Studio Render keeps stalling (crashing) halfway through every 0,1 seconds

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone, 

-Background info-

Halfway through this year I was tasked with making a video to use at an exhibition for my company. I used inventor Studio to make a quick video of a rotating model, with higher graphic fidelity than what you see in your standard inventor interface. I didn't have the time to do anything really neat, but this did inspire me to make something a bit more involved. 

So over the past half year or so, I've been working late when I had the opportunity, to set up a small animation to pretty-up a video essay I've been trying to make. I didn't want to make it too complex, because otherwise I would be better off using professional animating software rather than Inventor Studio, and I didn't want to learn a whole new software package, but even so I found myself becoming perhaps a bit too ambitious. Still, after months of work, I'm pretty happy with the final result, even if I did have to spend extra time on workarounds for Inventor and Studio's limits for these kinds of projects.

-Attachments-

Since it's just a hobby project, there is no confidentiality stuff, so I can attach the full project to this post. But even zipped it's ~425 MB, so too big to add in one go. I'll see if I can split it, so people can play around a bit with it if they feel like it. (Note: The actual animation I'm using will be in 'Animation_test_path.iam')

What I can add is the animation. I made a 15 fps pre-render that I attached. 'Final_unrendered.avi'.

To get an idea of how this compares to the final look, check the 30 fps render that I have so far, 'Current_render.avi'.

-Actual problem-

My problem now occurred as I was having Inventor studio do the final render. I took my work laptop home for the holidays, thinking it could render everything as I celebrated year's end. My home system is definitely not up to the task. First days went fine: Over the course of 12 hours, I rendered 8 seconds of video. Over night it crashed, which it tends to do sometimes, but it still rendered 4 seconds of video. So now I have approximately 12 seconds of video rendered. 

However, since then, I can't get it to render more than 0,1 seconds at a time before inventor crashes.

-Workflow-

Before I start rendering, I have to overwrite appearances in my model because if I save them in sub-assemblies, render will not use transparency. (I use Metroid internals for the Metroid core, Meat for the vessels, Metroid Shell for the shell, and Organics1 -not the selflit one- for the tendrils. I leave the teeth as they are.) I have to suppress-and-unsuppress 'decal2' or 'decal3' in the background because otherwise I get black bars running through my backgrounds (see examples below) and I have to set up my visual settings properly (reflections on, object/ambient shadows on, shaded visual style, set work geometry invisible, set camera path sketch/part invisible) I usually run some image render tests from different points of view to see everything is in working order, before I actually turn to the 'render animation' module.

background failbackground OK

So just getting rendering started takes a bit more work then I'd like. but still, if I set this up once every 6 or 12 hours, it shouldn't be a problem.

However, having it render a paltry 3 or 4 frames (0,1 s of footage) and than having to do all this again, for hours and hours on end, is not something I want to do.

-Attempts to resolve issues-

I've already tried multiple options to prevent rendering from going off the rails, restoring previous file, saving it again before I render. (Note: be careful with saving after a render, Inventor will save animated parameters at animation timepoint to parts, and if these differ from initial values, these new values will become initial values, corrupting the animation.) I've tried updating and changing settings explicitly (of course without changing the actual animation itself) hoping doing so would have data end up in work memory that would prevent it from crashing. I tried changing my power settings so they won't interrupt rendering. I tried disconnecting internet. It feels like I tried everything...

But it always just renders 0,1s before bailing on me.

So as a last resort, I thought to try asking for help. I'm aware that this will likely amount to little, as Inventor Studio's stability issues are well documented, but perhaps someone might have an idea I haven't tried yet.

-Extra information-

For reference, I'm using Inventor Professional 2019 64 bit edition, build 136, Release 2019.0.2, Date Fri-11/30/2018. 

I'm working with Windows 7 Professional SP1 64 bit OS.

(And I'm not allowed to update, even if I do have administrative rights on the system. I'd have to request ICT department to do so, and they won't permit that or do so.)

I render frame-by-frame, with 50 iterations per render, and am rendering into folders with names of the type 'Intro_s0s8' or 'Intro_s11,8s11,9'

If anyone has any idea how I could get past this roadblock and render the rest of the animation in decent chunks, I'd be very much obliged. And even if you don't, at the very least my thanks for your willingness to think along and try to help.

And, of course, best wishes for 2020, a merry christmas, and all that jazz.

[Anonymous]

I tried posting the first part of seven of a split zip file with the full inventor folder, but it didn't take. Likely there is not just a limit on post size in regards to attachments, but also on how much you attach per day, or hour or something.

I'll try uploading things piece-by-piece later, see if it works then. Until then, I've uploaded my inventor project to Wetransfer. Hopefully that'll work for now.

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/3429d1a52f659974ac6442599f9918bb20191226104452/017655107a14fb57bad2...