Mental Ray Memory Issues / AO Alternatives

Geezus

I'm having an issue when trying to render to texture a 2048 AO Pass using mental ray in Max. I get a memory error, which basically tells me Mental Ray ran out of memory when setting up. I've played around with the memory limits of mental ray in the render options, but I still get the same error. I've maxed the limits to 3072, still...no go. So, I'm stuck as to what to do next. I'm able to bake the rest of my maps using scanline, but not an AO Pass.

So, if noone knows how I might be able to tweak my mental ray settings to allow me to render this AO Pass...maybe you can give me a few AO alternatives? I'm aware of simply using a skylight/GI lighting on a white material, and rendering out a complete map using scanline. However, with the intersecting Low-High meshes, it wouldn't be the best route. Anyone have any tricks or maybe a solid standalone application they can recommend? Any help is appreciated, thanks.

I forgot to mention I'm running XP 32bit with 2GB of RAM.



EDIT
I fixed my issue with a lil' help from bearkub

If anyone comes across this thread in the future, looking for help:

Change the size of your virtual memory in system properties. I doubled my size from Min: 2046 Max: 4092 to Min: 4092 Max: 8184, and with a reboot I was able to render the AO pass. Hot stuff.

Thanks for the tip bk :]

robby_lamb

could also set up the scene and then do a command line render