Topic: Blue Screen while Rendering with GTX680

[CBurns]

Hello,

I'm constantly having blue screen crashes (memory dumps) while rendering, even though I have a GTX680. I have a very large scene being rendered out to a PNG sequence (but this happens with any rendering output) and I can't leave my computer for more than 30mins without coming back and seeing that it crashed.

The movie sequence I'm trying to render out is going to take 100+hours at 720p, 25fps (each frame taking between 15 to 60 seconds to render) and I have a deadline of this weekend, so you can imagine I don't want to babysit this thing (restarting everything after a crash) all day and all night until then.

More info: I currently have 22GB free on my disk drive, and I've switched to rendering onto our company server (which doesn't make a difference).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[peterm]

Hi CBurns

Blue screen is of course not good at all.  

Some questions to cover:
1.  What version of Lumion?
2.  Does this happen only when you try to render, i.e. not during playback or in Build Mode etc?
3.  How many clips do you have to render out?
4.  Does this happen always at the same frame? or always at in the same clip?
5.  Are you able to render of other clips?
6.  What is the scenes 3D Point count?
7.  How many Reflection Planes are being used?
8.  Can the scene ( or as a test clip) render OK at the next lower star quality?
9.  Have you successfully rendered other (maybe similar) scenes, and it is only this scene that's the problem?
10.  What's the specs for PC apart from GTX680? What's the Wattage of your power supply? Please click on Run DXDiag in the benchmark section and attach the dxdiag.txt file to your next post (it may take up to 1 minute to create this file, once the folder window appears).


Some suggestions to narrow down the problem or fix:
1.  Verify/check that latest Nvidia drivers are installed.
2.  As you have tried rendering on another PC and still same problem, that indicates some problem with an object, too much entourage (especially trees), too many reflection planes especially if combined with GI.
3.  Are you able to play the video onscreen in Preview mode in the Video Editor right through?
4.  A few test options:  place all Imported Library Objects to own layer/s if not already that way.  Add a Hide Layer Effect for that layer to Entire Movie so that it hides all Imported Library Objects and test rendering.
5.  Do same (if not already so) with (at least) Plants to a layer and hide and test render.

We'll see if something can be quickly isolated, then work back from there.  The main worry is that some object has got corrupted (an Imported Object) and isolating that so that a replacement can be worked on.

Do you do a SaveAs for the scene from time to time so you have some versioning available?

HTH

[Morten]

In our experience, 99% of Blue Screen errors have been caused by something outside Lumion, i.e. the hardware or the driver software. The good news (believe it or not) is that it happens consistently on your PC - there's nothing worse than an elusive Blue Screen that only rears it's ugly head every few weeks...

Some bonus questions:

1) Have you tried to analyse the Blue Screen minidump with this this Bluescreen reader?

2) If possible, please run OCCT for say, 60 minutes. This application will test your RAM, CPU, GPU and power supply (Make sure that Error Checking is turned on). Alternatively, please run the FurMark stress test.

[CBurns]

Hello,

Thank you for the responses. in reply:

1.  What version of Lumion?
Lumion 3.2 Pro
2.  Does this happen only when you try to render, i.e. not during playback or in Build Mode etc?
This does happen in Build Mode on a more rare occasion.
3.  How many clips do you have to render out?
8mins worth of about 34 clips, the bluescreen happens during clips though, not in between.
4.  Does this happen always at the same frame? or always at in the same clip?
Changes every time.
5.  Are you able to render of other clips?
I am able to render anything that has crashed before, and all clips have been rendered before.
6.  What is the scenes 3D Point count?
A lot (it's rendering now so I don't want to disturb it).
7.  How many Reflection Planes are being used?
Sometimes 5, sometimes none, crashed happen during small closeup scenes or large, reflection-intense scenes. Doesn't seem to matter.
8.  Can the scene ( or as a test clip) render OK at the next lower star quality?
Never tried but assume it could: wouldn't know about the crashing until i tried.
9.  Have you successfully rendered other (maybe similar) scenes, and it is only this scene that's the problem?
Happens all the time in this one large scene (which is pretty much the only thing I've worked on since getting Lumion), other scenes have been fine (but are incredibly less complex scenes than this).
10.  What's the specs for PC apart from GTX680? What's the Wattage of your power supply? Please click on Run DXDiag in the benchmark section and attach the dxdiag.txt file to your next post (it may take up to 1 minute to create this file, once the folder window appears).
I will look into this once the computer is done this set of rendering.


Some suggestions to narrow down the problem or fix:
1.  Verify/check that latest Nvidia drivers are installed.
Yep.
2.  As you have tried rendering on another PC and still same problem, that indicates some problem with an object, too much entourage (especially trees), too many reflection planes especially if combined with GI.
Don't have another machine that can handle this scene.
3.  Are you able to play the video onscreen in Preview mode in the Video Editor right through?
Yes, but very slow and jittery.
4.  A few test options:  place all Imported Library Objects to own layer/s if not already that way.  Add a Hide Layer Effect for that layer to Entire Movie so that it hides all Imported Library Objects and test rendering.
I will try this when I can and let you know.
5.  Do same (if not already so) with (at least) Plants to a layer and hide and test render.

I will follow up with the bluescreen reader and do an OCCT test and report back.

[peterm]

Hi CBurns

Thanks for the responses to the checklist.  We'll wait for your further tests.  Hope the rest of renders goes OK and no crashes.

It does not (at this time) seem to be Lumion running out of VRAM on the card as you would/should get a GPU Reset rather than a bluescreen.

One practice that might help to avoid serious crash, but is a bit tedious, would be to render a clip, once complete close down Lumion, and also reboot the PC so that all memory is reset, then do the next clip.  Also check there's no overhead applications running in the systray including AV tools and also no screensavers.