Hello,

My mantra is not rendering with Mantra NODE, I still can render with default setting with slow and sometimes not starting at all.
In the beginning it was rendering a few frames, Now not rendering at all.
Even, when it rendered a few frames the progress window did not come up automatically. I do not see that progress window at all whenever i launch the Mantra Node. Can any one help me ?
I am using latest Mac with Leopard. I did tried to restart the computer and Houdini.
Thank you.

Steve

Is it a heavy scene? Have you had a look at ram usage to see if it run out along the way? If you have played with settings you were not quite sure about what they do maybe try putting down a fresh mantra node and start from there and do testing inbetween while adjusting settings to see where it goes wrong. Also do you have some sort of firewall running on the machine? What houdini build? If nothing helps start a new houdini session and just render a sequence with a few spheres, lights and a mantra node and see if that renders. Also are you using a lot of textures? If so you might have to turn up the mantra texture cache. Also what kind of machine are you running this on? Johnny 5 need input…

Mvh,
Fabian

I do not have heavy scene at all. I just turned of FILEVAULT to see if it helps.
I am using Mac with Leopard. I do not have heavy texture i think. Cause i have just one obj with 3 textures for the parts of one obj.

I will try things you mentioned to see if it works.
I just downloaded latest build about a month ago.
Thank you very much. please help me further.

Steve

I have 1 gb memory left.
I can see bad image in Mplay for the failed sequence rendering.
Please heelp me further
Steve

Hi,
you will have to post a scene and images in order for ppl here to see what is wrong. That way it could be tested on other platforms to see if perhaps your machine is the problem or not.
Fabian

Hi,

I tried small test scene file with Just one sphere and one tube, and 3 shaders.
It's working fine. Now what would be the problem.

Steve

While I would love to be Fabian the Omniscient, if only to understand my wife better at times and know what plans my kids are hatching ahead of time. The sober fact of reality is that I am not. So I honestly have no idea given the information you have provided ;-) There are just way too many variables. To do this thing easily I would recommend copying one object after another over from the old scene to the new one that works and test render inbetween, if it is a particular object causing trouble then you will find the culprit that way. Also compare all mantra settings. Tedious i know…

Good luck,
Fabian

Seems like small file without texture is working OK but not for a little bigger file with some texture.
Wonder why ?

Did you convert the file format to RAT? (if you don't know how check the docs it's in there) Might be some issue with the file format you use also. For example tif has more variations and options than is sane by anyone's standard.

hi
i used pic format.
is that ok ?

Well pic should be fine for a normal size texture in this case but you really should post a scene that isn't working, use dummy models or whatever if you are doing something that is secret.

Hi,
Thank you very much for your help.
Here is the dummy file for your test.
Thank you very much.

Steve.

Hi Steve,
You have not included any of you materials in your file. You also don't have a mantra node in the file. There are some geometry errors in /obj/FLY2 , but I don't think that they are the cause of the problem.

I can not judge your mantra problems without seeing your manta settings.

Hello, Jenny

Here is the sample file for mantra test.
This is working by the way may be because the file size is 938kb verses 1.85 mb for the original file that has problem.
After sequence rendering, frames are missing in Mplay. Some times one frame or several frames. it varies. It shows BAD IMAGE with red in Mplay.
Thank you very much.

Steve

Hi Steve,
Here are some of the things slowing down your file

1.) You may have simple geometry, but you are animating your Fly with a bone system. This setup requires a lot of calculations, and will slow down your renders.

2.) You still have not saved your materials with your file, but I can see that they are .jpg format. As Fabian said, you will get increased performance if you convert them to .rat format. Also, if your textures are very large this will slow down your renders.

3.) You have 4 lights in your file, and 3 of them have shadows turned on. You will get faster renders with less shadow generating lights.

Now, the reason you are getting some missing frames is that your machine is having a hard time rendering this slow/heavy file. When the render crashes it might try to save part of the frame that it was rendering, but usually Mplay can't display that frame and will call it a “Bad Image”. So your missing and bad image frames are basically render crashes, probably due to your machine not being up to rendering this file.

Hi, Jenny

Thank you very much.
But, i still can't understand because my machine is almost new Mac pro, bought a several mnths ago. Actually i increased memory yesterday.
I do not think i have huge texture as you see one of them painted in illustrator. If that is the case why there are no postings regarding the same or simmliar issue?

Also, i believe many animations are animated by rigging the characters in many cases. I wonder why only mine is not working properly. If that is the case i am sure there must be a lot of screams from many other people in all the forum, which i do not see. it is just hard to understand.

You mentioned the other day default mantra has a known problem already and you are working on that. If that is the case why nobody is posting the same problem. I never seen the same or similar issues in the forum.

I do not have to choose RAT format by the way. Would you please help me understand better.

Thank you.

Steve

Hi Steve,
I took a brief look at your scene.

There is no directory structure.You should use one, as when you want people to debug your scene its good to have all the files.

Lights :- 4 lights 2 area , 1 spot , 1 distant light with raytraced shadows / s fgomewhat over kill to light a fly. I would read the help documents on lights and area lights in particular.

Try and use depth map shadows and write them to disk. Remember if the animation does not change reading maps off disk will be way faster to render. You can control this from the Mantra ROP or on each light.

Camera:- Your camera has a focal length of 1 and an aperture of 1.27414. This will obviously will make your renders look very odd indeed !

Geometry :- Once you have all your animation captured you should write the lot to disk and then read it back in .

Shaders :- Convert your jpegs to .rat files . You need to read the docs on .rat files. Use mplay to do this

Rop :- In your mantra ROP properties tab > statistics . Crank up the verbose level to 3 and turn on Alfred Style Progress . Very handy for debugging a scene. You should always launch Houdini from the terminal . Its located in the osx apps houdini folder. Then in the terminal you will get a print out of what happening in the scene when you go to render.

Hope all this helps

Rob

Thank you very much.
As a matter of fact, After a several trial, i could render all 24 frms using my mac book pro, but never with my MAC PRO. I wonder if there is any thing wrong with my MAC PRO. i bought it less than a year ago and add 1 more gb memory totalling 4 gb. Would you please help me through as i try the things you mentioned. i did not do anything on camera setting when i launched it.
thank you so much again.
steve

try taking out that extra memory, it might not be playing nice with what is in there from before. Also update the OS with latest stuff from apple.
-Fabian

Try and use depth map shadows and write them to disk. Remember if the animation does not change reading maps off disk will be way faster to render. You can control this from the Mantra ROP or on each light.

What do you mean by WRITE THEM TO DISK ?

Camera:- Your camera has a focal length of 1 and an aperture of 1.27414. This will obviously will make your renders look very odd indeed !

How should i set up these?


Geometry :- Once you have all your animation captured you should write the lot to disk and then read it back in .


Can you show me how to ? please