp H&F mod params up, only the shadows as mr used pushes times up slightly. This is still better than mr prim the whole lot together at over 5mins30!

Q1 its still not the most stable, is there an equivalent in scanline to increase memory usage like u mentioned in mr prim before?

Q2 the environment layer i am rendering as a jpeg as this is what seems to render the full blue background, as when i render to RPF and TARGA it doesnt include the mr lighting like the blue sky and blured horizon its kinda just the character and a black sky and grey ground plane. I am checking all channels and alpha split but it doesnt make any difference. This can also get confusing as im not sure what specific channels i should be using and there are loads files being rendered, and of course RPF are big files which i dont really want with all chanels selected
as long as i render a jpeg it works fine but of course i cant add effects or what not if its jpeg or similar image file.
What should i be rendering the environement out as?

Q3u mentioned in the prior msge if i render shadows layer seperately i need to add the objects it comes into contact with, as well. just a bit confused by this, as am i doing it right as per my method above in shadows?

do you know of any tuts on rendering matt objects for shadows , i really dont have a clue about this still at all, or can you elaborate for a dummie:P

Anyways cheers with your help again

Cheers
Ben
by the way i bought that allan mckay tutorial you suggested, its incredible!

Message 12 of 27
krueger_1
in reply to: Anonymous

Q1 its still not the most stable, is there an equivalent in scanline to increase memory usage like u mentioned in mr prim before?

What's not stable about it? In scanline, you might try checking Conserve Memory at the bottom of the Renderer tab or mess with the Buffer Rendering Options in the effects tab to get better memory usage.

Q2 the environment layer i am rendering as a jpeg as this is what seems to render the full blue background, as when i render to RPF and TARGA it doesnt include the mr lighting like the blue sky and blured horizon its kinda just the character and a black sky and grey ground plane. I am checking all channels and alpha split but it doesnt make any difference. This can also get confusing as im not sure what specific channels i should be using and there are loads files being rendered, and of course RPF are big files which i dont really want with all chanels selected
as long as i render a jpeg it works fine but of course i cant add effects or what not if its jpeg or similar image file.
What should i be rendering the environement out as?

Depends on what you are planning to do with it afterwards, what type of information you need in the file. Your targa or RPF file should still have the mr sky in the background, but your alpha channel might be removing it if you're using After Effects or Combustion to composite. You most likely don't need your alpha channel anyway so you can uncheck that when you save to either of those formats. Or you can also keep the alpha and tell After Effects to ignore it when interpretting the footage.

Q3u mentioned in the prior msge if i render shadows layer seperately i need to add the objects it comes into contact with, as well. just a bit confused by this, as am i doing it right as per my method above in shadows?

Since you're rendering the shadows from the hair with mental ray, you don't really have to worry about this.

But to explain, a matte object is something that will pick up shadows or reflections for compositing later. So if your hair was going to cast shadows on the ground, you would keep your ground geometry and assign it a matte material. You make a matte material by clicking the box that says Standard, Arch & Design, or whatever type of materials you're using and select Matte/Shadow from the list (this is for scanline, the mr material is Matte/Shadow/Reflection ).


The attached image shows how I would composite hair, shadows, and a background and here's an explanation on each stage:
Top Left: Background image I got off google images.
Top Right: A circle shape I made in Photoshop and added a radial gradient to make it more 3d.
Bottom Left: Added the hair pass from Max. I also copied the hair, shrunk it, made it totally black, blurred it slightly and decreased the visibilty to 50% in between the sphere and hair so it blends together better and gives a darker edge around the hair.
Bottom Right: Added the shadow pass from the hair from Max. I used a plane for the ground and assigned it a Matte/Shadow material.

Let me know if that explains it enough.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC
Message 13 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

My only problem now, is really the same problem it just keeps on crashing when rendering Hair and Fur to a sequence(this is from a precomputed stat file 200 frames for a test).The same as if i was doing from Mr Prim
I checked the conserve memory option +
in buffer rendering options tile memory usage changed from defualt 70 to 140
and transparency depth from default 30 to 60 , this all had no effect.
Done a re-install too, same happens.

as im in scanline and things are rendering really fast especially as im trying oversampling in draft to see if it makes a difference. I really dont understand whats going on and what my options I have left now, im kinda puzzled now. Attached print screen of crash report (also inc my max file)

i tried it on a 64bit machine and it works just fine,

The main problem i have at homes is when i re-load max and try and render from the last crashed frame it does not seem to pick the stat file up , so i dont know how to continue??

32bit xp
4gig(3.5 used)
Q9550

17468_LBpewDJt4JZODcYVKO30.zip

Message 14 of 27
krueger_1
in reply to: Anonymous

Did you zip that with a new version of winzip? I can't extract it because it gives me an error. This happened before and zipping it in a previous format worked.
3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC
Message 15 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

just used a trial winzip 12, it doesnt accept rar. and the compatible mode for all zip versions compresses to 4.70(too big) gotta do two posts for 2 zip files on on this ,

17516_wYfw41UNe4qq3IdKxuUg.zip

Message 16 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

2nd zip, dont know if i split this right never done it before, hope it works: )!

17517_zuYg4E4bwEmXBt5eOfG5.zip

Message 17 of 27
joegunn3d
in reply to: Anonymous

I was just checking the forums and came across your post. This seems to be a very long thread so I maybe too late. However, if you contact me directly BenC via the AREA I will help you out.

I have created a training DVD on Hair which covers a lot over 5 hours.

Here's the outline:

Overview

UI Setup - Maxscripts - Workflow

Hair Modifier

Grooming Pipeline

Styling Hair Part 1 & 2

Materials & Maps

Dynamics & Creating Collision Objects

Lighting & Rendering

BONUS TUTORIALS

"Cloth Driven Hair Dynamics"

"The making of the cover art"

http://www.joegunn3d.com/Shop.html

Thanks,

Joe
max2008-11
Message 18 of 27
krueger_1
in reply to: Anonymous

I saw you had object motion blur and image motion blur checked in the renderer tab, you could try disabling those and even turning off shadows in the renderer tab (because you're not using them anyway) to speed up rendering times and reduce your memory usage. If you want motion blur on your hair, you can add it in post because you have it on a seperate layer. I ran a test with those disabled and got through 25 frames with the precomputed stat files before I stopped it. This is with a 32-bit system and used about 1.5 megs of memory.
3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC
Message 19 of 27
Anonymous
in reply to: Anonymous

its an improvement; im getting between 25 frames and sometimes 37 .

Cheers for goin out of your way and taking a look,and your help along the way least i can work with this now.
ill prob upgrade to 64bit too : )

Thanks once again

Ben
Message 20 of 27
krueger_1
in reply to: Anonymous

I was looking through the scene for other things to optimize and you can probably put the multi strand to 0 for the head and knees, then lower the hair passes and segments for all the hairs until it is optimized as much as you can but still looks good. I also turned off my rendered frame window to free up some more memory. And I'm not sure if the motion blur in the H&F effects tab has much of an effect on your performance, but you can play with that if you want.

You can even do this for the mental ray scene which just uses the hairs for the shadows to probably bring that rendering time down a lot.

Hopefully tweaking these should get your rendering running somewhat stable.
3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC

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