Lightworks in ArchiCad Rendering Errors

[Anonymous]

I am unable to render my model using the LWRE. Sometimes during the render the program aborts and other times it gives a 'Not enough memory to render the model' error message.

The first thing I tried was doing the same thing on a laptop with the same ArchiCad configuration but more memory, same problem.

After reviewing other posts on rendering problems, I followed the suggestion of attempting to find the 'bad layer' in my model.

The model overview is in a view called A99 workingallnowall with an associated layer combination of the same name. I created views of A99 workingallnowalla and A99 workingallnowallb and associated layer combinations to split the layers between the 'a' and 'b' views. The 'a' view does render successfully and the 'b' view does always get the memory error.

Next I then split the 'b' view into a 'b1' and 'b2' views, with associated layer combinations (half on each one). The problem now is that both the 'b1' and 'b2' views of this set both render -- making it difficult to track down the bad layer.

I'm basically stuck here, the problem being is that I just can't seem to track down the problem, so any advice will be greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to everyone!!!! Solved!

I became suspicious that this might not solely be a problem with my model because..... yes because after many days of looking for the one layer that was causing the problem I discovered that there wasn't just one layer. It was acting like it was really just too big to render, ie. several layers needed to be turned off to get it to render and there wasn't just one causing the problem.

Anyway, I down reved to ArchiCad 10 and it renders fine. Same exact model and everything. I do note that it takes a bit of time to render in ArchiCad 10 and that you see the memory getting chewed up in both ArchiCad 11 and ArchiCad 10 in a similar fashion. That is -- the available memory will start at about 500 MB. In both 10 and 11 it gets chewed up and gets down to about 10 MB or so. In ArchiCad 11, it just quits or worse abends at this point. In ArchiCad 10 it continues to chug away, by the sound of the disk I guess using virtual memory - and then finishes a few minutes later.

Ah I have archicad 10 therefore I will need an archicad 10 file (likely).
By the way that would be "funny" if this already solve the problem...

Yes, you guessed it JL!

[Mishi]

interesting.
can you tell me how much physical memory you are using?
22000 polygons as model size sounds really small. not having enough memory sounds unbelievable for me. unless you use .5gb memory with win xp.

in the other hand: i have myself problems with our model, but 100 times in polygon and model size than yours.

anyway. sounds very strange. but i got an idea (i have layers which have thousands of polygons) : what if AC sensitive on how much polygons a layer have. it's just a guess. it might be sensitive and for the rendering it is crucial. i have to test it when i go back to work on monday after my holiday.

[Anonymous]

When I was having the problem I tried it on two machines running XP, 1GB and 1.5GB both with the same result. The model is very small and the memory problems were surprising. Mishi: Are you on V10 or V11? My conclusion was that this was something wrong with V11 since the same model works fine on V10....

[Anonymous]

Just out of interest, are you using any particularly large custom textures?
Maybe some high resolution wood textures or an aerial photo of the site for example?

I'm having the out of memory error too when I try to render several large aligned textures on separate meshs. Although the textures are each around 6000x6000 pixels in size they are physically only around 2.4Mb. I can only display one and still sucessfully render. I imagine it's a limitation in the latest lightworks.

[Mishi]

good point Peter. That's actually not bad idea to check it. i use a fairly big texture for the terrain to make it more realistic, and for our big chunk of tree areas. as soon as i get back i will check it out.

I use AC11 1033. but i tried the same model with AC10 same thing. i have no problem though on a g5 system with 2GB ram. i'm trying to figure out something since GS doesn't help me at all...