3DMAX == CRASH-TACULAR!!! *anger, anger, anger!!*
 

gah, I've been playing around with 3dmax this summer to learn it and what-not, but last night it finally made me crack and blow something up. Last night I got 3 xp blue-screens in about a one-hour period!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Any suggestions on how to lower the crashrate and/or dataloss of 3ds? The blue-screens keep blaming my Nvidia driver, so I guess thats the problem. I have a GeForce (the origional one) with the Detonator driver version somewhere in the upper 20's (something like v29, but I doubt the exact number really matters all that much). Anyways, any suggestions on how to de-crashify 3dmax?

Try a different driver. Heh. If the newest one is crashing, downgrade.

try not using xp. it was never really dsigned for it, so it would have problems. Also, you could try the compatibility mode for win9x/2k. Max 5 should fix this problem as they tested it on xp i would assume

3DSMAX 4 no worky in XP
 

Hmm... just wondering if this happens to be a licensed version of 3dsmax 4 or not. I've heard that the "cracked" versions have a rather hard time w/ WinXP. Not that I've ever tried or anything like that.

-GH

Even with win98, it's crashed on me a lot. I seem to recall from a while back someone said the nvidia drivers aren't the best, or something like it isn't stable with opengl, or something to that extent. You guys recall anything about this?

And Trashed, what did you mean by compadibility mode? Is it a 3dmax option, or a windows thing?

try direct x or software rendering for your viewports, i never got opengl to work right with max either

dan, right click on the 3ds max 4 executable, properties, and then click on the various menus. you'll find the compatability thing there. i think windows emulates the old win 9x kernal, though i'm not sure how it works.

ahh, so it's a windows thing... alright, thankies, I'll try that out too

You might need the C-Dilla Update
 

the C-Dilla update is the licensing update for 3ds max 4.2...It's usally only needed if you can't get into max tho... Another thing to look at would be the service pack for 4.2, it upgrades max to 4.25...I believe its a free download from the discreet support site..Lemme know if that helps any!

GO TEAM 1101100 (Thats binary!)

3d Max = Crap
 

I have spent the past few years of my life emersed in the world of computer art. I started out on a Mac with the 3d program called Pixels3d, and it is BY FAR the best 3d program EVER made. I recently got a PC and began playing around with maya and 3d Max and photoshop. I have found maya to be quite an incredible program and photoshop to be in a leauge of its own. Unlike the others, 3d Max is a piece of crap. I help my team with the animation last year and found 3d Max to not only be the most buggy program i've ever used but to be the most overly complex program I've ever seen. "For every button you see there are 3 more buttons in the dialog box it opens."

I would suggest NEVER under any circumstance using 3d Max because all it will do is make your computer crash and make you blood boil.

Re: You might need the C-Dilla Update
 

I only have 3d max 4.0... thats what the team got in the software package

Re: 3d Max = Crap
 

[COUGH]Typical Mac User[/COUGH]

Sorry... little congested there...

-GH

Re: Re: 3d Max = Crap
 

[COUGH]Ditto[/COUGH]

Ya know, i think there is a bug going around cause i've got a really bad cou..

[COUGH]Macs Suck![/COUGH]

Re: 3DSMAX 4 no worky in XP
 

I was using 3ds max on win 2000, so here is my conclusion.
Windows just sucks go to linux (if its comptable)
Do do anythign high end on 3ds max and incorperate that with differant programs (maya, lightwave whatever you want).

I would say that the only way of saving thta I had 90% of the time was the auto back feature, but then just that kickign in caused it to crash so I guess unless your lucky, or have a top of the line comp, or are not working with a lot of polygons, then your screwed like the rest of us,

cheers,
Tyler

Okay...now its dis'in time
 

All you people out there dis'in MAX obviously are thick-headed ignorant people who simply don't know it. All of us who use it and are familiar with it are fine with it. I run it on Dual Athlon MP 1600 with 512 megs of DDR, a Radeon 7500 (With Catalyst drivers), and windows 2000. Personally, it runs great! I hardly have any problems with it, even with beta plugins such as the blurstudios and brazil plugins. I'm not saying that maya is worse, or better. Whatever you learn and grow up on, its obviously going to be the easiet for you. I grew up on MAX (started when I was 13 I think...well, however old I was in 7th grade) and since then I've gotten much better at it, but I'm still no expert or anything. I learned all of its quirks and stuff from using it so much that I don't get those stupid errors (The ONLY error I ever deal with anymore is that I can't use a lens effects glow with a background pic, but I've just learned not to do that anymore). Now, I'm sure if I tried using Maya or any of these other programs, I could probobly sound the same way all you non-MAX users sound.

