Blender 2.41 CVS (APril 16) simply crashes if I set the resolution too high, I’ve had this problem for a long time (not just this cvs version), in some scene I CAN bake at 512, some I can’t. I am running under XP with 1.5Gig of RAM and immediately after I hit “bake” the program crashes with a “xp error dialog”. What do I do? Is it a memory related problem?
If you set the resolution too high, Blender could end up needing many gigabites of ram (it estimated nearly 27GB of space (HD or Ram?) for a resolution of 512:eek:). Even for 128, it estimated just over 421MB (the wiki manual suggested roughly 250MB, though). I suspect the wiki gives RAM needed whereas the little number in the fluid settings gives the amount of space required to store the data. Either way, 26.87GB is a lot of space.
Remember, increase the resolution only if you need to.
Looking at the figures, I would try to keep below 192 (224 at the most).
Yes I do know the implication of using a resolution of 300 of up when baking. I’ve already ‘optimize’ the scene by making the domain dimention as small as possible. But I DO NEED to bake at 512 resolution for this project 
The above video isn’t the project I am working on right now, but it shows what can be done at 450 resolution.
And as far as memory is concerned, the baking process only used 1.3GB of RAM. So 512 isn’t that far off given I’ll be getting 2GB soon.
Wow Thats Really Great
Can you give more details (if its the one I think it is, the message offers more information after passing another dialog). If the extra details say segment fault or something like that, there is probably not enough memory. If I understand correctly, no Windows program (32 bit) can access more than 2GB (or 3GB with a special switch) of memory anyway. Any program wanting more, would probably have to make and manage its own “pagefile”.
So, there are two things I can suggest:
- Further optimise your scene (if you can)
- Use a lower resolution, and particles to fill in the rest (I’ve never tried this my self, but it could give a very good effect)
Any tut on how to use the particles? I set “gen particles” to 10 but still don’t see any paticles. What else do i do to enable them? Thanks.
Actually, I didn’t fully realise particles had acutally (I realised the idea existed) been incorperated into fluid simulation. I was thinking of good old fashioned particles with emittors (the adjacent panel). I looked in the wiki, and didn’t see anything. I recommend experimenting with it.
Edit: Making the domain smaller optimizes the scene because it makes the Resolution per BU^3 greater. An analogy: A bitmap of a given resolution takes up the same space whether it is a picture of a galaxy or a single grain of sand. So the smaller you make the domain (the fewer metres you represent inside it), the lower the resolution can be.
Hi,
mpan3: yes this sounds like a memory problem - a 512^3 simulation cube would probably require more than 4GB of memory, that might not even be possible with a 32bit operating system & blender build… The particles are still experimental, not sure whether they should be in 2.42, but here’s a small example:
www10.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/~sinithue/temp/partgentest3.blend
Techmeology: you’re right, the required memory display seems to be off, I’ll take a look there…
Regards,
-> Nils
I ran some tests on that .blend (I changed a few things: materials, etc) and I think particles add a great deal of realism (especially to animations). I made images of two versions (with particles and without).
Remember, though, this was only a quick experiment, and the particles seem to add even more realism to animations than to stills.
Ok, thanks for the replay. I realize that 512 is an insane resolution to work with, but now that I got particle working, I should be able to live with ‘410’.
Expect a screenshot of my WIP soon 