Real3D1.4 :- "OUT OF MEMORY" = ?
G. Coulter
Well just thought I would ask here to see
if anyone can cast some light on a problem that I
am having using Real3D Version 1.4 Pro/Turbo on a
18MB A4000/040.
The problem is that I keep getting system messages
saying that I have insufficient memory from reals
Rendering Control screen.
I am trying to build a space craft for a
simple 10 second anim. The scene consists of the
following:
(1) ... Space ship about 400 objects, mostly prims.
(2) ... 2 Lights
(3) ... 1 bump mapped 16 color landscape plane -
(Infinite)
I am rendering the scene as follows :-
[GRAYSCALE] := 640
[INTERLACED] := 512
[NORMAL] := Full Raytracer
[ANTI-ALIAS] := 4
Now this is what happens :- When I click on
render the screen goes black and the "Thinking"
clock type pointer comes up. The hand on the clock
moves round until its at 10:00 (the screen is still
black). Things now stay like this for about 10-15mins
with the clock hand sometimes moving to 12:00 and
then back to 10:00. After this long wait Real either
starts the rendering to screen or comes up with a
requestor saying "Insufficiant Memory"
I have nothing running in the background
only the workbench, and when I do an available
memory from Real before rendering it says 1.6MB
CHIP & about 14MB FAST.
Any ideas on what could be happening would be great
its going to be difficult to do an animation, if I
can't even get the ship to render on its own.
I had been playing with Real3D for about 8 hours
and I thought that it was simply a bit of bad
memory freeing. so I saved the scene, and reset
the amiga and re-loaded Real & the scene. I
selected all the options as above an selected
render, after a 10 minute wait Real said Sorry
not enough memory or something.
HELP..................
PS Could this be a bug in Real1.4 that was changed
in 1.41 & is there a technical help number that
I can ring to get some help on this. THANKS
-Gary- SERC DL
John Shiali
> Well just thought I would ask here to see
> if anyone can cast some light on a problem that I
> am having using Real3D Version 1.4 Pro/Turbo on a
> 18MB A4000/040.
Why no upgrade? You have missed TWO versions (three if you count V2
just out)
> The problem is that I keep getting system messages
> saying that I have insufficient memory from reals
> Rendering Control screen.
>
> I am trying to build a space craft for a
> simple 10 second anim. The scene consists of the
> following:
>
> (1) ... Space ship about 400 objects, mostly prims.
WHAT! Are you insane? <grin> Why do you need 400 objects? Can some
of this not be done in textures?
> (2) ... 2 Lights
Fair enough
> (3) ... 1 bump mapped 16 color landscape plane -
> (Infinite)
Make this really big rather than infinite - it will render faster.
> Any ideas on what could be happening would be great
> its going to be difficult to do an animation, if I
> can't even get the ship to render on its own.
Is this just a test render or do you actually have an animation? If
you are spinning the ship, that means that the program adds the new
data to the database for each different frame - this means data for
400 objects per frame!
> render, after a 10 minute wait Real said Sorry
> not enough memory or something.
Wow... Is the anim data file big? Wanna mail it to me and let me have a
look? It's much easier to see waht might be causing it...
> PS Could this be a bug in Real1.4 that was changed
> in 1.41 & is there a technical help number that
> I can ring to get some help on this. THANKS
It will be better in 1.42 - as for a helpline, if you bought it from
Alernative Image, they claim to do good telephone support (0533 440041)
or else try Kysoft themselves on +358 34471 8930
--
John .. InterNet - jo...@heights.demon.co.uk
FidoNet - 2:253/510.9
G. Coulter
>In article <1rgjks$q...@mserv1.dl.ac.uk> G.Co...@Daresbury.AC.UK (G. Coulter) writes:
>
>> Well just thought I would ask here to see
>> if anyone can cast some light on a problem that I
>> am having using Real3D Version 1.4 Pro/Turbo on a
>> 18MB A4000/040.
>
>Why no upgrade? You have missed TWO versions (three if you count V2
>just out)
Its just that I have not got round to until now, I
was going to upgrade about this time last year to
a newer version but I just did not get round to it.
