Error Message

[240 Animation]

Whenever we try to render one frame, it gets to 99% (at the most) and then crashes with this message:
mental ray has encountered a fatal error and the application will now shutdown. The error is MEM 0.6 fatal 031008 : can't allocate 20971520 bytes

We've checked our memory in all areas and its sufficient. What's going on?!?!

[Bax2996]

The memory is never as efficient as it says it is. I know you have enough- but the truth is you need enough and more in order to render.

[240 Animation]

4 gb is the recommened amount. We have five. This is getting a little frustrating. Thank you for your help.

[Bax2996]

It's fine.
Yeah, you may have to try rendering on another computer. I know it is frustrating, but we've had the same problems for a long time.
Some computers are just not capable of rendering complicated scenes.

[240 Animation]

We would undoubtedly prefer to render on this computer, if only we could figure out what our issues specifically are.

[Bax2996]

Well, the problem seems to be the computer.
I'm sorry, I wish I could be of more help, but it really seems that you are going to have to render from a differant computer.

[240 Animation]

Alright, thank you for your patientce(... I forgot how to spell it).

[Bax2996]

^.^ It's all good.
(It's patience if that helps any XD don't worry I can never spell "experiance")

[rastermon]

I know it's a bad renderer, but test that portion in the default scanline renderer. We ran into a complex particle scene a few years ago that was too much for Mental Ray. Or reduce your scene and render parts to see which object (if any) is causing the memory failure. Rendered elements with alpha channels can be recombined in post.

[DaveC]

Autodesk has a discussion of this error message. See
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...inkID=12544120

They give a few strategies for getting around it. Good luck.

-Dave