After the Final Gather pass, mental ray will freeze up my installation of 3DSMax9 64bit.  The rendering job DOES complete, but the buckets stop moving and then all of a sudden the final rendered image appears--all this happens at the expense of no other program being responsive.  Has anybody had this problem? 

I’m running:

Intel Xeon Quad-Core 2.3Ghz
4GB RAM
NVidia QuadroFX 4600
WindowsXP 64bit edition
Max 9 64-bit

I tried to disable the multi threading option in the Rendering tab in “Preferences” dialog, but that did not help.  I figured Max is taking advantage of all the “cores” of my processor via multithreading , but I suppose it’s not. 

Has anybody encountered ths problem?

Is there a way to limit the amount of RAM that Max9 64bit can take up?

Thanks!

3DSMax 2011 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Apple iMac 27” Bootcamp
Intel Core i7 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 6970M

I’ve had mentalray leave buckets bank, so the image has black squares in it, I’m sure it’s a memory thing, changing the raytrace acceleration method and using the 3GB switch reduced but didn’t cure it.
As for multithreading, the number of buckets reflects the number of processors being used. My singe processor machines show one bucket, my twin processors show two and my twin dual cores show four if I use distributed renering I get loads of buckets.
If you look at the Processing tab of the renderer there is a Memory Limit setting near the top.

I’ve had the “jump” as well if I am understanding you correctly. I think the thing is your buckets are just waiting on data that has not been computd yet so it cannot be displyed. While these tasks (n the buckets) wait for thier info to complete Max has finished rendering the frame so all of a sudden it apears to “jump” or “pop” done. Keep in mind multi threading means your program can do several things at once and that just because your lighting is not done is no reason it cannot figure something else out and then just sew it all together in an instant.

I lowered the Memory Limit parameter and the same problem occurrs.  I don’t mind Max being power hunger, but I do want it to stop taking over the entire OS.  I can not do anything with my workstation when that render button is pressed.

Is there a way to limit it’s resource usage at the OS level?  Or is there a way to limit the cores that it uses at the OS level?

Thanks guys for the responses!

3DSMax 2011 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Apple iMac 27” Bootcamp
Intel Core i7 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 6970M