Comming to think of it i'm not quite sure which
version that I am using. The first version of real
I got was in a pinky colored box? I then upgraded
to a newer version which is in a black box with the
Real3D water picture on the front? The only change
between the two is the addition of two more rows of
icons to the bottom right corner of the screen.
>> The problem is that I keep getting system messages
>> saying that I have insufficient memory from reals
>> Rendering Control screen.
>>
>> I am trying to build a space craft for a
>> simple 10 second anim. The scene consists of the
>> following:
>>
>> (1) ... Space ship about 400 objects, mostly prims.
>
>WHAT! Are you insane? <grin> Why do you need 400 objects? Can some
>of this not be done in textures?
I know this sounds like a lot, but it does say in the manual
that you can have about 1000 objects on a 4meg machine. I
could model some of the ship using texture maps & bump maps
I just did not see the need for that when I was building the
object. The actual ship probably only uses about 150 objects
the main use of primatives is to produce two huge springs
needed for the ships landing gear and hydrolic systems. This
could be most on the problem as I think I defined the start
loop as [LOOP]Subdivision := 32 (Yup a bit over the top I
know now) and then defined a spiral path, Subdivision := 100
for the loop to go round. Thats 3200 vertices or considering
that you only need vertices 4 to make a cube, about 800 cudes.
Now times that by 2 and add on all the addittional objects
for the ship and I could have somewhere in the order of 10000
vertices in the full ship (about 2500 cubes) WOOPS!! what do
you think John? I think that I should at least delete the
springs. Do these sound like they could be the problem? About
how many objects can you render on your 8meg A2000?
After saying the above, I did actually define an animation
using the above ship (just a simple spin through 20 frames)
and real3d completed the rotation OK, it looked quite good
when played back in wireframe. I did not however try to
render any of the frames. I think at that point the memory
would have been very very full (All 18megs of it).
So looking at the above I would say that Real3D actually uses
quite a good method of storing the geometrical database. In
the above case about 20*2500 cubes := 50,000 cudes. The problem
that I am encountering comes from Real3D setting up the scene
prior to rendering, this would explain the long wait, before
anything actually gets drawn on the screen. I am not to sure
of the workings of Real3D here but I would say that it builds
a representation of the scene in memory for calculating the
path of rays in addition to the geometric database.
The one thing that still puzzels me is :- how can it be that
Real3D will allow me to CREATE 20 frames (ie 20X the data)
but it won't let me RENDER just one none animation frame:
(ie 1X the data). Does this mean that real uses some form of
shorthand data representation for the geometric database but
has to expand the data fully prior to rendering. Thats the
only thought that I can come up with.
>> (2) ... 2 Lights
>
>Fair enough
Hey I tried putting matt-glass sphere's round the lights like
said and it worked quite well.
>
>> (3) ... 1 bump mapped 16 color landscape plane -
>> (Infinite)
>
>Make this really big rather than infinite - it will render faster.
Right another good idea, I had actually considered this but
did not actuallly do it
>> Any ideas on what could be happening would be great
>> its going to be difficult to do an animation, if I
>> can't even get the ship to render on its own.
>
>Is this just a test render or do you actually have an animation? If
>you are spinning the ship, that means that the program adds the new
>data to the database for each different frame - this means data for
>400 objects per frame!
See above will not render 1 single test frame (Not an animation)
but will allow me to define 20 frames in the editor using the
same object, it all points towards optomised storage in the
geometric database and fully expansion of the data prior to
rendering.
>> render, after a 10 minute wait Real said Sorry
>> not enough memory or something.
Do you think the above is plausable?
>Wow... Is the anim data file big? Wanna mail it to me and let me have a
>look? It's much easier to see waht might be causing it...
>
>> PS Could this be a bug in Real1.4 that was changed
>> in 1.41 & is there a technical help number that
>> I can ring to get some help on this. THANKS
>
>It will be better in 1.42 - as for a helpline, if you bought it from
>Alernative Image, they claim to do good telephone support (0533 440041)
>or else try Kysoft themselves on +358 34471 8930
>
Thanks for the help John.
>--
>
> John .. InterNet - jo...@heights.demon.co.uk
> FidoNet - 2:253/510.9
-Gary- SERC Daresbury.
