Large scenes using high-resolution bitmap textures cause 3ds Max to freeze or crash when rendering with Arnold GPU

Autodesk Support

Oct 8, 2023

Products and versions covered

Issue:

When rendering large scene files with Arnold GPU that use many high-resolution textures (2K and above), 3ds Max may freeze (showing a black render screen) or crash.

The following error may be present in the Arnold log file or listed in the 3ds Max Render Message Window:

[gpu] an error happened during rendering : Unknown error (Details: Function "_rtContextLaunch2D" caught exception: Encountered CUDA error: cudaDriver().CutEventSychronize( m_....

Causes:

The GPU may be running out of memory when processing large scene files (2 GB+) that use many high-resolution bitmap textures (2K and above).

Solution:

To test if the GPU is running out of memory:

Merge a smaller set of components (2-3) from the main scene file into a new file.
Test the render again with the fewer scene components.

Should the render be successful when using fewer items within the new scene file, try one of the following to render the complete original scene:

Provide additional GPU memory allocation for rendering.
Optimize the scene file to utilize less overall memory. See: How to optimize performance and improve program stability when working with large 3ds Max scenes.
Avoid using Photoshop PSD files as texture bitmaps, which can contain multiple layers that increase the file sizes greatly. (TIF files with layers can have the same issues.) Where possible, resave the images from Photoshop into a "merged" or "flattened" format to save on memory.
For maximum memory efficiency, convert existing texture bitmaps to the TX format. See How to convert bitmap textures to TX format for rendering with Arnold in 3ds Max.

Products:

3ds Max; Arnold;

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