Animation Crashes Program

[MudMover]

Hoping someone has some suggestions I could try.....

I can perform rendering static images just fine. I can create non-rendered animations just fine. But when I try to create a Rendered Animation, the program gets as far as calculating the radiosity and then moves on to the Ray Tracing - at this point I get the 'Turbofloorplan has stopped working, Windows will now close .......yadayada.... box pop up. The only option being to close the program.

I have tried removing and recreating the animation paths, differing resolutions, differing FPS, differing video compression (including, of course, none), differing radiosity levels, differing anti-aliasing levels.

I'm not a violent person, but right now, a fist through the monitor is looking a pretty attractive option!! 

Running a Core i5, 4GB RAM, 6TB storage. TFP is the only program running.

Yours,

frustrated in Northumberland,

Phil

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Phil,

Couple of questions first:

You said you can render static images OK - Basic Render or Advanced? Or both?
Does either of these also crash?
Have you tried File / Repair Project?
Crashes are usually caused my a corruption in the model - most frequently badly joined walls. Have you checked then?
What version of TFP are you using?

Apparently striking the monitor does not work - although I have not tried it myself.  It is reported to cause instant euphoria but is soon followed by severe depression, that they say is worse than the original problem! I am told it is expensive to reverse this attempted solution too, so I personally would not recommend it! 

Lets see how we go with the above answers and if that does not help maybe you can email the file to me to have a look at.

Allan

[Draft Patrick]

Hi Phil,

Did you try to create an animation with very small project (say just four walls and a roof)?
If it works, try to create an animation with one of the sample projects included with your program
If it works only in the first case, then it is a video card issue

Pat

[MudMover]

Hi guys,

thanks for the responses.

Alan,

I can render static images, both basic & advanced, they both work (although basic render has frozen on me a couple of times.)

Already tried repairing the project, with no joy.

Walls all seem OK.

Using TFP 16.

Pat,

Even very simple animation crashes the program. (4 walls)

Graphics card is an ATI HD4650, with the latest Catalyst drivers.

HTH.



https://www.dropbox.com/s/kczwb4miu7fl767/OG%20Cine%20Build.bld

[garystan]

    MudMover
    Allan        :

                          Can I make a suggestion ?     I tried using animation with a couple of my designs,  but it took forever, and the file size was huge.     So, what I did, I made a slide show of the rendered pictures, and made it into video format.   I did a post of a couple of me vids....with the links.

                                                                                           garystan

[MudMover]

Hi Garystan,

thanks for the suggestion, but I'd really like to be able to 'fly' through and around my model. I don't mind it taking a while to create, and I have plenty of space available storage wise. I'm just frustrated that the program doesn't work! Particularly after the effort I've been through to model our extension in the first place!

Cheers,

Phil

[MudMover]

....just tried turning off Hardware Acceleration, with absolutely no difference.

Just to be clear, the crash occurs as soon as the radiosity calculations have been completed and the dialogue box switches from 'Generating Radiosity Solution' to 'RayTracing Image'.

HTH

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Phil,

basic render has frozen on me a couple of times.

This comment concerns me. You said before that the radiosity is OK but the crash happens on the raytrace segment. Basic is raytrace only, so it looks like your static Basic render freezes have returned.

If, as you said to Pat, it crashes on a simple model, it could be the video card issue but I will leave Pat to help with that as he knows what he is doing in that area and I don't.

If the video card is not the issue then I would still be a bit concerned about a wall or other corruption that is causing the raytrace section of the animation to fail. It may be worth rendering the animation with the walls turned off. If that works then there is a corruption in the walls somewhere. If it still fails then the walls are OK. All you can do then is turn off other element groups and progressively identify where the corruption is. If you want to send it through to me I can check it out (alches AT iinet DOT net DOT au) or post it here if it is not too big.

Allan

[MudMover]

Hi again Allan,

Just checked, and the Basic render is working fine. It was a week or so ago that it froze on me, and even then didn't produce any 'Windows Message', it just sort of stopped!

