Render fails after a few frames

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1

Solution:
The “solution” for this is more of a workaround. I used an online tool to generate a sequence of commands to render each frame separately, like so:

"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender" -b "C:\Path\To\Blender\File.blend" -f 1
"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender" -b "C:\Path\To\Blender\File.blend" -f 2
...
"C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender" -b "C:\Path\To\Blender\File.blend" -f 100

I used Text Mechanic to generate a sequence of numbers and prefix it with the command to render a single frame.

Original Post:

I’m trying to render a sequence of RGBA 16-bit PNG frames at 1920X1080 with my GPU. Unfortunately, after rendering a few frames, the render fails.

When rendering with the Blender GUI open, Blender will suddenly stop rendering and I’ll get a Windows error message saying that “Blender has stopped working”, and the frame it fails on won’t save.

When rendering from a command line, rendering will just continue, but the frame it fails on will only be partially done when it saves, and every frame after that is entirely transparent.

At first I thought it might be running out of RAM, but task manager shows that almost no RAM is in use when it’s rendering. CPU usage hovers below 20% and GPU around 100%.

Specs:
OS: Windows 10
Motherboard: AsRock Extreme4 Z97
CPU: Intel i5-4590
Cooler: Stock
GPU: Evga GTX 650Ti
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD Green 1TB
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 250GB
RAM: Ballistix Sport 1600Mhz 9-9-9 2x8Gb
PSU: Corsair VS 450W

2

Does the render also fail when rendering on the CPU?

3

Do the failing frames render ok separately and fail only in sequence?

4

I haven’t tried rendering on the CPU very long so it might or might not. If I can’t find a solution I’ll let it render with CPU overnight some time and see how that goes.

I believe so. It’s always roughly the same number of frames before it fails, and it’s never failed on a single frame render or the first frame in a sequence. I had another really short project that refused to render an animation via command line, so I manually made a bat file with commands to render each frame separately. This one is too long to do that but I guess I’ll find a way to automatically write the bat file.

EDIT: Ok, so I’ve now got a bat file with commands to render each frame separately thanks to TextMechanic, so I’ll run that tonight and see how it goes. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try a CPU render the next night.

5

Actually I didn’t think of CPU rendering as a final solution, but rather a means of troubleshooting this. If the render does not fail on CPU rendering, the issue clearly is GPU related - e. g. by running out of the GTX 650’s sparse VRAM…

6

The issue is that it takes quite a while before it fails, and I’ve got other projects to work on during the day. Therefore I’ve tried all my various fixes overnight to see if they continue rendering properly until the morning.