Maxwell Render

Hi, I'm currently working on a jewellery store and the number of watches, etc. is really driving up the RAM usage!

Normally when I do interiors I render multiple views of the scene by setting a handful of frames and moving the camera per frame and then rendering it as a mini 'animation' (without motion blur!). The only problem with this method is that when you hit Render Current Pass in XSI, it exports the specified frames as mxs files (which is what I want) but it then starts up mxcl and starts to render the first frame.

This works fine for normal scenes but with this one, the RAM usage is so high that I immediately go to swapfile and the computer grinds to a halt.

Is there anyway to get XSI to export the mxs files but then NOT start rendering them immediately. I want to close down XSI after it has exported them (to free up 1.5GB of RAM!) and then use a batch file to render the exported mxs files, one by one. I've turned off all the channels in the MaxwellRenderOptions within XSI but it still opens up mxcl and starts Voxelizing.

P.S. I've ordered more RAM but wanted to know if there was a simple fix in the shot term!

_________________
oz.

"Make lunch, not war."

Visit http://www.3D-Visualist.com/
for all things 3D, especially XSI.

Well as a dirty trick you could rename mxcl temporarily so it can't find it.

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

thanks for the trick Mahai but I was hoping for an option to export the mxs but not start rendering (thus allowing me to batch render after I have shut down XSI).

Currently, because the process is automatic, rendering the current pass immediately starts mxcl and my current RAM won't let both XSI and mxcl run together with this scene without using the swapfile and, obviously, that really slows things down!

Any chance of an 'export mxs only' option on the next release? I'm sure there must be others in this situation?

_________________
oz.

"Make lunch, not war."

Visit http://www.3D-Visualist.com/
for all things 3D, especially XSI.

Yes, it could be an option to consider, but what I wrote above will accomplish what you want It will generate all the mxs files first from your frames, and then start mxcl. So if it can't find mxcl it can't launch it, but you will have your .mxs files on the disk. Or did I misunderstand something?

_________________
Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

No, you understood correctly. I was just hoping that there was a slightly 'cleaner' option? Anyway, not to worry my extra 4GB RAM came today so we're back on track!

_________________
oz.

"Make lunch, not war."

Visit http://www.3D-Visualist.com/
for all things 3D, especially XSI.