Hey

It seems whenever I do rendering with Mantra for any length of time, my computer crashes, not Houdini, but my whole system. I just upgraded my system for 3d work especially for rendering. I'm not sure if it is Houdini that is the problem or my system and or settings. Here is what I have

Dual AMD 2000+ 1.67G Processors
1 GIG Kingston Registered Ram
Quadro 4 750

I am thinking maybe my problem is with the graphics card settings. This is my first high end card, so I don't know to much about performance settings. What is the optimal settings for Quadro's and the best drivers

Is there any settings in Houdini that I could change to help it from crashing during renders. I read somewhere on the forums that when you install Houdini there is specific settings that help run Houdini, I think it had to do more with folder structures but maybe it was performance settings, I know that is a bit vague, but so you know I didn't do any setup for Houdini variables or anything like that, just installed and started using.

BTW I am using Window XP Pro. is Win2000 Pro a better OS for doing serious 3d work?

Any ideas..anyone. Really need to figure this one out.

i had have the similar problems if there were
closed NURBS/Bezier curves (produced by Extrude SOP, Cap SOP)
in a scene and they crossed camera plane.
Rendermanlike “Eye :cry: split” problem ???
The solution was to use Convert to Polygon + Divide SOP for such primitives. :twisted:

Andrew- Thank you for the reply. I am rendering a poly model, no Nurbs except for two Nurbs spheres for the eyes.

“in a scene and they crossed camera plane.” Not sure what you mean exactly, could you explain this a bit more. Thanx

This situation is more or less explained in docs:

“MICRO POLYGON SPLITS
If there is a SINGLE primitive which spans a large area,
but only a PORTION is visible on the screen
(i.e. a single polygon ground plane stretching to infinity), it's possible
that some shading artifacts will appear.
These will manifest themselves as large
blurry areas on the surface.
This occurs when mantra is unable to refine a surface
into small enough micro polygons.”

In my case it results sometimes in system reboot or
swap enlarging and error notification.

i don't think I have anything like that in my scene..yet.. but some interesting info, thank you.