I never had this problem before, but since 2.66 Blender crashes almost always when I bake a fluid sim. Even a simple one with a final resolution set as low as 10. And if I try to bake a second time after a small change, it ALWAYS crashes. Never had this before.
Blender 2.66.0
r54697
Windows 7 (64 bit)
Intel Core i7 3.2 GHz 6 cores
2TB HD
12GB RAM
AMD ATI Radeon 5570 graphics card
Have you tried the latest official blender version, the one you have isn’t the latest.
File / Load Factory settings
Select cube and Object / Quick Effects / Quick Fluid.
Press the Bake button.
If it crashes report it as a bug to the bug tracker (link in help menu)
Ensure you record all error reports
Thanks Richard. It worked OK just using all the defaults exactly as you said. Later I’ll try something a bit more complex and see how it goes.
Download Blender 2.66a and see if the problem continues.
OK. Well the first attempt I did EXACTLY what Richard suggested. I made no changes to anything at all and just followed what he said. It worked fine. Then later I did a very simple fluid setup. I scaled the default cube on the Z-axis, then added a mesh UV sphere, scaled it down a little and moved it up a bit, but it was still totally within the cube. I set the physics for the cube as ‘domain’ and the sphere as ‘fluid’, set the final and preview to 30 (to save time) and hit ‘bake’. I immediately got a notification box that Blender has stopped working. There were no error messages, and because Blender stopped I couldn’t save the file, although I could recreate it and save it before I try to bake it again. But it was just the simple setup I described.
I scaled the default cube on the Z-axis
Maybe related to your crash, or not :
When you said you have scaled the cube, was it in Edit Mode or in Object mode ?
If it is on Object Mode, after scaling you need to apply that transformation with CTRL+A -> Rotation&Scale
If it was in Edit Mode, no need to apply the transformation.
It was Object mode. So I tried scaling in edit mode but same thing. Blender has stopped working. I tried again, this time in Object mode and I applied the scale (Ctrl A>apply scale) and it worked one time. I started a new file, tried it again, and Blender crashed.
I often have a problem similar to this, and it usually happens for me when I unfocus the blender window while it is processing, for instance when it is rendering ,baking particles, fluids or dynamic paintmaps… My advice would be to check to process in task manager to see if its still using any CPU. and depending on what kind of windows error, select “wait for program to respond” and just leave it to work… it may show a blank black window but in most cases its still happily processing…
this is just an idea and may be completely unrelated to your issue especially if its not the “wait for program to respond” type error message… basically, if blender is doing heavy duty processing, windows often thinks its no longer responding.
Exile -
I get a Windows notification box that says “Blender has stopped working - Windows is checking for a solution to the problem. This may take several minutes” After a short while, another notice appears asking if I want to send information or just cancel. When I click “Cancel” it all goes away, including the Blender window. There is no option to “Wait for program to respond” but I have seen that at other times with other programs, but this isn’t that.
oh ok… was worth checking… beyond that I have no ideas.
Thanks for the suggestion though. Funny thing is I keep trying and trying, and two times (out of maybe 50!) it actually worked. I was very careful to do EXACTLY the same thing each time (after 50 tries I was pretty good at repeating!). Weird.