Afterburn 4.0b Crashes on rendering

[fernandokts]

I have a scene with a PFlow that increases the number of particles by an object's movement.
The first frames render okay. But when I go to a frame that has more particles, it crashes 3ds max.
When I reduce the number of particles, the same frame that crashed before, starts to work (but other frames with more particles crash).
All the options of environment->afterburn are left in their default, and it doesn't change a thing if I add or remove the light.
I tried to render with multithread enabled and disabled. And it didn't change a thing

So I think it has only to do with particles number.

I'm using 3ds max 2008 - 32 bits

I've uploaded an example file of the error to:
http://www.fernandotortosa.com/particles.max

Please, render frame 58

Is that a bug?

[fernandokts]

Sorry for double posting...
But I've made more tests_
My machine has 4GB of RAM. When I render at frame 40, it already gets the error.
A friend of mine tested it on a 2GB RAM machine, and the problem started at frame 22 (that has less particles).
I think it has something to do with memory. But when I monitor the RAM usage, I see it uses less then 1.6GB. As I have 4GB, I don't know if that is really the issue...

[Galagast]

Hi, I took a look at your scene, and I was able to render frame 40. My machine has 2gig of ram with the 3gig switch enabled. Rendering it took 2.5gigs of ram on my task manager.

My observations..
- You are running 3dsmax 32 bit, you won't be able to maximize your 4gig ram. You must use 64-bit for that. (and are running on a 64-bit windows?)
- Maybe try to setup the 3gig switch on your friend's machine and see if it will climb up to 2.5gigs and render.
- Also try increasing the Particle Amount > Upper Limit on your PF Source 01. On your file, it has the default (I think) of 100,000 particles. increase it to a million.
- When using afterburn, I think you don't necessarily have to have a lot of particles, a single particle cloud can represent a lot in an animation.

I hope this helps!

[sitnisati]

I've tried render here and it went fine - also using 2Gb RAM machine with 3Gb switch.
You should defeinitely use less particles for AfterBurn volumetrics - it will be faster, using less memory and you'd get the same effect.

Regards,

Kresimir Tkalcec

[fernandokts]

That's really strange why it works for you and not for me...
But for the time being I'll try to use less particles.
Thank you both for your replies