nVidia Quadro 400 kernel panics Windows&OSX

I have an HP Z800 12core 2.44ghz Windows 7 ultimate 64bit, 24GB of RAM, nVidia Quadro 4000 and the same video card on a MacPro early 2009 8core 2.26ghz, OSX 10.6.8, 26 GB RAM.

I am trying to render a project 1920X1080 with three AI files split into 5 layers a piece, one drawn layer with a gradient, one layer with a vectorized image sequence/movie and one .OSB file and rendering to movie.

In OSX .OSB will quit rendering via Maya 2012 and freeze the whole export to movie, or in Windows it will crash Harmony after a few frames but then render.

However recently as the project progresses I now get kernel panics of the nvidia card…with old or new drivers it makes no difference. The system recovers and I am able to render but the screen in windows does not refresh properly.

I wonder if the 32bit core of Harmony is robust enough. Can anyone suggest another app to use to move a 3D form through animated AI vector files? I can render basic forms and basic 3D but now am reaching hardware and software limits.

I need to get this project finished.

So an image sequence would be lighter?
I’m having tech support work on this issue this coming monday. I hope it can be worked out. I have had some success making the screen resolution lower than 1920X1080 but I cannot wait until the 64bit version of Harmony comes out. It’s not capable of taking much of a load in 32bit.

Still, when it works it is the best!:wink:

Lilly
thanks for the advice.

I’m going to try the image sequence and if need be render and crash until finished:)

However the 64bit version of harmony will really help. Do you need any beta testers? I really do put Harmony thorugh its paces. Not many are using six layers of *.OSB files, seven layers of AI files and another six of drawn digital animated layers.

you should you use us heavy hitters. Harmony will work if all you do is Wacom pen animation. try having several layers of vectorized movie imports and a 3d form and several AI files and you’ll see it freeze the machine.

Just a thought.

8)

Thanks I sent you my email and info
And your idea about image sequence works!!!

Yay indeed! Though one question: how do I get transparency to work? I use render to network and I set the folder and file format as .png.

However I discovered the problem with the movie output was to do with some very, very complex .ai files. I am using simpler files and the issue of kernel panics have gone away.

Having great fun with the Deformation modules.

Did you try to activate the Preference>Render> Enable disk caching? If you are doing a sequence of images this might help because it doesn’t keep all the intermediate images in memory while rendering a frame. It creates an actual file on disk and frees the memory, then when the final render of the frame is processed it retrieves all the intermediate images.

I don’t know if it would help for the Maya rendering but it’s worth a try.

I’ll try your suggestion on my next Network Render out to. png4 sequence.

The problem is if you use Maya 2012 default it sets the .osb render to use all cores of your system and therefore leaves nothing for Harmony which struggles to keep up in its archaic 32bit gestalt.

So I’ve set all new Maya 2012 .osb projects to only use 6 of the 12 cores. This has really helped.

But I think your suggestion will help give Harmony more headroom and mean less crashes.

Thanks for the assist. I’ll let you know if it works.

I can’t think of another app that would do it. The only other option is to render the elements separately and composite them together, but you’ll have quite a bit of work ahead of you doing masking to get the elements to move through each other. :-<br />
There’s no way that you can lighten the load in the project file by rendering the 3D and AI files together first, then compositing that render back into the rest of the elements of your scene?

~Lilly

Oh or the other thing is render it out as an image sequence, then render a movie from that.

~Lilly

Well the advantage of doing the image sequence is that it only has to render one image at a time. Then it should release the memory and go onto the next image. The thing with the movie file is that it can’t release the memory until it finishes doing the whole movie.

Also, if it does fail part way through the image sequence, then you can re-render by picking it up at the spot where it failed.

~Lilly

Send me an email at lvogelesang@toonboom.com and I’ll see if I can put you on a list to become a beta tester. It won’t be available overnight but when it is available I can see what I can do.

~Lilly

Yaaay!

~Lilly

If you want transparency then select PNG4, the 4th channel is your Alpha channel.

~Lilly