Can't load Thea Project - Memory Warning

[foster]

Hi,

I have two GTX460 graphics cards in SLI (1 Gig each card). I have rendered a file in Thea, which is 1600 x 900 pixels. I total of 16 materials were designated as "paintable" for Colimo. When I try to open the file, I get a low memory warning, and Colimo crashes. I have attached a screenshot. I have also disabled aero and closed any other software. My questions are:

- since the warning says that I have a texture memory space of 993 mb, and the revised memory estimation is only 499 mb, why is it crashing?
- can Colimo take advantage of 2 graphics cards in SLI? I would then have 2 gigs available, not just one.
- the materials that I rendered in Thea use quite large diffuse and bump maps, about 6000 x 6000 pixels. Would downsizing these help, or does that not affect Colimo?
- how can I calculate what Colimo can handle, in regards to size and number of changeable materials?

Any advice is appreciated. I have also attached the log file.
Foster

[Victor.Feliz]

SLI don't represent any advantage on this app since the total memory is not the sum of both since all the textures have to be load in each one.

Bump maps are not used so it won't affect neither.


About the crashing it seems that there is nothing strange in the log. Before anything can you try to load a small scene like a box or somelike that and confirm that it is working fine for you?

Anyway you are using a full version but you are not tagged as customer maybe you have bought it with another mail that the used in the forum.


Regards, Víctor.

[foster]

Hi Victor,

Thanks for the reply. I did purchase the software through another email address (foster_jb@ yahoo....), but I was at work yesterday while posting on the forum, so I signed up with my work account. If you need any further verification from me, let me know.

It's unfortunate about the SLI, yet understandable. It seems I need to get a 3 gig video card.

Before I left work last night, I tried many variations in Thea: quick render in TR1 and then open in Colimo to see what happened. I found that the maximum I could do was 8 repaintable materials , relight turned OFF, and a maximum resolution of 1200x675 px. Then I was able to open in Colimo without it crashing, and also with the supersampling turned on.

However, I am still confused. Unless I am completely wrong, shouldn't Colimo have been able to open my original file, but with supersampling and precise mapping disabled? If I understand the screen shot correctly, that would give a memory estimation of 499 mb (the green number), which should be easily handled by my video card. Am I wrong? Are there settings which maybe I need to change in the NVIDIA control panel?

Thanks,
John

[Victor.Feliz]

You have understood that panel fine, it seems that there is a bug that brokes your scene, but I'm not too sure about the cause since I'm not totally sure that memory is the problem there.

Could I get the .clm document?

[foster]

Hi Victor,

I saved the Thea render this morning, which had cooked all night. Colimo was able to open it, although it did crash when I tried to change textures. The textures were large (3000x3000 px), so I changed them to 512x512 px. Then Colimo no longer crashed.

I created several states in the states manager. I am able to change the states to my liking, and then save an image without crashing. However, when I try to export the various states to an html page (through states manager), Colimo then crashes and gives me a Runtime error. I have attached a screenshot.

I have also attached the .clm file for you. Let me also know if you require the "layers" folder as well.

One question: Is there a way to rename the "object" names in Colimo? I don't mean the material names in States Manager, I have figured out how to do that. But I can't find a place to change the actual object names. They have the same name as the materials I used in Thea, but I would rather change them to something else.

Thanks for your help,

John

[Victor.Feliz]

It looks that you are ever in the border of memory overflow.

Loading warning panel only takes in account the loaded layers not the textures so that could be the problem, obviously web exporter rises the memory a little bit again.

About renaming the objects you can do it in two ways:

- The interface one: go to Project Wizard -> Open Project -> make changes and save it.

- The direct one: edit the .clm file (xml text) and look for your object names and replace the text.

About fixing the problem what Thea version are you using? Could you paste the Thea->Customize->Preferences (I'm using the internal betas and I don't know if you have one option available or it will be soon).

Probably a new version will be released on Christmas / January but it doesn't improve memory footage (but new features), a new memory conservative memory method is planned for next version after that one.

Regards, Víctor.

[foster]

Hi Victor,

Last night (for me), I also realized that the size of the textures might be causing the crashes. So I made a new Thea file, and any re-paintable material was changed. I removed all the textures and just used a color (grey). I kept the same amount of reflection as the original file, but again used color rather than a map. This resulted in the Colimo file opening much quicker, but I still have crashing issues when trying to export to web. (And this is with using only 512x512 px texture files within Colimo)

Thanks for the info on how to rename objects! Last night I ended up just naming the Thea materials with the names I wanted, but it is of course much better to do it in Colimo.

The Thea version is build 576. When I go to "Customize" there is no open for "Preferences." I have attached a screenshot for you.

Seems I need to buy a GTX580?

Thanks,
John

[Victor.Feliz]

Mmm that's more strange , could you send us your layers too?

About preferences... it seems that it will be available in the next version.

[foster]

Hi Victor,

It's a fairly larger file (~100 megs), so it took a while to upload. Here is the link to the layers:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18547054/Still-1-03Layers.zip

Thanks again for the help,
John

[clark5901]

Thanks for the nice information in the post...