John Shiali
> >Why no upgrade? You have missed TWO versions (three if you count V2
> >just out)
>
> Its just that I have not got round to until now, I
> was going to upgrade about this time last year to
> a newer version but I just did not get round to it.
>
Real3D water picture on the front? The only change
> between the two is the addition of two more rows of
> icons to the bottom right corner of the screen.
I think that you may have 1.41 - the version number is in the top
menu line of the RENDER screen.
> >WHAT! Are you insane? <grin> Why do you need 400 objects? Can some
> >of this not be done in textures?
>
> I know this sounds like a lot, but it does say in the manual
> loop as [LOOP]Subdivision := 32 (Yup a bit over the top I
> know now) and then defined a spiral path, Subdivision := 100
> for the loop to go round. Thats 3200 vertices or considering
You have gone a bit over the top on this one - if you use a stripe on
black texture and spiral wrap it on a cylinder using NO 0 COLOUR and
CLIP, it removes all the bits that you painted black - one texture and
one primative to make a spring.
> that you only need vertices 4 to make a cube, about 800 cudes.
> Now times that by 2 and add on all the addittional objects
> for the ship and I could have somewhere in the order of 10000
> vertices in the full ship (about 2500 cubes) WOOPS!! what do
> you think John? I think that I should at least delete the
Take them out and see if it renders!
> springs. Do these sound like they could be the problem? About
> how many objects can you render on your 8meg A2000?
Dunno - I've not yet hit a limit for objects in that way.
>
> After saying the above, I did actually define an animation
> using the above ship (just a simple spin through 20 frames)
> and real3d completed the rotation OK, it looked quite good
> when played back in wireframe. I did not however try to
> render any of the frames. I think at that point the memory
> would have been very very full (All 18megs of it).
I have a 100 frame quarterscreen spaceship barrel roll that is about 1
meg (1/2 meg archived) - the full screen version is about 2.5 meg in
interlace - that was done on a 5 meg amiga.
> So looking at the above I would say that Real3D actually uses
> quite a good method of storing the geometrical database. In
> the above case about 20*2500 cubes := 50,000 cudes. The problem
> that I am encountering comes from Real3D setting up the scene
> prior to rendering, this would explain the long wait, before
> anything actually gets drawn on the screen. I am not to sure
> of the workings of Real3D here but I would say that it builds
> a representation of the scene in memory for calculating the
> path of rays in addition to the geometric database.
Yes it does - you can see this by way the clock on the wait pointer
runs through - it waits for a while in different places (depending
what it is calculating) and then hacks into a render quite quickly...
I think there is something in the manual about the stages the render
goes through...
>
> The one thing that still puzzels me is :- how can it be that
> Real3D will allow me to CREATE 20 frames (ie 20X the data)
> but it won't let me RENDER just one none animation frame:
It has to have the space for the program, the animation database, the
OS, the screen memory, and then it has to have workspace to do the
calculations.
> (ie 1X the data). Does this mean that real uses some form of
> shorthand data representation for the geometric database but
> has to expand the data fully prior to rendering. Thats the
> only thought that I can come up with.
Quite possibly- databases can be very small for very complex images
scenes (they get big when you do animations). As everything is a
primative (unless you use meshes) this has GOT to be stored in some
kind of "database of primative shapes"
> Hey I tried putting matt-glass sphere's round the lights like
> said and it worked quite well.
Try experimenting with different coloured glass and intensities of
light in relationship to distance from the main objects. You can get
really good colour washes on objects (green lights on blue objects,
yellow on red, etc). You may have to turn off AUTOLIGHT in the render
screen to stop the program scaling the lightsources together.
> >
> >> (3) ... 1 bump mapped 16 color landscape plane -
> >> (Infinite)
> >
> >Make this really big rather than infinite - it will render faster.
>
> Right another good idea, I had actually considered this but
> did not actuallly do it
It works
> See above will not render 1 single test frame (Not an animation)
> but will allow me to define 20 frames in the editor using the
> same object, it all points towards optomised storage in the
> geometric database and fully expansion of the data prior to
> rendering.
