#instance and the rendere
7 messages in this thread
How does the renderer treat an instance? Does it consider it to be like any
other object, or does
it have any special considerations? Is it better to make 1000 instances each
of 6 objects, or 6000 instances of one object?
The reason I ask is related to the question I posed to you yesterday about the
'can't allocate object instance' problem. I tried the file again, after I had
remmed out some unnecessary drivers in my autoexec.bat and config.sys, and the
error message didn't pop up, but It sat at the same exact place (the gas gauge
was on 'preparing normals' and the line was 4/5 across the screen) from a few
minutes into the rendering until 16 hours later when I finally gave up and hit
the reset button. There was a gig free when I started, and 40 meg free when I
checked the drive after re-booting. The master object I made the instances off
of had a little over 1000 faces.
I tried another file on another computer with 4096 instances made from 4 copies
of one object with 488 faces. This rendered fine without crashes or anything
weird happening, though it did take about 90 min to render each frame, but I
was expecting that. Both computers have 64 meg ram and about 1 gig free hd
space.
What can you suggest that might shed some light, or make my life easier in some
way? Dealing with this many objects is greatly tiring.
Thanks.
It's a good question. Most people don't realize that all instances are
expanded out into full geometry inside of the renderer, so if you've got 4096
instances of a 488-face object, the renderer will be looking at 2 million
faces! The two things that instances "buy" you are small .3DS file size and
the ability to change the editor master object and have all the instances
change in the keyframer.
– G
>>>The two things that instances "buy" you are small .3DS file size and the
ability to change the editor master object and have all the instances change in
the keyframer.<<<
Well, the small file size make it worth using instances in this case. I'd never
be able to manage these files without using instances. Before I spent all my
time waiting for files to save and load, now it is no big deal. I can fit the
files on floppies even if they have 20 thousand trees in the file.
Unfortuantely there is still the problem of rendering. 5000 trees seems to be
the useful limit per scene. After that, the rendering time becomes too high and
the machines start to flake out from too much swapping.
Frankly I am amazed I was able to pull this project off at all.
With that much data being expanded into the renderer, you're really pushing the
hardware HARD. (I like to see that pioneering spirit! <g>)
– G
With all the time and effort I put into this, I wish the end result were more
visually striking than trees on a terrain. Nobody will appreciate the time and
effort and the fact it is real world data behind the image.
Maybe this is a job for R5. (hint, hint) (G)
I shudder to think of how much memory a scene like that would take under NT,
with all the extra overhead.
– G
It's taking about 400-500 megs now, so unless NT hogs memory exponentially, I
don't see it making a big difference, but I haven't used NT personally yet, and
of course I can only guess what might be in store for V5 of 3ds. I doubt it
would help me any in this situation. What I need is more RAM, or some trick I
haven't thought of yet to simplify the scene.