Hi keyshotters, wanted to share this fix that has worked for several of my files that either crash when attempting to batch render, or that are exceedingly large (1-3gb) when they shouldn’t be:
Sometimes it’s the materials quantity:
Fusion, Solidworks, etc. previous designers, etc. sometimes save out auto generated generic materials for every single object in a model. for some complex model, this can end up being hundreds/thousands of materials.
Try reducing/consolidating materials down. I know it sounds futile, but give it a shot.
I first stumbled upon this working while applying toon shaders for line-art to entire model sets - one file reduced from 3gb to 1.2gb. I have no idea how it could have gotten this huge, there were no linked files, no giant .PSB/PSDs, etc. nothing of actual file size, so it must be the sheer quantity or some meta data in the materials causing it.
The easiest way for me to do this, (aside from throwing out every material in a model set) is to turn on the visibility filter in the material panel, and naming all of your own customized materials with good names you can recognize, e.g. with prefixes or starting with something common. I used the product name or brand name I was working with.
Once that was done I knew I could ‘link’ all materials that were random and not relevant with one already used. some of my products could be reduced from over 4,000 materials to 25 or so. this would often reduce a gigabyte or more in file size, increase speed of working with the file, and most importantly allow batch rendering again.
For a few files that wouldn’t batch render with default settings, I could de-select the ‘group jobs together’ checkbox in the ‘add studios’ dialog, and though it would take a lot longer to queue up, it would successfully process the queue. which is all that mattered.
This also leads me to rethink the starting steps for fresh CMF jobs, e.g. I’m going to try starting with a common material for every single part and unlink as I go, vs one at a time replacing the common materials from individual ones.
Hope this helps someone, good luck!