3ds max 2021: Arnold (CPU) rendering keeps crashing consistently.

[Austin_Roberts]

My problem: 3ds max 2021 keeps crashing when using production renderer/Activeshade with Arnold. This happens 100% of the time.

- I recently upgraded to 3ds max 2021, I have been having a horrible time trying to render my scenes. This started 2 weeks ago when my Arnold activesahde started to permanently crash max every time I would click render.

So being that this problem is caused by enabling legacy settings within the activeshade renderer, I normally just switched my render settings to production renderer with Arnold and now that is crashing.

My error message when I click render: "An error has occurred and the application will now close"

I have tried many ways to get around this:

1. Reinstalling Max to Arnold.

2. Reinstalling 3ds max 2021 with all the latest updates.

3. Reset the ENU

4. Updating my graphics drivers as well as installing all the recent windows 10 updates.

(None of these methods have worked)

If anyone has a solution to this, please help.

[lee_griggs]

This is with the latest version, right?

What does the log file say?

[lee_griggs]

Can you increase the verbosity? (debug) with Max. Warnings: 100

[Stephen.Blair]

How to get an Arnold log for debugging and troubleshooting:

You will see the Arnold log in the Render Message window, and you could save that to file and attach it.

But you'll also have the arnold.log file already, which will look like this:

00:12:49  1323MB         | log started Wed Sep  9 06:21:46 2020
00:12:49  1323MB         | Arnold 6.0.4.0 [3fad32b9] windows icc-17.0.2 oiio-2.2.1 osl-1.11.6 vdb-4.0.0 clm-1.1.1.118 rlm-12.4.2 optix-6.6.0 2020/07/31 08:11:38
00:12:49  1323MB         | running on NOVMJ07M9WM, pid=20332
00:12:49  1323MB         |  2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 5118 CPU @ 2.30GHz (24 cores, 48 logical) with 65154MB
00:12:49  1323MB         |  NVIDIA driver version 452.6 (Optix 60600)
00:12:49  1323MB         |  GPU 0: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti @ 1683MHz (compute 6.1) with 11264MB (10927MB available) (NVLink:0)
00:12:49  1323MB         |  GPU 1: Quadro P2000 @ 1480MHz (compute 6.1) with 5120MB (4729MB available) (NVLink:0)
00:12:49  1323MB         |  Windows 8 Enterprise Edition (version 6.2, build 9200)
00:12:49  1323MB         |  soft limit for open files is set at 2048
00:12:49  1323MB         |  
00:00:00  1323MB         | log started Wed Sep  9 06:21:46 2020
00:00:00  1323MB         | Arnold 6.0.4.0 [3fad32b9] windows icc-17.0.2 oiio-2.2.1 osl-1.11.6 vdb-4.0.0 clm-1.1.1.118 rlm-12.4.2 optix-6.6.0 2020/07/31 08:11:38
00:00:00  1323MB         | running on NOVMJ07M9WM, pid=20332
00:00:00  1323MB         |  2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 5118 CPU @ 2.30GHz (24 cores, 48 logical) with 65154MB
00:00:00  1323MB         |  NVIDIA driver version 452.6 (Optix 60600)
00:00:00  1323MB         |  GPU 0: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti @ 1683MHz (compute 6.1) with 11264MB (10927MB available) (NVLink:0)
00:00:00  1323MB         |  GPU 1: Quadro P2000 @ 1480MHz (compute 6.1) with 5120MB (4729MB available) (NVLink:0)
00:00:00  1323MB         |  Windows 8 Enterprise Edition (version 6.2, build 9200)
00:00:00  1323MB         |  soft limit for open files is set at 2048
00:00:00  1323MB         |  
00:00:00  1324MB         | loading plugins from c:/programdata/autodesk/applicationplugins/maxtoa_2021 ...
00:00:00  1382MB         | loaded 8 plugins from 6 lib(s) in 0:00.14
00:00:00  1398MB         | 
00:00:00  1413MB         | [color_manager] no color manager is active
00:00:00  1413MB         | [color_manager] rendering color space is "linear" with declared chromaticities:
00:00:00  1414MB         |                 r(0.6400, 0.3300) g(0.3000, 0.6000) b(0.1500, 0.0600) and w(0.3127, 0.3290)
00:00:00  1445MB         |  
00:00:00  1445MB         | there are 2 lights and 4 objects:
00:00:00  1445MB         |       2 persp_camera
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 distant_light
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 skydome_light
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 ray_switch_rgba
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 utility
00:00:00  1445MB         |       3 standard_surface
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 shuffle
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 user_data_rgb
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 gaussian_filter
00:00:00  1445MB         |       3 polymesh
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 list_aggregate
00:00:00  1445MB         |       1 max_driver
00:00:00  1445MB         |  
00:00:00  1445MB         | rendering image at 1280 x 720, 3 AA samples
00:00:00  1445MB         |   AA samples max    <disabled>
00:00:00  1445MB         |   AA sample clamp   <disabled>
00:00:00  1445MB         |   diffuse           samples  2 / depth  1
00:00:00  1445MB         |   specular          samples  2 / depth  1
00:00:00  1445MB         |   transmission      samples  2 / depth  8
00:00:00  1445MB         |   volume indirect   <disabled by depth>
00:00:00  1445MB         |   total                          depth 10
00:00:00  1445MB         |   bssrdf            samples  2
00:00:00  1445MB         |   transparency      depth 10
00:00:00  1445MB         | initializing 18 nodes ...
00:00:00  1446MB         |  creating root object list ...
00:00:00  1446MB         | node initialization done in 0:00.00 (multithreaded)
00:00:00  1446MB         | updating 19 nodes ...
00:00:00  1446MB         |  scene bounds: (-19.6152458 -26.5131245 0) -> (260045.516 26.5131245 50.994545)
00:00:00  1446MB         | node update done in 0:00.00 (multithreaded)
00:00:00  1446MB         | [aov] parsing 1 output statements ...
00:00:00  1447MB         | [aov] registered driver: "max_display_driver" (max_driver)
00:00:00  1447MB         | [aov]  * "RGBA" of type RGBA filtered by "max_filter" (gaussian_filter)
00:00:00  1447MB         | [aov] done preparing 2 AOVs for 1 output to 1 driver (0 deep AOVs)
00:00:00  1465MB         | starting 48 bucket workers of size 64x64 ...
00:00:00  1509MB         |    0% done - 341 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |    5% done - 7 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   10% done - 1 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   15% done - 5 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   20% done - 7 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   25% done - 22 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   30% done - 3 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   35% done - 5 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   40% done - 8 rays/pixel
00:00:00  1510MB         |   45% done - 15 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1510MB         |   50% done - 8 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1510MB         |   55% done - 4 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1510MB         |   60% done - 15 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1511MB         |   65% done - 13 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1511MB         |   70% done - 5 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1511MB         |   75% done - 6 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1511MB         |   80% done - 10 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1511MB         |   85% done - 13 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1509MB         |   90% done - 4 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1472MB         |   95% done - 2 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1467MB         |  100% done - 1 rays/pixel
00:00:01  1465MB         | render done in 0:00.492
00:00:01  1465MB         | render done
00:00:01  1455MB         |  
00:00:01  1455MB         | releasing resources
00:00:01  1404MB         | Arnold shutdown

[Austin_Roberts]

Hopefully this will help.

[Austin_Roberts]

Solution found: "bad scene geometry"

Fix: Export your mesh, delete the bad scene geometry within your max file then re-import the mesh into your existing scene.

- ActiveShade and Production render with Arnold should work as normal.