Yes - start a render and run AVAIL in a shell every few seconds, and
watch the change in memory as the wait pointer runs around the clock.
>
> >> render, after a 10 minute wait Real said Sorry
> >> not enough memory or something.
>
> Do you think the above is plausable?
Yes very - I think you've hit it on the head there.
> Thanks for the help John.
Anytime....
G. Coulter,office,extension,homephone
>You have gone a bit over the top on this one - if you use a stripe on
>black texture and spiral wrap it on a cylinder using NO 0 COLOUR and
>CLIP, it removes all the bits that you painted black - one texture and
>one primative to make a spring.
Yup the problem was the springs, I deleted the springs and did
a few full test renderings and everything worked OK. Instead
of the springs I used 6 small disks along a central axis it
looks really quite good. I will remember the clip mapping
method that you pointed out, that does seem like the best
way & I will use that method next time, thanks.
>Take them out and see if it renders!
It renders! 400*400 grayscale, anti-aliasing @ 3, it takes about
30 minutes per frame, I have nearly completed 50 frames so far.
>I have a 100 frame quarterscreen spaceship barrel roll that is about 1
>meg (1/2 meg archived) - the full screen version is about 2.5 meg in
>interlace - that was done on a 5 meg amiga.
Hmm sounds good, my animation so far consists of two sequences
the first is 24 frames and consists of the ship lifting off &
slowely rotating towards the camera. The second sequence which
is rendering whilst I am at work today consists of 30 frames.
Here we see the ship slowely accelerate and then bank at speed
in front of the camera, the camera then pans to follow the ship
into the distance. The final sequence will invlove the ship
pulling up (90 degrees) and then doing a 360 roll as it disappears
into space.
>Yes it does - you can see this by way the clock on the wait pointer
>runs through - it waits for a while in different places (depending
>what it is calculating) and then hacks into a render quite quickly...
>I think there is something in the manual about the stages the render
>goes through...
When you are rendering to the screen have you noticed that
Real3D thinks for a few seconds and then renders about an
inche of data, and then thinks again and renders another inche.
It does not render at a steady rate through the image but rather
in bursts. Have you noticed this?
>Try experimenting with different coloured glass and intensities of
>light in relationship to distance from the main objects. You can get
>really good colour washes on objects (green lights on blue objects,
>yellow on red, etc). You may have to turn off AUTOLIGHT in the render
>screen to stop the program scaling the lightsources together.
I will do, next I am doing the interior of a cathedral so
lighting will be very important, I can maybe use something
like that there.
What I want to do is to try and simulate light comming into the
building through stained glass windows. The effect that I want
is where you can see the beams of light passing through the
slightly dusty air of the cathedral. I realise that I will have
to somehow model the air in the building as a fine fog, do you
have any ideas on how to get this effect?
>Yes - start a render and run AVAIL in a shell every few seconds, and
>watch the change in memory as the wait pointer runs around the clock.
Last night I set up 60 frames of my space ship, when I looked
at the ammount of memory I had left it was about 220 CHIP & 400 FAST.
I do not need to say that it would not render, I finally halfed the
frames size to 30 frames ( I did get things to work using 40 frames
but memory started getting low after 2 20 frames rotations, 1 40
frame ordit & a 40 frame direction. ) and everything worked just fine.
>Anytime....
Same goes for you if you want any help with anything you are
working on drop us a line, I would love to help.
> John .. InterNet - jo...@heights.demon.co.uk
> FidoNet - 2:253/510.9
-Gary- WORK : SERC Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire, UK
INTERNET : G.Co...@Daresbury.AC.UK
UNI : Staffordshire University.
John Shiali
> Yup the problem was the springs, I deleted the springs and did
> a few full test renderings and everything worked OK. Instead
> of the springs I used 6 small disks along a central axis it
> looks really quite good. I will remember the clip mapping
> method that you pointed out, that does seem like the best
> way & I will use that method next time, thanks.
It will also move like a spring - if you paint an object, then stretch
it, the material will also stretch! Great for stars to get that
"hyperspace" effect.
> >Take them out and see if it renders!
