Server Studio frequent crashes on render start Tweet

[TStrolia]

Hey everyone. Looking around it doesn't seem like this a common issue, so perhaps it is just me. I list my specs down at that bottom just in case.

After a more recent update, and since then, I don't remember the build number but it started at least 2 stable release versions before the current at the time of writing this, 2022.1.1 - 27.16. Basically, on certain scenes, usually scenes that have higher geometry counts, the exporter hangs at export time and then octane server crashes. Usually, but not always, I can sorta "fix" this by restarting server and then clearing the cache, but this is on an every time basis, and only lets the render continue about 60% of the time. The other 40% it just crashes again and I need to rinse/repeat.

It crashes very suddenly and there are no error logs. The scene I am having the issue with right now is only about 9gb of VRAM usage. I am not even close to maxing out my VRAM on my 3090. Temps look good. Event viewer only shows that Octane Server Studio has stopped but no driver issues. Drivers are up to date. I went as far as re-installing windows, updating it, and then doing a fresh install of NVidia drivers so there should be no need for driver-cleaner or scrubbing old drivers at all.

Initially I had thought this might be a result of the Add node, because removing them seemed to fix the issue but then in certain scenes the issue came back.

This issue does not exist for me with the same scene in octane stand-alone or the maya plugin. This seems to me to be isolated to Blender / server studio, and the exporter.

I unfortunately cannot post the scene file because I have an NDA for the work and it takes a degree of scene complexity for me to re-create the issue, but maybe someone does know about this and can help anyway...

System specs:
Blender Octane Edition (The OTOY build, not the add-on version yet);
Windows 11 (10.0.22621);
Ryzen 5950x;
NVidia 3090 (Studio Driver 535.98);
64gb ram, 3800mhz, suggested XMP profile clock;

I didn't used to have this issue. Even after the first update I did the issue didn't happen until I threw a particularly complex render scene at it, although, the scene had worked just fine with 0 issues in previous builds. I had hoped maybe this was just a problem with that version of Octane for Blender and Server Studio but it seems to have persisted. These days I am using stand-alone more anyway, but there are certain things blender excels at as a DCC that sometimes I want to take advantage of, that can sometimes be done in stand-alone but not anywhere near as streamlined.

I appreciate any light that can be shed on this issue, maybe how I can troubleshoot it better or if there is another log being secretly written somewhere I can post that I just don't know about that might help. I appreciate it.

[Andreas_Resch]

Unfortunately there seem to be a few issues that cause Blender to shut down when starting rendering (or preview). It would be great if the devs could maybe post a little list of issues that cause Blender to crash at the moment. It doesn't necessarily have to do with drivers.

The two that I certainly know about are ...
*) Appending something from a different file that has an RGB image node in it.
*) Having a Gradient map node in a group.

But there might be more. I'm just working on an isolated set of tools specific to my workflow.

What you can do it go through an elimination process to find the culprit - that's what I did. It's a bit time consuming but it might help. Just delete objects, purge the scene and render until it doesn't crash any more.

[TStrolia]

Unfortunately there seem to be a few issues that cause Blender to shut down when starting rendering (or preview). It would be great if the devs could maybe post a little list of issues that cause Blender to crash at the moment. It doesn't necessarily have to do with drivers.

The two that I certainly know about are ...
*) Appending something from a different file that has an RGB image node in it.
*) Having a Gradient map node in a group.

But there might be more. I'm just working on an isolated set of tools specific to my workflow.

What you can do it go through an elimination process to find the culprit - that's what I did. It's a bit time consuming but it might help. Just delete objects, purge the scene and render until it doesn't crash any more.

As far as blender, blender is not crashing. Octane is. Blender stays open and then octane crashes and the render details banner just reads "error at IP address: ###.###.0.0."

As far as isolating the problem, I have done this. The problem with this is, turning things on one by one, the problem won't repeat. It in other words "works fine" then. The problem then is, then I go to render the final render where I can't enable things one by one and it crashes. By it I mean Octane Server Studio, the background process, not blender.

The behavior is very much that like it ran out of memory or like it encountered a driver error but the ram use is all in all low, and there is no evidence I can find of any driver errors.

[Andreas_Resch]

Ah, sorry. I have misread that. Those server crashes are harder to pinpoint for sure. I get those occasionally as well. But they are very random and I won't even try to find the culprit. It mostly happens when I "torture" my preview renderer too much. Without any logs those are very annoying to debug.

[linograndiotoy]

If you have a scene (the simpler, the better) showing the issue you can share that would help!

Thanks!

[TStrolia]

If you have a scene (the simpler, the better) showing the issue you can share that would help!

Thanks!

That's where it gets dicey. It isn't something easy to replicate and I can't provide my current scene since it is work related. It only happens in complex scenes and frequently the scene will work for maybe 3, 4 days, and then suddenly boom.... broken. If I look at the blender console it gives me a less than helpful hint to the error just letting me know the export failed, and it seems to be failing prior to the crash, leading me to believe maybe the ORBX exporter is what is failing? This could also maybe explain why turning things on 1 by 1 fixes it temporarily, and then it keeps working once everything is turned on. I can exit and re-enter render view and it seems to persist the previous export. But then final render where it seems to export again, it would fail. Clear the cache, restart octane, try again, seems to work just fine. Blender stays open all the while.

I don't suppose octane keeps a written log somewhere from the octane console that might have more useful hints as to what is happening? The problem is, server studio is crashing so monitoring the logs is not really possible because the console window just closes.