Flamingo nXt & Bongo

Bongo
1

I’m trying to render/animate a ship here at work to use as a presentation using Flamingo nXt as my base render - but am having some problems.

The animation starts ok, but after a while the computer runs out of memory. With task manger open I can see that after each frame is rendered (I’ve limited nXt to 10 passes) the physical memory isn’t cleared - the next frame adding to the amount used. This then grows quite rapidly.

I’m managed to downsize the file from nearly 300 Mb (this crashed the computer twice) to 93 Mb and am about to re-try - although my first test just had the memory up on 15 Gb after a mere 8 frames (of 150 frames total).

I’m rendering at a 640x360 size on a dedicated render machine (The Rhino package is just about the only thing on it). The machine is 64bit, dual quad processors with 16 Gb RAM and I have just set rhino’s “undo” RAM to 2048…

Is there any way to get Rhino/Flamingo/Bongo to clear the memory cache between frames?

Any advice would be appreciated.

UPDATE - as expected the memory went quickly up to 99% and the system slowed down and after around 11 frames I’m getting the “server busy” warning with options to “switch to” & “retry” ??
Clicking retry seems to allow it to continue - but this is not a viable option…

***UPDATE 2: After some trial and error testing I think I may have located the problem. It seems to be the HDRI background/lighting image.

If I remove it and use the automatic sky setting the animation renders at a steady 5.26 Gb RAM usage.

This makes Bongo usable again - but somewhat reduces the dramatic effect associated with a HDRI lighting scheme.

So now we need to find out why the HDRI image causes this increase in RAM usage.

2

James,

Can you please do the following test:

  • Render the animation using Viewport Display or the Rhino Renderer as the target renderer. Do you get the same result or does that work?
3

It seemed to work fine earlier when I tested both the other options - so the culprit must really be the nXt render engine. The question is really why the memory cache continues to grow even though each frame is saved on the local machine?

Maybe I should post this on the nXt section?

At the moment I’ve lost contact to the remote desktop on the computer - so I guess it’s frozen again and will need to be restarted. That’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

4

James,

If you can render the same animation using Viewport Renderer and the Rhino Renderer without a problem, I’d say that the problem is in Flamingo nXt.

@scottd - Can you help?