Topic: Trying to make a movie but system crashes

[Jac]

Hi! So, I am trying to convince my boss to purchase Lumion Pro by showing him how a project could look in a Flyby animation I created with Lumion Free. However, every time I try and export an animated clip into a movie (.mp4) Lumion Crashes. 

I originally thought this was due to our graphics card not supporting such a large model size, so I made a really simple model and put it into Lumion, applied the materials, and created an animated clip.  When I tried to export that model to a movie it seemed to work (as in the green progress bar cycled through completely), but when I tried to open the .mp4 file in quicktime and windows media player they said they could not read/ support the file.  What do I need to get a model rendered in a movie clip?

FYI - I can run the editor with minimal sluggishness.

MY SYSTEM AND MODEL INFORMATION:
GRAPHICS CARD: NVIDA Quadro FX 4800 (PassMark point score of 1,000 and 1.5 GB ded. video mem.)
MODEL: There are three models in one scene. They are 136MB + 30MB + 78MB totaling 244MB. In the scene it says there are 12.6 million 3D Points. I don't know what that means, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

[peterm]

Hi JacAttack

Thanks for the detailed info.  Quadros can work with Lumion (we do have a number of users that work with them), however Lumion is designed to work best with general GPU's GTX and AMD type.

The Passmark is 500 points below the minimum recommended for Lumion so you may be able to work with or render some scenes but not others. 

Refer also:
LUMION 3: Minimum hardware requirements

and Lumion Web Site: Specifications

The models and 3D Points would be high for the type of card and although Lumion attempts to render free of frame rate so that it can render each frame, if you are getting constant crashes then you would need to consider changing the GPU. 

In some cases if you have lessor scene requirements your GPU may be OK.

What are the results of the Benchmark?

Can you render successfully the Sample scenes?

Do you have any high end effects such as GI, lots of lights and Reflection Planes?

[Jac]

Thanks for the quick reply!
I'm not sure what you mean by what are the results of the benchmark. As I said my Video Card Benchmark is 1,000 ... My CPU benchmark is 5,323 is that what you are asking for?

In the sample scenes I can complete the rendering process but when I open that file (.mp4) in Windows Media Player I get an error saying that the file in not readable. When I try to open it in QuickTime I get the same error with an option to convert to a readable file. When I do that, I get a distorted video as seen the attached picture.
When I open the file in DivX I get the same picture as Quick Time.
What video players support your exported files? Do you recommend one to use over others?

I have no high effects in MY model, just applied and slightly manipulated materials, but no light planes. As for the sample model, whatever was in that are the effects that it has.

Editing the file is no problem. I only run into a problem when I try to export my large scene and when I try and open an exported sample scene as a movie.

[peterm]

All video players that support playback of MP4 can playback rendered MP4 videos made by Lumion (excluding some that can't handle extra high bitrate videos).

The distortion is Lumion not being able to correctly render your scene.  This is most likely due to the GPU being a Quadro and the scene detail a bit too high for the GPU to handle it, given the GPU Passmark is only 1000 and we suggest any GPU have at least a 1500 Passmark.

Lumion has a Benchmark utility to report as a guide on core PC performance.

It is run first time Lumion is run, and can be re-run at any time.  Please click on Files then System Speed Bar and if you could post a screencapture of the result that would help identify how Lumion is performing on your PC.

Are you able to render an image of your scene at either Desktop or Print resolution?

Suggest for testing the sample Wegner scene that you remove the GI and Reflection Plane Effects then try rendering to see if that scene works for your setup.

If you would like I can test the scene, unless you have access to another PC to test.

[Jac]

Ok, good to know. That's what I thought it was but was a little confused because Lumion was acting like it was rendering just fine.

Picture of my performance bar is attached. Looks like we are also going to have to upgrade our video card if we want to buy this program as the performance isn't that great, and I now know why we can't render anything. And, no we can't even render a still shot. I tried and the program froze on me.

We have a system that has a Quadro 4000 (with 2GB RAM) in it that I'm going to try this all out on again, but yes if you could test it, that would be fantastic!  How would I send it over? I'm curious as to how elaborate someone has been able to make a model while still getting it to render.

[Jared G.]

When selling your boss, don't forget about the featured projects!

http://lumion3d.com/forum/gallery-best-works/

Most all of them should have a project timeline for how long it took to model, setup in Lumion, and render with the graphics card listed. You might want to find a user on the Featured boards that does projects similar to your companies size and scope, then you can see what kind of computer system they have setup. You could spend tons of money on a Titan, but depending on your projects, that might be overkill.

[peterm]

Hi JacAttack

Send me the files via wetransfer.com -> peterm [at] act-3d.com or Dropbox or other file transfer site, wetransfer works easily.

I would need both the scene and all imported objects in order to test as a complete scene.  In Pro it's easy to export a single packaged file, but in Free you will have to locate the files then RAR, zip or 7z (better compression).  You can send all files or one for the projects Imported Library objects and one for scene as suits you.

Imported Library Object files are found in My Documents\Lumion Free\Library.  For each object there is either 3 or 4 files (*.lib, *.mtt, *.inn, *.txx) and

for scenes in My Documents\Lumion Free\Scenes 2 files (*.sva, *.spr).

If you have lots of files in Library, then to locate the files used in this project, just sort by date first to see library objects recently updated.

[Jac]

Thanks so much Jared! That will help a lot!

Peter - Files are coming your way.  BTW, when I loaded Lumion on the computer with the Quadro 4000 turns out it's all around not as good.  In doing this I realized what you meant by the Lumion Benchmark (because of the "Benchmark in Progress" note at first launch) , so I have listed below the two different computer's systems according to Lumion's Benchmark file.  I understand that they are beyond incapable of rendering, but thought you might like the data for whatever. I thought it interesting that the computer with the better graphics card (per that website http://www.videocardbenchmark.net actually had a lower performance). 

NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800
Memory : 1516 MB
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           W3540  @ 2.93GHz
Memory : 12284 MB
GPU Score : 3600
CPU Score : 1020
Total Score : 3600

NVIDIA Quadro 4000
Memory : 2014 MB
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           W3565  @ 3.20GHz
Memory : 12285 MB
GPU Score : 3420
CPU Score : 765
Total Score : 3420

[peterm]

Thanks for the benchmark data, will also add to our graph.

[peterm]

Files received and tested.  Please see my email reply.

Will post some general comments here later.  Test PC setup succeeded in rendering OK, but very slow.  Models have high levels of interior detail which the Quadros just cannot handle for Lumion when trying to render.