yamanash Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Hey guys, I just joined to ask this question... I haven't been able to find too much on it. As the title says, I am getting consistent crashes with mantra in houdini 14 whilst attempting to render a single frame of a decently detailed smoke volume. Does anyone know what this error means exactly and/or how to go about fixing it? I am quite new to Houdini so it is probably caused by something I am doing wrong Thanks so much! -Kyle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 At the top of the error it says 'could not create output directory' so your temp files or output files can't be created. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yamanash Posted September 2, 2015 Author Share Posted September 2, 2015 (edited) Hey man! Thanks for the swift reply! I too noticed this. I am the admin, I have set all the relevant permissions for the drive, and H 14 is also running as admin when this happens (Windows 10). It says it couldn't create the dir but the image still renders part way on most attempts, it never gets past like 20%ish though as the majority of the image is empty still on crash. Can you think of any reson why it would be saying that about not being able to create the dir though/if this could still be causing the error? EDIT: Speak of the devil, I left for a while to do something else, came back and did a test render with no lighting in the scene and it managed to spit out a complete (although boring) image...That is the first time that has ever happened in this scene. I just did a second render of it to be sure and it sucessfuly competed it. Upon adding an enviro light it crashed again however... Edited September 2, 2015 by yamanash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yamanash Posted September 2, 2015 Author Share Posted September 2, 2015 (edited) Here is a test scene which exhibits a similar issue... Can you see anything wrong? test.hip It seems to always be that error or the 255 which initiates the crash and it seems like it could be related to lights? Edited September 2, 2015 by yamanash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 There's something up with the setup - the density is missing for Mantra - turn your statistics Verbose level up to 1, start stop a render and MMB on the Mantra node - this will tell you that it cant find density. Can you test with a new file and using just the shelf tools. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yamanash Posted September 2, 2015 Author Share Posted September 2, 2015 (edited) Alright, I made sure to only use shelf tools this time, it seemed to work for the first three renders. After that I incresed the voxel res in my pyro node and did a re-sim. This resulted in the same error ass last time on render, I also moved the camera around a little using the transform parameters in the SOP. shelfonly.hip\ Small update: I just recreated this same scene fresh, rendered out a frame fine. Immediately after I did another, same frame, same everything and it crashed... I'm not sure what to make of that. Edited September 2, 2015 by yamanash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 This is working for me here- rendered 12+ frames no probs. - I removed the UnixRop node and set the file name to the default sequence - the settings you had only use 10GB of Ram and I've tested with a Division Size setting of 0.01 and it works. Probably one to send to SideFx support. I've attached the .hip file that was working for you to double check. Windows 7 SP1, 64Gb Ram, H14.0.361 shelfonly2.hip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yamanash Posted September 2, 2015 Author Share Posted September 2, 2015 (edited) Okay, thanks for the help man! I think I have pinned down the issue. It seems to be my OC that has been causing the issues. Strange as this machine has been used for week long + renders all its life and doesn't have any problems passing Prime95 for 24 hrs... I guess H is just sensetive to it for some reason, it certianly explains the randomness of the problem though. I just Primed it for about an hour, didn't get a single error but I figured screw it it's worth a try, brought 'er down to stock clocks and I have rendered out many frames of complex scenes without issue... Maybe its time to bring up some voltages... Thanks again! -Kyle UPDATE: So doing some experimenting revealed that Houdini hits a wall at just over 3.8GHz on my particular setup (evga sr-2 dual xeon e5649s 48 GB ram) it took some playing around but I finally narrowed the culprit down to Uncore frequency. This actually makes a lot of sense given some of the errors Houdini was spitting out in hind sight... The uncores (non-core components of the cpus) were getting too far behind I guess and eventually tripped errors.. I still find it quite odd that this only happened in H 14. It was fine in H13 not to mention numerous other computationally intensive 3d apps... Any ways this was a very specific so I doubt many others will have the same problem but if you do... Try increasing Uncore freqs so they are closer to the core clock(s) Edited September 4, 2015 by yamanash Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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