Oh, and btw, I am going to diss one thing...MAC! NOTHING'S FREAKING WRITTEN FOR IT! maybe OS X will have a better chance now that its unix...but for now, I'll stick with windows until max ports to linux...then maybe I'll go to linux.....

Basically, don't knock it till ya tried it...and by tried, i dont mean, ::click:: install ::click:: open max ::click:: why isn't the image perfect!?!?!....Get over it, it takes time to learn!

Emachines 400 celereon wit 4mb onboard video memory and 256 mb ram running 98..... it runs fine on mine.

Hehe, awwwwww yeah trashedman.

at work though i have a 10 2ghz p4's with half a gig or ram, 80 gig hard drives and 64 mb ati cards wit burners and a t3 connection :P

I ran if for a few months on my Athlon XP 1700 with 256mb ram and a Ge2 MX in Win2k. Never had it crash on me.
It so could have used a better video card and more ram tho..


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/me is listening to E:\Carbon Leaf\Echo echo\Carbon Leaf - 11 - Desperation Song.mp3

Ok, I finally got all the updates and got it running on both my machines. Runs great on both:

Tower:
Home-made from the ground up
Win XP Pro
Dual P3-450
768 megs ram (the old 100mhz stuff)
Matrox G400 Max 32meg
10 gig, 30, and 60 gig hard drives
2 cd burners and a dvd-rom

Laptop:
Dell Latitude C840
Win XP Pro
P4-1600
256 megs ram (ddr PC2100, not rambus)
Geforce 4 440 Go (it's the laptop version of the gf4) w/ 64 meg ddr
40 gig hard drive (laptop hard drives suck...)
a cd rom (yeah, I know... I need the cdrw/dvd)

The only thing that I've noticed a problem with is that my laptop needs more ram... Max is a ram HOG and it keeps using the swap file on the hard drive in my laptop, which is SLOW. Max itself seems to run fine w/ no hiccups, but I can't run anything else at the same time.

I checked prices on the ram for my laptop at pricewatch.com and found 512 meg sticks for $214 shipped, that makes $428 for a gig. If anyone knows where I can get this stuff cheaper let me know please.

-GH
I finally get max 4 running, and then they come out with max 5...

First off, a big AWWWWW YEAH! goes out to trashman, lol. Nice dude, at school I'm looking foreward to getting about 25 new dells for our visual computer modeling lab...network render em all together = instant fun for the lab managers (i.e. me and kev). Hehe, that's gonna be kickin comes competition time!

GilaHacker: check out crucial.com, thats where i got my ram for my laptop from. What's really cool is they gurantee it'll work with your system. Also, watch out, I upgraded my HP when I got it to 512, because it won't take any more than that (the mobo won't support any more). Not saying yours won't..just be careful u don't buy waaay more than you can hold (BTW, crucial will tell ya how much you can hold under the system stats after you look up your model number. Plus, their cheap because their actually a divison of Micron (the only people who make DDR ram).

