Looking for a work-around and way to diagnose what is wrong so I can publish my project.

My project has 4 cameras and plays fine and switches in preview mode.  I mention switch because it is significant. It is 12000 frames long. When I go through 3 camera switches, iClone crashes on the frame where the 4th camera switch is done.  Removing the camera switch just kicks the can further down the road to the next camera switch.  The crash appears two ways.  FIrst there is a hesitation, then the rendering continues lickty split to the end--but the video only has a garbage frame.  Second crash is a Windows alert that the program has stopped working.  In the first crash the UI is non-operative.

I rendered the project with no switches and all animation and vismee work just fine.  What could go wriong with camera switches?

What rendering settings are you using, Format and quality setting ?



Freelance Artist Kevin.S



  

Email: animatemyart@gmail.com - Web Site:  www.animatemyart.com

Default out of the install settings.  I have rendered more than a dozen projects with the same settings and no problems until this project.  I saved the file that caused the problems and have been building a new project.  First I deleted all the cameras and recreated them. Second I add only one camera at a time and render the project to video.  This is very time consuming but I am afraid of going the full blown camera switching.

Feagans, though I haven't submitted my problem with iClone, I had this problem forever. The version I used on You Tube (mp4, but it's not as clean as the original mp4 from iClone) I only had 64GB of RAM. Since then I added another 64GB of RAM (128GB  total now) I was able to add more dummy light fixtures, people etc., only because my motion puppet stopped greying out, after I added more avatars. I saved and used the mp4 output, using 8 video quality @ 1920x1080, plus 3x3 rendering checked, no HQ shadows, (that renders forever). I use normally about 12 cameras maybe more on other scenes. Anyway this updated scene with all the additions started to render and then it failed. I tried the sequential PNG files, it too failed after a few thousand frames. I have 11,661 frames in that scene. In earlier versions of iClone if it crashed on the same frame, it was something like a Avatar or in one case the hair on avatar when the camera switched on them that it didn't like, so I changed that avatar or the hair. This is crashing at random frames, So I split the frames, 1-3000, 3001-6000, etc. in 3000 frame intervals, saving as a, b, c and d. What is good about this? Even splitting it in 3000 frames, it did crash but only once and after booting and only rendering about 800 frames. I usually reboot the computer before saving each section. Then I put the four of the videos together, download the audio separately. So here came problem #2 with my sequential PNG files. The .WAV export file crashes, I've never had that before. So I went back to the mp4 export, this time with the checked 3x3 quality, and slider @ 8, I did the same for these mp4 files; I used a max of 3000 frames each, 1-3000, 3001-6000, 6001- 9000, 9001-11661. And the audio will be included, without the exporting of a wave file. I also checked the hardware acceleration button, which I think didn't work with my AMD processors. You are probably asking why I don't use Reallusion for tech support? I tried since iC3. Being a former engineer they may be sharp with 3D and animation problems, but as much as I love iClone. They have never solved or answered my questions, ignored me, and I didn't get off a spaceship. If you ask me they do minimum testing and I come from the school of we're going to max everything out, try it in the Sahara, and then in Siberia or simulate it. I knew the all the limitations of everything I designed and put it in writing. To me their rendering encoders have always been the weak link for me, I'm buying iClone7 soon, and I hope they fixed this and give us a better mp4 encoder, and for some reason they seem to be really tight mouthed about this. The only answers other than your project is too big, which is not stated anywhere, or like the timeline problem 2 weeks ago, it needed a patch. I'm not helping them, if they are going to ignore me. I thought it might be a virtual memory problem, but when you reboot if that was the problem, you wont get the same project to crash at 11,000 frames, and then the next time only make it to 800 frames. So when you encode to make you video, break it up in 3000 frame sections, and add together using a video editor. My mp4 using video hardware acceleration looks great. Even if I put it on You Tube, they kill the quality. You can see the older mp4 video on here if you haven't already. You Tube kills the quality though. Remember this video was 11,661 frames, and it didn't crash rendering it in mp4. It was only after I added more avatars, walls, dummy lights and another 64GB of RAM, that it crashes regardless of output rendering I used.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMfEQudj0OQ&feature=youtu.be  I hope I helped, and I may put the update scene on You Tube this weekend? Have a great weekend.
     

Home built; ASRock X570 Pro 4, AMD Ryzen 9-5950X CPU, AMD RADEON RX6900XT, 16GB video card, 131GB of RAM.

Rgreenidge Thank you for your comments.  I believe in "What you see is what you get".  I can't wait for a patch or a new release, the educational materials have to be delivered to the customer, now!

By the process of adding one feature at a time then rendering I found what caused the crash.  It appears that one of my cameras set up for depth of field, is where the rendering crashes.  Looks fine in preview but will not render. I still have all 4 cameras switching where they did in the original, but do not use depth of field on that troublesome camera. All 12,000 frames rendered correctly and I am on to the next part of the project.