>
> It renders! 400*400 grayscale, anti-aliasing @ 3, it takes about
> 30 minutes per frame, I have nearly completed 50 frames so far.
How many onjects id that now then? Didn't you promise to mail me a
still or something?
> When you are rendering to the screen have you noticed that
> Real3D thinks for a few seconds and then renders about an
> inche of data, and then thinks again and renders another inche.
> It does not render at a steady rate through the image but rather
> in bursts. Have you noticed this?
Yes, in fact you can see this if you have a complex, reflective object
in front of a simple background, it will render the background, but as
soon as it hits the complex object, it does that in little bursts as
it moves over the object, then zips over the background again.
> What I want to do is to try and simulate light comming into the
> building through stained glass windows. The effect that I want
> is where you can see the beams of light passing through the
> slightly dusty air of the cathedral. I realise that I will have
> to somehow model the air in the building as a fine fog, do you
> have any ideas on how to get this effect?
Fill the place with a sphere made of a fine fog - make it SMOOTH to
take the surface off it, 100 TRANSPARENT, and slightly turbid - this
isn't quite the same as dusty air, but is pretty close - you'll have
to use particle animation in R3D v2 to get a better effect.
> Last night I set up 60 frames of my space ship, when I looked
> at the ammount of memory I had left it was about 220 CHIP & 400 FAST.
> I do not need to say that it would not render, I finally halfed the
> frames size to 30 frames ( I did get things to work using 40 frames
> but memory started getting low after 2 20 frames rotations, 1 40
> frame ordit & a 40 frame direction. ) and everything worked just fine.
30 mins per frame for gazzillions of primatives isn't bad, but you may
find it faster if you split the anim down to shorter sequences so that
you can give the program more memeory to work in - I found quite a
marked difference when going from 5 to 9 megs...
> Same goes for you if you want any help with anything you are
> working on drop us a line, I would love to help.
Sure thing... I'll mail you...
--
G. Coulter
>It will also move like a spring - if you paint an object, then stretch
>it, the material will also stretch! Great for stars to get that
>"hyperspace" effect.
That will be quite good actually, this small attack craft grew
out of an idea to produce a space probe animation, I am still
going to do that but I may just render the probe in Real3D and
render the planet surface in vista this time. Only one problem
with that, I don't have vista at the momemt. Anyways I would
like to do that animation in HAM8 but as yet I don't have any
way of playing back a HAK8 animation, You don't know of any
cheap programs or PD stuff that will do that, do you? Ahh yes
back to the probe, well that was going to have a kind active
suspension system, and that would look good with stretch &
squash springs.
>
>
>> >Take them out and see if it renders!
>>
>> It renders! 400*400 grayscale, anti-aliasing @ 3, it takes about
>> 30 minutes per frame, I have nearly completed 50 frames so far.
>
>How many onjects id that now then? Didn't you promise to mail me a
>still or something?
I think it works out at about 100-150 objects + a 128 point mesh
I should have used some texture but my copy of DpaintIII is one
of the early ones that has a bug in the flood fill routine, this
acts up quite bad on an A4000. I talked to one of CBM's technical
guys about this and he said there was originly a bug but this was
removed in a later revision of DpaintIII. I just guess I will have
to upgrade but after buying the A4000 that will have to wait,
Anyway I am still waiting for the arrival of DC's Brilliance.
Yes, no problem I will send you a disk with a sample 9image on,
I would e-mail it to you but I am having some trouble with my
system here at the moment (SPARC-Station) and it could be quite
a while before before things get back to normal. If you send me
your address, either at home or work/Uni I will post it to you.
>Yes, in fact you can see this if you have a complex, reflective object
>in front of a simple background, it will render the background, but as
>soon as it hits the complex object, it does that in little bursts as
>it moves over the object, then zips over the background again.
Yer I have noticed that, its quite handy really at least you don't
have to wait ages for something simple like a background to render.
>Fill the place with a sphere made of a fine fog - make it SMOOTH to
>take the surface off it, 100 TRANSPARENT, and slightly turbid - this
>isn't quite the same as dusty air, but is pretty close - you'll have
>to use particle animation in R3D v2 to get a better effect.
