Lightworks Renderings Crashing on PC

[Anonymous]

To all who use lightworks,
I recently went to the Lightworks in Archicad seminar, which was very informative (Thankyou Dwight!). I then proceeded to use the Lightworks package to render large perspectives for a competition that week . I was really interested to see what I could achieve in 2 weeks. They turned out well, but I had alot of trouble with the our PC's. I spent 40% of my time trying to get each of the computers to render without error.

The problem was as the file got more and more detailed and complicated through the design process the PC's started to give me more and more errors and eventually crash. They would often also produce blank screens instead of renders. The behaviour was inconsistent across different computers using the same file. The CPU capacity would always sit at maximum during the rendering process say 98% so this also convinces me it was not a modelling issue but a hardware issue.

I have spoken to Graphisoft Australia who tell me that the problem is due to the fact that Windows can only address a maximum of 1.7 Gb of Ram. (Apparently, Macs don't have this problem) .They say this is the limit of a 32 bit system. They have suggested that I should try a using a windows 64 bit operating system. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with these 64 bit operating systems using lightworks and what graphics cards/ ram etc they would recommend. It would be great if someone could suggest an ideal spec for a computer to do intensive lightworks renders and eventually animations on a PC.

I am really surprised and disappointed that I cannot use the lightworks package (without major grief) to do 2000x4000 pixel renders of a large building within a standard windows operating system. In my experience, Lightworks animations were also out of the question.

It was particularly frustrating as I finally worked out how make nice renders and spent time making materials and putting lights in , then I had to spend many more hours of precious time mucking around with the computers to produce the actual render.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Anti

2GB Ram
NVIDIA graphics card
Pentium 4 CPU 3.2 Ghz

[Anonymous]

I work for a large firm in Salt Lake City.
I am having the same types of issues that you are having. We have a multi-family development that has several pln.'s hotlinked together with a topography hotlinked as well. I can see the 3d view fine, but when I try to render the image, with open GL or with Lightworks, I will either get a blank white image, or crash the computer.

We are pursuing maxing out the ram to 4GB, which I am unsure it will help considering that archicad only supports 1.7GB max (so I hear) If not that then we will upgrade the graphics card to the best of the best (whatever that is, any suggestions would help)..

Considering getting Mac g5 to do our renderings typical.

(We have a fairly large land mesh for the topo)

[Anonymous]

Interesting to hear that you are having the same problem. I also think that in using hotlinked 3D modules that you are probably expecting too much from the program! I agree that the ram and graphics card may not help. My only other advice is to marquee small sections of the model and try rendering. If this works it is the size of the model that is a problem. Another suggestion is to export the file and take it into another program such as 3D Studio Max and render it that way, but that would be admitting defeat!


good luck!

anti

[stefan]

Graphics Card will not help your rendering at all... Rendering is CPU-intensive. More RAM can help.

It'll help with model display and if you use a product such as nVidia Gelato, then it will render for you, but not with ArchiCAD and Lightworks.

[Anonymous]

We did section off parts of the model, and it would render just fine. Except that it turned off the land mesh. All I had was a floating complex at that point. Useless when trying to show a planning committe your beautiful project on the site in 3D.

Have maxed out to 4G. Will try rendering again today.

Sad to hear that I am asking too much of the program.

Any reason that the topography turns off when cut with a marquee tool? It does have holes cut in it for the underground parking structure. (I do have some paint from ArchiTerra imported) Any way around it?

[Chadwick]

I had a similar experience as well. I would get blank images or blank frames in animations. The project I was using that model for was 100,000 SQ FT office building with the site and surrounding topography. I tried turning off the mesh, but it didnt help at all. What did help was reducing the amount of entourage that was in the model (trees, cars, etc.). Basically I had to render it bare - without any foliage. I still have no idea how to get it to render with everything in the model. We did this on a brand spankin' new computer we just bought too - so I know its not a computer limitation.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with Piranesi, but that was my solution for still images. Render the model without entourage to a Piranesi file and then insert trees, people, cars etc. in there. It worked out pretty nice, IMHO.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

There comes a point where you need specialized (high end/expensive) hardware and software to do the job. This comes somewhere between our common architectural renderings/animations and Industrial Light & Magic.

I am amused to think of a new ArchiCAD add-on command "Convert to Major Motion Picture", but I wouldn't try running it on my Mac Mini.

[Djordje]

If you are on Windows XP 32 bit, the max memory you can use is 2GB.

Solution?

Windows XP 64 bit or Mac if you insist on rendering in Archicad.

Otherwise Artlantis.

[Anonymous]

Is there a RAM limit for the Mac?

[TomWaltz]

mtallen wrote:
Is there a RAM limit for the Mac?

I'm not sure about the OS, but the bigger Macs can physically fit up to 16 GB.