#3DS render problem
3 messages in this thread
December 16, 1991
To whom it may concern,
We are trying to render out a 4096×2736 compressed TGA file to disk. We
have selected a null driver with the COMPRESS and TARGA switchs turned on.
We keep getting back two error messages; COULDN'T ALLOCATE IMAGE BUFFER
(CONTINUE) and INIT OF DRIVER FAILED (CONTINUE). We have also tried to
render this out to 2048×1368 but receive the same errors. We have a client
needing this by the end of the week. Do you have any solutions ?
The 3ds file contains the following information:
4,827,420 bytes in size
(All objects have been welded and normals unified)
1 spotlight casting shadows
Aprox. 180,000 faces
Aprox. 80,000 vetices
Anti-aliasing set to LOW
PHONG shading
using a NULL driver
saving to a COMPRESSED TARGA file
We have approx. 50 megabytes free on our drive, a WEITEK chip and 4 meg of
ram on a 486 Northgate computer. We have also tried rendering this on an
Everex Step 25 386 with 8 meg of ram and two hard disks. The C drive
contains the software and has 23 meg available, the D drive contains the
3ds file and has 45 meg avilable. Both machines received the same error
messages.
We would appreciate any suggestions!
Sincerely,
SPECTRUM 7 Inc.
Jim Kiefer & Bob Neebn
Dear Jim & Bob,
Personally, I think that 50M free isn't likely to be enough,
particularly if you have texture maps. That's a darn good-sized model, and
the memory requirements will be substantial. This means that on a 4M RAM
machine, you are doing some serious spooling off to disk, even without
textures. Thus, a large swap file is going to be created (maybe 20Meg. or
so). A 2048 x 1368 file (in 24-bit only, not 32-bit) is about 8.5Meg
uncompressed (if you have Save-Last-Image= YES) than this file is being
created. Plus, add the resulting .TGA file you're trying to write (less
than the 8.5Meg if compressed). Add textures, and your memory/swap file
requirements go up. You might want to look for Gary Yost's recent
discussion of such requirements in the libraries. Best suggestion I can
give you is to: 1) edit your 3DS.SET file to turn off Last-Image
rendering; 2) make sure that ALPHA=NO, so that the additional 8 bits per
pixel is not written; 3) make sure you are writing a compressed .TGA; 4)
get more RAM; 5) get more disk space; 6) simplify your model geometry; 7)
cut down on use of textures.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Bob:
Please read message number 6611.
Evan