Weird, but glad you figured it out!



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I haven't used or messed with the DOF I years, but I want to use it in my final scene. Thanks for the lookout. I'm far from the final scenes. I might just wait until  iClone7 is out? Unlike you I'm working at my own time so I understand the rush. Waiting for a patch? You're doing the right thing because they haven't fixed the rendering problem, I was just told that my files and or project is too big. Well how about telling us that what are the limitations so I know where to stop, because other than crashing it gives no warning. I'm glad you got through with rendering the whole project after you changed the camera and know how to troubleshoot. I was fine with my scene until I added more stuff to it. I sent them one of my scenes a while back, and all I got back was that it was too big, they didn't fix anything, and never answer my questions on their encoders. I hope they improve the encoders and have (I know it's expensive to license) a mp5 I call it (H265) encoder also. Some newer video editing programs versions now have it for 4K videos. H265 compared to H264 looks like night & day, it really looks great. I think I put a link on here somewhere. But here it is again. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL22L0mRSDs  try to watch in full screen. Believe it or not some people do not see the difference. Good luck with your project.

Home built; ASRock X570 Pro 4, AMD Ryzen 9-5950X CPU, AMD RADEON RX6900XT, 16GB video card, 131GB of RAM.

@rgreenidge I have seen your video and it is difficult to believe that iClone should not be able to render, also considering that you have a well-equipped PC.
I have done projects much more complex (about 60 characters!!!) and sometimes rendering for 14 consecutive days (!!!!) with no issues at all... and my PC specs are probably worst than yours.
How long before iClone crashes ? Hours ? Days ?
Couldn't be a kind of corrupted project issue ?
Maybe the issue is not the rendering itself but some issue when the project is saved... SW problems might be complicated to find when their effect appears somewhere else later in time...
I usually save multiple incremental versions of my projects, so that I can restore a previous version if anything went wrong.
Anyway, it is also true that rendering 11K frames in a row makes not so much sense, except for a previz: it is suggested to break the scenes into sub-scenes and to use a NLE to rebuild the project.
You can still resync everything perfectly with the audio, if you pay attention to each sub-scene start frame and NLE frame rate.
My videos shall be perfectly synchronized between me playing in iClone and the audio running in the final assembling within the NLE: it works pretty well, no issues at all!
If you need suggestions about how to do that, feel free to ask.

Cheers

  Roberto








My PC:
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English
Hello from Spain, good afternoon everyone
Sorry for my english, google translate.

Hi feagans_john.The same thing happened to me with that version, the application hung and I had to finish it. The last one was hung in 21 minutes, and I had already taken the option of image sequences.
Apart from sending the Reallusion support what happened to me, what I have done, has been to reinstall iClone 6 until the 6.5 update and NOT the 6.53, so that it will not be hung.

Today in the morning, I reinstalled it, and I started to render the project that was hanging, and now it takes almost 4 hours rendering (there are 7850 frames in VR) and for now it is still moving forward, but it is lasting much longer than with Version 5.53.3511.
My project is 1.69GB and I could work with it, the problem is that it hung when rendering.

Best regards.

Spanish
Hola desde España, buenas tardes a todos.
Lo siento por mi inglés, traductor de google.

Hola feagans_john.

A mí me ha pasado lo mismo con esa versión, se quedaba colgada la aplicación y la tenía que finalizar. La última se ha colgado en 21 minutos, y ya había cogido la opción de secuencias de imágenes.
A parte de mandarle al soporte de Reallusion lo que me ha pasado, lo que he hecho, ha sido reinstalar iClone 6 hasta la actualización 6.5 y NO la 6.53, para que no se colgara.

Hoy por la mañana, la he reinstalado, y he puesto a renderizar el proyecto que se colgaba, y ahora mismo lleva casi 4 horas renderizando  (son 7850 frames en VR) y por ahora sigue hacia adelante, pero me está durando mucho más que con la versión 5.53.3511.
Mi proyecto es de 1,69GB y podía trabajar con el, el problema es que se colgaba al renderizar.

Un saludo.


iClone 6 PRO · 3DXChange Pipeline · Character Creator · Windows 10 PRO · i7- 6700K 4Ghz · Asus Maximus VIII Hero · 32 GB RAM DDR4 · GeForce GTX 1070 (Nvidia driver 376.09) · 1 HD SATA for S.O. & APP · 3 HD SATA for data · 1 SDD TEMP/RENDER

With large frame sizes, rendering a single frame in high quality may take several seconds. You can easily check that by rendering a short sequence of 100 frames, look at the time and then dived by the number of frames. That will give you an idea of the time it takes for a single frame to render.

For this reason it is recommended to split a cproject up in several with fewer frames. If it's really almost 8,000 frames and one frame takes four seconds, you will be rendering for a while. This may also be taxing on the GPU. Use a tool like GPU-Z to check the temperature.

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