I have some models that will render with the Lightwork renderer only once before running out of memory.  I can render with a High Quality Full render for one frame at a time and then rerender in wireframe to clear up the memory that is used up.  Then start the next frame.  I can continue this process for a long time before memory becomes a problem.  However, if I used Animation Lab to create the frames, I can't find a way to do this programmatically.   The scripting provides access to the ActiveDrawing object but not to the Application Object where the Render Object is located.

Am I missing something simple?  I've been using Animation Lab with TC 16.2 pro and 17 Platinum for quite awhile but have not run into a function to reset to wireframe before starting the next frame and rendering.

UPDATE:  I figured out that I can control the rendering with the RenderView Object which is part of the View Object.  Now on each iteration of the frame I rerender my model to wireframe and then set it to render in Lightworks Full Render for creating the Frame.

It works.  I need to fine tune my code but I will let this render complete which is 406 frames and will take about 8 hrs.  This process adds time about an hour in my case.  We will see how it goes.

I will copy the code here if it works for those that may have models that just are too big and the memory runs out over time as the model is rendered over and over.

John

I guess nobody bit on this.  I have read that others have had problems running out of memory while runing animations as the memory used climbs after every iteration.  Even models that don't take up almost the whole allotted memory during the the render will eventually run into the memory barrier.

I was able to run all 406 iterations last night on my animation of my model.  The first frame took 1,310MB of RAM (seems like two renders are used one during the object movements and the second for file frame creation.  I believe the second one will not accumulate the memory leak and that is why I don't have problems when doing camera movement only renders.  After about 300 frames TurboCAD used only about 1,396,MB of RAM.  It never crashed until all renders were done and the Application restarted.  It did take longer to run the animation however, but beats doing it manually which is what I used to do.

I hope this makes sense to people that have experience with Animation Lab.  For those with more experience than me, and there are a lot of you, if there is an easier way of doing this without simplifing the model too much please tell me.  I have seen amazing renders on this site.

Here is the code I put in the script:

// Copy this code into the script section of Animation Lab 4.4
// to force rendering into wireframe to recollect lost memory
// from Lightworks Engine memory leaks.
//
// Animation Lab seems to Render the drawing twice,
// once on each step after a movement of an object
// and during file frame creation.

// Untested:  One step scenario's enter a scrpt which will need
// to be modified by adding below code to the StepCustomAction Sub

// It is best to Set Options to not check syntax before as that can cause
// many unnecessary iterations of the code

Sub PreScenarioAction
// TODO your code
end sub

Sub PostScenarioAction
// TODO your code
end sub

Sub StepCustomAction
  Dim RefeshEveryXFrames
  //RefreshEveryXFrames should = StepNum to refresh on every iteration otherwise any integer greater than one 2,3,4,5,10...
  RefreshEveryXFrames=StepNum
  If StepNum<>0 then
    If StepNum mod RefreshEveryXFrames=0 then
     ActiveDrawing.ActiveView.RenderView.EndRender
     //RenderMode=0 is wireframe render
     ActiveDrawing.ActiveView.RenderView.RenderMode=0
     ActiveDrawing.ActiveView.RenderView.BeginRender(0)
     //RenderMode=4 is Full Render
     ActiveDrawing.ActiveView.RenderView.RenderMode=4
    End if
  End if
end sub

Thanks for the script!  Finally I am able to run full length best quality animations. 

Does anybody know what these settings are for the various render modes.

ActiveDrawing.ActiveView.RenderView.RenderMode=0 ActiveDrawing.ActiveView.RenderView.BeginRender(0)


Example as above, what should the settings be for other rendering modes in relation to

RenderMode
BeginRender

I would at least for starters like to know what these settings are for lightworks Raytrace Full.

Any assistance appreciated.

Regards Mike Geraghty!.

I haven't been frequenting the forum lately, but I did get your PM while I was on vacation.  Now I can answer your request.

I sent you a PM as to how I can find which rendermode is which.  The Raytrace Full looks like it is 6 for the Lightworks engine.

Good luck with your project, the tcsdk.chm help file has a lot missing.

Johnny

Many thanks for your feedback and assistance Johnny, I am going to have a play around with some of the new settings today!.





Mike Geraghty.

Hope it worked for you.

I am getting somewhere Johnny, but not exactly what I want yet, still waiting for a reply from Softdev about the RenderStyle and ChangeRenderStyle commands.


I will email you in the next few days with where I am at with the initial problem.


Regards Mike Geraghty.

Mike - I am curious if you got answers regarding renderstyle.  I am struggling with the same issue. 

Craig Johnson

Hello Craig, unfortunately I did not get any feedback from SoftDev, probably because it is in Russia, and some of the emails may be taken as spam. I know Dave Taylor was going to chase up SoftDev about some of the settings or syntax, but as yet have not heard anything.

Try sending Dave Taylor a message!.

Mike Geraghty.