Blender stops baking halfway through

[Pamela Galli]

This started just today. I am baking AO textures and about halfway through, Blender just stops. I have plenty of memory. I restarted Blender and got one thing baked but the next one I tried, same problem.

 

Anyone seen Blender do this? I used to see it on some buggy version of 2.5 but not this 2.66a I am using.

[Rahkis Andel]

If you hover your mouse over the topmost "separation" between windows in blender, you can drag that down and it will reveal the meat of the info console. Alternatively, you can turn any window into an "info" window.

All scripted commands run in blender will appear there along with any errors. If you go ahead and try to bake, it will probably throw an error up there that you can see and show us.

Hopefully.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Does the render process completely stop ( meaning: does the render process bar close / dissapear),
Or does Blender itself stop responding?

Should the process bar still remain it's sometimes best to wait.
Depending on how excessive the settings are for gathering, samples, the output image size;  as well as the density of the mesh's gemoetry , the heavier such a bakes can become. And i noticed it has sometimes the tendency to hang a while when being halfway through but then proceeds after a while when it gathered enough new memory or computed what was needed.

If you are baking an Object from Objectmode that contains several materials and separate UV/Image maps. It appears just being frozen, because it proceeds in the background and bakes onto all other images too. Unfortunately it doesn't allways pop up any of the image maps it is currently baking through, means if you are not aware of this you might think it's not doing anything, also here waiting helps until it's done with all these.

In all other cases, same suggestion as Rahkis: See if you can grab any error from the info panel and write it down here.

[Rahkis Andel]

Oh! That reminds me...Blender is a notorious memory hog when it comes to baking -- I know you said you had plenty of memory, but it really does drain it.

If you go to performance in the render settings, there should be a choice of methods, one of which being vBVH. I personally find that one to be the best mix of speed and memory efficiency for all the baking methods. Also, if the option is there and you can make it work, baking from multires is much-much-much more memory efficient, though perhaps a little slower.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

.. yeah it is a memhog, but rendering itself generally is =) people often underestimate that.
even 16 gigabite RAM and 3.4 GHz can be like nothing depending on what your rendering /baking etc and a CPU can also only process so much data at once.

Hence why there are 'renderfarms' .. =)

Like netbased cloud renderfarms i.e. RenderRocket for MR, VRay, 3DS, Maya, C4D, or NetRender for Blender. In case you can't build your own cluster render farm. (just for the fun of it: eventhough an AO bake shouldn't be as extensive to need a renderfarm - then you can clearly consider your settings being totally overboard and wrong lol )

That's why i thought i'd mention that for her.

What's also an option btw is to change to GPU as computing device. (If you have a CUDA enabled Nvidia Card that is) the AMD  / 'Open CL' (not GL) support kinda died off since 2.65 , i do hope it'll come back (maybe Gaia popps in on that sidenote : )) 

For certain things the GPU is way more powerfull due to how it operates compared to a CPU. But its case dependend, for when to gain advantage from either CPU or GPU.

[Pamela Galli]

I restarted Blender and when I opened it there was the AO texture and model, all completed. As if I had imagined the whole thing. So the bake was apparently being completed but the model and texture were not being updated.

 

I am waiting for it to do it again so I can find something in the log, but hopefully it was just a glitch, tho it happened several times yesterday. Today is fine.

 

It did behave like a memory problem, which is why I mentioned it. (I do in fact have the 16 GB / 3.4 GHz configuration)

 

 

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Let's hope it won't happen again Maybe you just had too much other demanding programs open at the same time, opr your memory had a hiccup , hehe

But yeah as written above rendering and baking is still a intense computation, and can eat up easily all your available memory.
And when baking objects with several UVs and images / materials applied it doesn't always refresh and jump to each of them. Sometimes it first shows up when reaching the last image in the stack- so to say. So might have been as well just that.

If it happens again, yes please do note down the error message =)

 

Cheers! code

[Pamela Galli]

The console message is not very helpful I don't think.  I have had the problem consistently today and each time it just says:

 

bpy.ops.object_editmode_toggle

 

And something else, which I have seen before:

 

The texture is different in Obj and Edit mode:

 

[Rahkis Andel]

The texture should be different.

In edit mode, you'll see the texture applied to the UVs (Via the UV editing window). In Object mode, you'll see the texture applied to the materials when in textured draw mode. If you're in solid draw mode and have textured solid on, you'll see the textures too.

In textured draw mode you'll also see shadows from lighting, which can get in the way.

The point is, you might have a different texture applied to the UVs than what you have set to your materials.

[Pamela Galli]

---

Rahkis Andel wrote:

 

The point is, you might have a different texture applied to the UVs than what you have set to your materials.

---

     Well something like this is happening -- you would not believe the mess these stair textures are in, and I have no clue what I did to create it. 

 

 

How would I go about making sure the texture applied to the UVs is what I have set to materials?  Actually I only have one texture, and the rest is just white trim I am trying to bake AO to. I also can only bake the texture without AO, can't be both. 

Texturing would be the most rewarding part of making things except that I almost always get tangled up like this.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

How would I go about making sure the texture applied to the UVs is what I have set to materials?

 

I have that problem often - because i cut down objects in lots separate materials and different UVs while creating and baking textures and before finalizing it to just a few maps.

You can do it the following way:

- pull one panel open with "UV/Image editor" so you can see the UVs and Textures all the time.

- Go into editmode of your object

- select the material you want to set the right texture to , and click the 'select' button on the material panel. So that all polygons assigned to this material are selected (make sure everything else was deselected before).

The texture you see now in the image/UV editor is what Blender has assigned to this part of your UVs / to this Material.

- now move into the Image/UV editor panel and from the Image-button select the correct image (the same that is assigned in the image tab to this material)

- now switch to object mode (don't unselect yet), and again in the  image/UV editor panel select the same Texture / image once more.

- Repeat those steps for the other material-parts as well.

(possibly turn on 'textured shading' in the viewport' to see if the texture is taken correctly)

- should the image be shown in red highlighted in the UV image editor, or the UV-image editor reject and always swap back to another texture:  that means that the linking to it is broke and it can't find it.
In that case switch to the properties panel of your object first and open / load the correct file again. (or create a new one) sometimes it get's messy when working with lots different textures. And then repeat the steps from above.

[Rahkis Andel]

Sounds like Codewarrior already gave a good answer.

But yeah, I can totally relate. It applies to just about every aspect of working with 3d software. Once you have done it all a few times, you'll be able to really enjoy the whole process without all the snags of getting it all figured out.

Keep at it.

[Pamela Galli]

Thank you SO much Codewarrior -- such a simple basic step, clicking on the material button, but one I totally missed.( I was just going into edit and clicking the texture but not clicking the material button so sometimes it was not connected.)

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

No problem Pamela : )
it's once more one of these tinys things one can easily oversee when having so many little steps to take care of hehe