And here's all of my stats for my comps (while we're at it)

Home Tower (Built from the chasis up):
Windows 2000 Profesional
Dual Athlon Mp 1600
512 Megs DDR 2100
Radeon 7500 64 meg ddr
Tyan S2460 mobo (MP chipset)
60 gig hard drive (ITS CLICKING, NOOOO!...must call maxtor)
Plextor 16x with buffer-underun protection
Pioneer s106
Antec SX1030b Case (Pretty!)
7 80 mm fans to cool it down...it gets hot in there! (and it sounds like a freaggin jet when it starts)

Laptop:
Hp Pavilion n5470
Used to running XP Home...but after being in for service, HP restored the hard drive, and they've finnally made a 2000 driver pack, so now its 2000
Gig athlon 4 chip
512 megs of 100mhz (:( too slow)
20 gig hard drive (too freaggin slow! 5400 rpm...)
8 meg Trident cyberblade (yeh, bring on the "haha's!"..I know it's no good)
CD-RW/DVD Combo drive (8x...it came with a 4x, but after the 3rd rerepair, yes third rerepair on the laptop [with the cd drive still being broken when it got back everytime but the last] they swtiched it out)

So far, MAX has run great on all my machines! The only problem I seem to have is hardware problems, lol...I guess I gotta start spending some more cash to buy the higher end parts...these home parts just aren't cuttin it anymore. I just run em too hard!

3DS MAX 5 system requirements are large. 256 mbs RAM minimum with 1 gb RAM recommended. That's a lot of RAM.

From what I've seen, this isn't the case any more....at the place I work, we have some 333 DDR with Samsung stamped on the chips, and not the telltale MT...

Well, I *think* (not positive) but im pretty sure Micron is still involved...I think they manufacturer a component of it, and ship that component of the memory stick to other corporations. I think its the actual DDR chips or something, just they're assempled by diffrent people...But I could be wrong!

Oh, and be careful with that 333 mhz stuff...Im seeing it a lot lately advirtised, but their's no standards on it yet... I haven't gotten to play with it yet, so I won't comment on how it is...just saying be careful with it... If anyone out there is using it, lemme know how it is! Im interested in it (anything to shave off a lil rendering time, hehe)

Until next time, GO TEAM 1101100 (Thats Binary!)

In response to the first post. If u are still having problems with your 29.xx driver try the new 30.82 Detonator that just came out, it may help u some or it may not... ;)

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=drivers


Now back to your originally scheduled program.

::with a confused face on::
 

oh yeah..ever notice how the original point of a post tends to get lost as the thread continues over many pages....
::shrugs::
Oh well, hey, let us know how that nVidia Problem is going (I'm an ATI guy usually..but I'm becoming more and more skeptical of their quality... but i still might be able to help) Good Luck with the detonator updates!

GO TEAM 1101100 (That's Binary!)

I switched from openGL to DirectX... that seems to have fixed the crashes for now, thanks for the suggestion, but thats no longer the main thing on my mind...

As soon as i get a new soldering iron that actually works, I'm probably gonna do that GeForce-to-Quadro mod thingie - I figure I can't mess the card up any more than I already did. A few days ago, I tried to attach my temperature probe in a better way than just electrical-taping it to the main processor. In my infinite geniosity, I decided to put some of that silver-heatsink-gluing stuff on the probe and try to slide it between the heatsink and the geforce's processor. Long story short, I apparantly have shakey hands, the silver stuff got all over the board, and I cleaned most of it up with a q-tip. Don't worry though, the card works, just I had to add another fan to my case to keep it running below 50°C (before, normal operating temperature was 30°, mid-40's if I was doing something graphics-intensive. Without the extra fan, now anything in the mid-50's is a 'normal' operating temperature for the card)

::Hits self repeatdly while repeatelivly muttering "Don't flame the people on the forums everybody reads...Team leader's now watching..."::

We have max 4. It is horribly crash infested. Maybe if it was not a school obtained copy ( it's legal tho )

Attn: Specialagentjim

I checked crucial.com... they don't list a 512 meg chip for my laptop. I know the laptop will take a gig, and I can find the 512 sticks on pricewatch (samsung ones I think), they're just rather expensive.

-GH

Hmm...What's the brand/model/etc. on the laptop, lemme take a looksey for myself (they recently hid some stuff on the site...)

Dell Latitude C840

Is that a relativly new model? I noticed its a 200 Pin SODIMM...those haven't been out very long, so its possible that crucial isn't selling the 512 meg version of it yet...They tend to be a little slow on putting them out for sale...I think its because their testing for compatibility, but I could be entirely wrong. Sorry bout that!