The link in one of my posts above (The Dropbox one) should be the '.bld' file - not used Dropbox in this before, so let me know if it doesn't work. Many thanks for taking a look.

Cheers,

Phil

[MudMover]

Further testing.

Walls Off - Doesn't Crash! - Hurrah! - But still doesn't work! - Booo!!

HW Acceleration on or off doesn't make a difference. Video is totally corrupt. It plays, sort of. But nothing useful visible - see screenshot!



Getting a bit fed up now. Going to look at the walls myself, but can't understand why my static renders work just fine!

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Phil,

What do you have as the time of day? If it is night and you do not have lighs inserted it could explain the video. There is a tick box for 'use current time' which does catch some out, as overrides the time setting.

I have downloaded your file - will have a look at it tomorrow (2am here at the moment so a bit late to start now  )

Allan

[MudMover]

Hi again Allan,

Time is set to 08:15 in the morning. I've tried it with current time too. No change. 

02:00 in the morning! I remember it well, trying to get to sleep in Oz with my body clock wanting to keep going!

I think I'm going to have to leave it for now too anyway, I need to get other stuff done.

Many thanks,

Phil

[MudMover]

OK, one last try. Walls back on and Ray Tracing crash does not re-appear, but the video is still a garble pile of rubbish. All jumbled and green. Thought the green might have come from the terrain being set to grass, so changed that to a dark grey - and the video produced is a grey jumble now - bizarre, as the Terrain isn't even visible for the most part of the animation. Something really screwy with 3DRealView.

I give up.

Are IMSI going to produce a V17 anytime soon? Something with a working rendering engine perhaps?

[Draft Patrick]

Hi Phil,

I'd suggest these steps (it is a routine maintenance)

1 - Check the website of your video card manufacturer and update the drivers (I know that you mentioned that your drivers are updated, but, just in case, check again)

2 - Right click on the wallpaper (look for a place without icons)--> Properties--> Settings--> Advanced--> Open GL--> Compatibility Settings--> Force 16 bits--> Apply--> OK

3 - Set your video color depth at 24 or 32 bits ("true color")

4 - Go to www.microsoft.com/directx, and see what version is current and check if you have this version installed in your computer

5 - If the problem persists--> change the color settings to 16 bit

6 - Run Malwarebytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ and Spybot http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html  (yes, run both, they are free). They use to find different things

Let us know about the results

Pat

[Allan Chesney]

Hi  Phil,

Well I have started to look at you model and came across some odd things:

1. The program crashes when I try to open it in TFP V16 - says it was produced in a later version!  There has only been one version of V16 (no updates officially released) and V17 has not been releasaed yet either.  What is our full version number? (Help / About)

2. I opened the file in Envisioneer 8.2 (which is a later version - effectively TFP V17.2 but not yet released) and it opened OK and rendered stills OK.

3. Is the file in Dropbox the one you are using? I ask this as there are a number of things different from you comments in the forum.

4. The time was set to 11:15pm which in Australia would be very dark but maybe not in Edinborough in June (I was there once at that time of the year and could not get to sleep!!!)

5. Daylight was turned off.

6. Size was set to very high definition. Would still work but would take ages and probably stretch the computer resources somewhat. I always test anything first at very low image size.

7. The file did not have an animation path.

In view of the above, are you sure you uploaded the correct file?

Anyway I have set the daylight on and that time to 11:15AM, created an animation path and reduced the image size to 640x480. The animation is being created now and the preview is coming out really well. It is only about 1/6th of the way through at present so I am  going to leave it running and see what it is like in the morning (well - later in the morning, 12:45 am at present here.)  I am determined not to make tonight as late as last night    so I will let you know later how it came out (should have set a very short path!  ) but so far is looking very good - no crash and normal colours. But - is it the right file?

EDIT 6am: Well the video completed and created an AVI file of 12MB and which runs for 24 seconds (500KB per second) and it is fine. Some walls/floors of the model are white but that is because I do not have some of the textures you have used - replace the textures and the animation would be pertfectly acceptable, even at 640 x 480.
Can you just confirm that the file on Dropbox is the correct one?

Allan