Memory allocation errors with animation

[DarcTheo]

Trying to render a pretty dark scene with lots of fluorescent light sources. This means to get it clean it's needing denoising and about 180 passes it seems. Even then it's not perfect but it's close.
The pcs keep crashing after about 30 frames due to memory allocation errors. And max closes. Is this something to do with denoising or what? If it can render all those frames before crashing is something stacking with each frame? Or is it just a frame comes along with some bad luck and runs out of memory?
There's alot of render elements due to the way of trying to create an effect. There's an element for each light source.

[maru]

Hi, are you using LightMix here?
My bet is that you are simply using too many lights and render elements and you are running out of RAM. This could probably be optimized (I mean in your scene, not in Corona).
Could you show us renders/screenshots of the scene, viewport, your elements list, and the errors you are getting? In case of crashes you can also generate minidump files and send them to us. Here is how: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000524006-how-to-report-issues-

[DarcTheo]

Each element is a light select. One for each light so I have a pass of the scene with just 1 light. This wasn't for use with the corona light mixing. It was used to create control of lights being on n off in post production with opacity of the layers. It was done this way to have a more flexible use of animating the lights because of how long it seemed to take to render. I currently can't post up any images but when I get a moment I'll try and show an example image.

The lights are modelled with some glass and absorption and the corona light is situated inside this model. Then there's about 40 of these. The rest of the scene is basically a floor ceiling and n space. (No walls). A sort of light sculpture situated in the darkness.

Maybe we went the wrong way about setting up these elements but it'll be good to learn how to optimise this for future tries.

[DarcTheo]

Hi, are you using LightMix here?
My bet is that you are simply using too many lights and render elements and you are running out of RAM. This could probably be optimized (I mean in your scene, not in Corona).
Could you show us renders/screenshots of the scene, viewport, your elements list, and the errors you are getting? In case of crashes you can also generate minidump files and send them to us. Here is how: https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000524006-how-to-report-issues-

Hi Maru,

I've attached an example of the model in max, list of some of the elements being used and example crop of a render.

So just to say again the idea was the lights could be animated on n off in post so the whole animation was rendered with elements for each light and with all the lights on. the use of about 40 elements was very ram hungry but the scene was also incredibly hard to clean up.

You mentioned I could probably optimise this, is it just generally because this was a bad way of trying to do this, the use of too many elements? or maybe the way it was modelled was wrong?

[maru]

Each light select element requires some RAM. That might be a problem especially if you are rendering in high resolution. Is it necessary to control each of the light tubes separately, or could they be grouped and controlled all at a time?

[DarcTheo]

they could be grouped but the idea was to have full control in post so that we wouldnt have to re render at all. So i'm guessing the crashes are just elements being too intensive for the machines RAM.

Regarding noise, is there anyway to reduce that or will it always be noisey having the lights inside the glass? we also had denoise on but with all the elements it just becomes even more intense. luck of the draw at the moment to render.

we have the animation done now but i'd like to learn better ways for future stuff like this.

[maru]

If there is noise when a light source is behind a glass, I would guess it's reflective caustics. You can completely exclude the glass material from GI calculations by using a rayswitch material (use the glass material for all slots except for GI - leave GI empty).

You can also have separate objects for the glowing light tubes - not casting any light into the scene (e.g. LightMtl with "emit light" off), and separate, simplified objects (e.g. lights) that would illuminate the scene.