common hang?

[a5']

Hello,

I just gave a quick look at the KB articles and wiki, didn't see anything, but I am looking for info on how to setup/configure softimage and my computer to better improve performance.

I am experiencing frequent hangs'.

The last one was from a (http://xsisupport.wordpress.com/2009/10 ... f-samples/)
known issue.

I am asking because I have found this happens often from seemingly unconnected scenerios.

If anyone would point me in the right direction for setup hints, configuration settings etc.
for paging files, cache, ram, (performance) etc....
I would appreciate it.



additionally,

I wonder what one is left to do in the case of the above problem, AO samples 0, because they need to be set to 0 for the AO parameter in the render settings to apply.

When ambient occlusion is enabled, and the Number of samples is set to 0.0 in the XSI Ambient Occlusion Shader, then Rays is the value used for the number of rays to cast when computing the ambient occlusion at the current shading point. As long as the ambient occlusion shader has its Number of samples set to a positive non-zero value, then the Rays value is ignored.

Thanks,

a5'

[Hirazi Blue]

First up: for general hard to explain crashes a general first-aid is described here

Secondly, and I haven't tried this (and you probably have, if so: ignore!): Stephen Blair's post states

If the Number of samples is set to 0 for the XSIAmbientOcclusion shader

while the manual explicitly states

If set to 0 or a negative value then mental ray will use the global Ambient Occlusion > Rays setting

My preliminary (and often totally wrong ) guess would be to try to set the "Number of Samples" to a negative value (instead of 0)

[a5']

First up: for general hard to explain crashes a general first-aid is described here

Thanks, I hadn't known about the renaming of the user folder, I'll try that.

Secondly, and I haven't tried this (and you probably have, if so: ignore!): Stephen Blair's post states

If the Number of samples is set to 0 for the XSIAmbientOcclusion shader

while the manual explicitly states

If set to 0 or a negative value then mental ray will use the global Ambient Occlusion > Rays setting

My preliminary (and often totally wrong ) guess would be to try to set the "Number of Samples" to a negative value (instead of 0)

I hadn't tried that, as it happens, although I Did and the AO shader (default softimage) doesn't accept negative values.

Thanks,

a5'

[Hirazi Blue]

Now that I've had plenty of coffee and a chance to check this on my (offline) workstation, I can confirm that it doesn't work, though the manual implies that it's possible.

[rant]Some fact-checking of the XSIDocs as to the question if the statements therein (still) apply, might be in order,
as this isn't the first time this has happened[/rant]

It is possible to change the SPDL to accept the value "-1", where it now has it's minimum value set to zero, but as this involves tampering with factory spdl, I would advise against it...

[a5']

Actually, I was wondering if there was some sort of way to do that, it seems fairly rudimentary for the software, but what do I know? I havn't investigated it.


with ice somehow?


anyway, that is only one situation with which I was having trouble. I have run runonce and changed the user directory name. So we'll see what happens in the future.

Thanks,

a5'

[Hirazi Blue]

extreme edit:
You CAN enter negative values into the "samples" field of the XSIAmbientOcclusion shader, without editing the SPDL. All you have to do, is to get yourself an "attribute shader" of the integer variety in your Render Tree, set this to "Use Default Value" and set the default number to a negative number of your liking. Plug this output into the XSIAmbOCC "samples" input...
Something happens, that much I can tell you, and it doesn't crash at "samples = -1", but if it does as advertised (use the global values), I cannot be sure of, as I am not truly a wizard as shading/rendering (or at anything for that matter... )
This, however, seems to be quite an easy and relatively harmless way to test it, without all that SPDL editing nonsense of my earlier post...

PS I just noticed: you cannot see the XSIAmbientOcclusion ports in this screenshot, but it seems quite obvious, you should plug into the "samples" port, I hope...

[a5']

That is what I expected, something like that, I didn't get a chance to investigate that particular issue--Thank you for the info.

as to your previous post, before the edit, I think the answer to finding what is being used where is to be found here :

render.JPG (45.63 KiB) Viewed 1484 times

in the debug options which you can view in the script editor and can Further do real-time logging of messages and debug info.

although I havn't been able to get a log without the program crashing yet.. hanging rather.

here is a link to the log I outputed using your technique

http://a59303.freeshell.org/forum.s/Cop ... al_sam.txt


thanks again for the info,
a5'