What does [SMOOTH] do? I guess thats the one on the info
requester. I will have a look at this next week. I have
not experimented with any fog effects yet, but I will have
a go next week. I did look into it briefly on my A2000, but
with an 68000 these things seem to take longer than they are
actually worth. I remember doing a water scene on my 4.5meg
A500 it was only 40 frames and it took 3.5 days to render.
I agree R3D2 should be nice, you will have to let me know
what its like after you have used it for a few weeks.
>30 mins per frame for gazzillions of primatives isn't bad, but you may
>find it faster if you split the anim down to shorter sequences so that
>you can give the program more memeory to work in - I found quite a
>marked difference when going from 5 to 9 megs...
I have to admit the machine does render fast, I rendered
some IFF-24 images 400x400 anti-aliasing 5 the other day
(the image only used about 8 prims) and the machine finished
24 frames in no time at all.
>> Same goes for you if you want any help with anything you are
>> working on drop us a line, I would love to help.
>
>Sure thing... I'll mail you...
>
Thats great, stay in touch All the best -Gary-
>--
>
> John .. InterNet - jo...@heights.demon.co.uk
> FidoNet - 2:253/510.9
-Gary- WORK : SERC Daresbury Labouratory, Warrington, Cheshire, UK
John Shiali
> like to do that animation in HAM8 but as yet I don't have any
> way of playing back a HAK8 animation, You don't know of any
> cheap programs or PD stuff that will do that, do you? Ahh yes
The new version of Art Dept Does Ham8 and there is a version of
Viewtek which will convert anim5 to 32 bit anim7 (vtek1.4.lha ??)- also
Steve Koren has a propriety beta format that also handles sound as well
in the same iff format (FAF-tools.06.lha) and PPshow3.0 does Ham8 on
playback (I think). These should all be on Aminet or
wuarchive.wustl.edu, or else I'll send them to you..
> I think it works out at about 100-150 objects + a 128 point mesh
> I should have used some texture but my copy of DpaintIII is one
> of the early ones that has a bug in the flood fill routine, this
> acts up quite bad on an A4000. I talked to one of CBM's technical
> guys about this and he said there was originly a bug but this was
> removed in a later revision of DpaintIII. I just guess I will have
> to upgrade but after buying the A4000 that will have to wait,
> Anyway I am still waiting for the arrival of DC's Brilliance.
Buy something cheap or get something PD then! Even with brilliance,
you may find it more useful to reduce textures to 32 or 16 colours -
they can be far more effective, faster and smaller than trying to use
HAM images as textures (I find)
> Yes, no problem I will send you a disk with a sample 9image on,
> I would e-mail it to you but I am having some trouble with my
> system here at the moment (SPARC-Station) and it could be quite
> a while before before things get back to normal. If you send me
> your address, either at home or work/Uni I will post it to you.
OK, I'll mail you.
> What does [SMOOTH] do? I guess thats the one on the info
> requester. I will have a look at this next week. I have
No, the material requester - page 60 of the manual - it removes
specular reflections on the materials boundaries
The one you are thinking of in the INFO menu is on page 104 - smooths
polygon meshes in the solid render
> not experimented with any fog effects yet, but I will have
> a go next week. I did look into it briefly on my A2000, but
> with an 68000 these things seem to take longer than they are
> actually worth. I remember doing a water scene on my 4.5meg
> A500 it was only 40 frames and it took 3.5 days to render.
Ahh, but it's when you learn tricks like NOREFLECT on everything that
stuff speeds up - once I spent 48 hours rendering 100 frame full screen
anim that took 12 hours just by setting the environment object to
NOREFLECT - rending time per frame went down by some 50-80 percent
depending on the individual frame.
> I agree R3D2 should be nice, you will have to let me know
> what its like after you have used it for a few weeks.
I am still waiting for the upgrade to arrive - the money has been
sent, so I am just waiting for the postman!
> I have to admit the machine does render fast, I rendered
> some IFF-24 images 400x400 anti-aliasing 5 the other day
> (the image only used about 8 prims) and the machine finished
> 24 frames in no time at all.
R3D2 should be faster yet as it there is a version specifically
optimised for a 68040.