Percolating objects into shots, program crashing like crazy.

[bwelsh1981]

Hi

So i've made a first draft of an entire film, it's huge so i've split it into 4 acts.

I'm trying to add more detail into the sets by inserting objects and then going to Objects - Percolate etc.. but literally every time I do this the program gets a little way through the percolating and then just vanishes. It's driving me crazy as the only other option would be to go through shot by shot and add an item into the scene which would take forever.

I'm having the same issue with changing wall textures and percolating those too. If the set only has a few shots it manages to do it but if the set has loads of shots then it just crashes.

Does anyone have any idea how to make this run better? I've already clicked the render in a lower resolution, it helps but it still crashes on big scenes.

There are loads of issues i'm having tbh with the program just exiting on its own. It's a really really glitchy program, i'd class it as only just usable!

I've tried using 2 different computers. One Macbook pro 13" with 16gb memory and i5 processor and now i'm trying on an iMac with 8gb Ram but a Quad core i5 and 1500mb intel iris pro graphics card. The imac seems to handle the graphics better but i'm constantly getting "out of memory" cascading warnings. It seems like the program is very inefficient with RAM, especially during percolating where the rendering doesn't seem like it's dumping the info in the RAM before moving onto the next shot render.

[jamesw]

Our tech support guy is under the weather, so I'll see if I can help.

When users have trouble with memory, it's often because of too many objects, such as highly detailed multiple-room sets, or a "cast of thousands". There are some tricks to deal with that, such as splitting a set into multiple simpler sets, using background actors from the "Extras" category, and using a background image pasted to a wall or billboard rather than actual background objects.

As for crashes, that may be something we can fix if we can get enough information.

On thing that may help is a crash report. That's something that the Mac OS generates when a program crashes, and you see a message offering to send the report to Apple. It doesn't do us any good for the report to be sent to Apple, we need it sent to us. There are 2 ways to go about that. One, when the "FrameForge quit unexpectedly" dialog appears, click the "Show Details" button, copy all the details, and paste it into a post here or click here to e-mail to me. Two, in the Finder, select the menu item Go > Go to Folder..., and in the resulting text field, type:

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

This will open a folder containing all your old crash reports. Look for ones with a name starting with FrameForge. Such a file can be attached to an e-mail or post.

The other thing that would be very helpful is an actual previz file that reliably crashes when you follow certain steps, along with a cpack file containing any nonstandard objects or textures used therein. (Use File > Export > Nonstandard Objects & Textures to create such a cpack.) It sounds like you're using large files, so it may not be feasible to e-mail or post. If you use a service such as Drop Box or Google Drive, you can put the file(s) there and then send a shared link.

[bwelsh1981]

Hi James,

Thanks for replying. Yes I have been using loads of characters so this is probably the issue. I've figured out a way of working without it being too much of an issue (by not trying to percolate too many objects at once). The only problem I can't seem to find a work around for is printing shots (to pdf) at high quality. The program just disappears if I do this (even if I only try to print a few shots in one go). Next time I give it a go i'll send you a report. Atm I'm a bit stretched for time so actually purposely causing crashes is a bit too time consuming right now. Thanks for your help regardless and I'll try and supply some more info and examples of the crash in action.

[ChrisB]

Hello bwelsh1981,

Regarding the printing to PDF problem, I haven't been able to replicate it in my tests unfortunately. I wonder what might happen if you installed a different PDF writer and used it instead of the native OSX PDF functionality. There are free alternatives you can try such as RWTS-PDFwriter.

https://github.com/rodyager/RWTS-PDFwriter

Just a thought...something to try when you have the chance to tinker with it again.