Urgent update to the Doc for Indigo Rendering procedure to avoid crashes on big projects

Votes
0

Product:
iClone 7

Version:
7.01

Status:
Closed

Issue 3545

Urgent update to the Doc for Indigo Rendering procedure to avoid crashes on big projects

Problem: I have a project consisting almost 3 million polygons and set up a complex scene for rendering with displacement textures
and upon export to Indigo project files it would crash half way with only 432 frames.

I was told by support that what ever the quality I wanted to out put to that I would have to make the view port with max quality settings and tessellation on high -WRONG -that's for iClone rendering NOT Indigo!

Attempted fixes before realizing the solution:
I have 32 GB of host memory, two dedicated GTX 970 graphic cards with 4 GB of Video ram each, 8 Core 4GHz Intel CPU and many SSDs for storage.

I looked at iClone in windows 10 for performance in the task manager and saw that it was barely using CPU or Ram but the hard drive consistently had spikes up to the 256 mb range (I had been sending files to an external USB storage but it would only peak about 128 mb) when I sent files to the SSD it did speed things up but did not fix the crashes. I disabled so many background programs like antivirus etc.. this also did not fix it. I tried SLI mode but read in various other rendering programs that it's generally not compatible with SLI so I disabled it.

Solution:
1.Set iClone to use quick shader (it eats up resources in quality mode and is not needed for Indigo since it has it's own method of rendering PBR etc) HQ mode takes up a lot of resources that could otherwise be used for exporting to Indigo project files.
2.If using Tessellation, keep it set to 0 in iClone but increase it in Indigo once it's loaded.
3.Use a solid state hard drive -it helps.
4.Disable any background programs if not needed.

This is my experience and works for large projects. It took me 2 1/2 days of rendering trial and error..and a week of waiting for solutions from support (Indigo Render Support and Reallusion)

I wish Reallusion would of added this information to the Manual or specified this in a Indigo Render Tutorial -would of saved me a lot of precious time not to mention bothering support with this issue.

Maybe I missed this information posted by Reallusion somewhere?

OS: Windows 10

Duplicate Issue: Bug that makes Iclone crash, when you export to Indigo

3
1558

Bug Suggestion Indigo Render Visual

Submitted byAscensi 2017/09/15 23:48:07

COMMENTS (3)

Feedback Tracker Admin 2017/11/03 11:19:36

Hi, Ascensi,

The tips about iClone Crashes when Exporting Huge or Long File to Indigo is here:
http://manual.reallusion.com/iClone_6_Indigo_Plugin/ENU/Indigo_Plugin/default.html?page=07_tips/tips.htm

Thank your for helping us to come out this workaround!

Reallusion

Feedback Tracker Admin 2017/10/13 06:53:35

Hi, Ascensi,

Thank you for sharing this valuable experience with us, we appreciate your working and the time you spend to find the solution.

We have tested with your method to export a large project from iClone 7 to Indigo for render, and it did significantly increased the number of frames that iClone can send to Indigo without crash.

To show the difference, we use two kinds of tests with 2 machines and a project with over 120000 polygons as an example:

TEST1: How much the difference with or without the settings you provided?
The machine: Windows 10, Intel Core i7-7700K, 16GB, nVidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB VRAM
The results:
1, With the original settings in the project, export range from 1 to 1000, iClone 7 crashed with 64 image/mesh folders generated, 22.1 GB hard disk space used.
2. Set Quality to Quick Mode, Tessellation to 0, iClone 7 reached the memory boundary and received a system warning of low memory, iClone 7 hanged with 299 image/mesh folders generated, 103 GB hard disk space used.

Which means your method did significantly reduced the resource used and extended the live time of iClone.

TEST2: With the settings you provided, is it possible that iClone could successfully complete the task to render a certain amount of frames of a large project with Indigo, by only increase the available system memory?
The machine: Windows 10, Intel Core i5-7600, nVidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB VRAM
The results:
1. With 16GB memory, iClone 7 reached the memory boundary and received a system warning of low memory, iClone 7 hanged with 301 image/mesh folders generated, 104 GB hard disk space used.
2. With 32GB memory, export range 1 to 900 frames, iClone 7 completed the task with 449 image/mesh folders generated, 159 GB hard disk space used, 30.1 GB system memory consumed, no crash.

So that the suggestions to user who wants to render with Indigo for a large and long project would be:
1. Minimize the resource that does not need for Indigo, specially to set Quality to Quick Mode, Tessellation to 0.
2. Increase the available System Memory, either by adding the physical RAM, or by increase the Virtual Memory of the Hard Drive you used to export Indigo files.
3. Split a long project into several outputs with certain amount of frames.

Thank you again for your help, we will put these information into the online manual of Indigo Plugin, and will continue try to solve this issue in iClone.

Reallusion

Ascensi 2017/10/10 10:05:47

Also forgot to mention - on the hard drive you're exporting your Indigo project to, set the Virtual memory to be 40 GB or higher -it seems to depend on the exported project size in order for it to be exported otherwise it may export half way and crash. 

I think the Reallusion programmers should make it so that when you press the export or indigo render button that iClones shader and tessellation is set to it's lowest and perhaps some kind of scratch disk or direct mention of Virtual memory needed for the specific Indigo project. Also disable export to frames from iClone to Indigo.