I’m running a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 1 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM and OS X 10.5.5. I only use that computer for ZBrush, so I haven’t installed any other apps and don’t have extra processes running.
2.8 GHz Intell quad core x2, 12 GB MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM ram. ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT and NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT. one cinema display, one gateway, and cintique monitors. osx 10.5.6, MAC pro 7 months old. photoshop and or modo sometimes, maybe safari now and again. but not on the tests. I had only zbrush running (and snapz pro x for the capture) on tests from a fresh computer restart. I have had this issue since the release of 3.12. never on the windows side. I will try “Aurick’s - plugins test after work”
John I’m working on the identical box (with 10gb instead of 12), one at work and one home - exactly the same. I get the same behavior in zbrush on each.
It’d be interesting to see what others are using who are having this behavior (anyone?). If z is picky about disk state, there’s no reason it couldn’t be picky about other components as well (e.g. CPU, GPU, and RAM).
Aurick, do you know what systems the dev team worked on for the 3.12 port? Do you have any way to get on a MacPro to test this? It seems reasonable to assume that a majority of mac users will be on this hardware…
I generally have Firefox and iChat open, but I try to keep everything else off while in Z (since it seems so sensitive) - at this point though I think that if there is a conflict it’s hardware based as opposed to process.
We’ll need as large a data pool as we can get, if you know anyone else on mac system… do a little spec check eh? 
I get the same behavior using a MacBook Pro 17" 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM on OS X 10.5.6.
For the moment that eliminates cpu and memory, and they all use sata…
ATI Radeon HD 2600 here (MacPro standard)
nVidia 8600m GT (MacBookPro standard)
ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT (Aurick’s 20" iMac)
nothing jumps out at me based on GPU here either…
I generally run dual-displays on my systems, so have just tried booting with one up and testing (thinking this may be a difference from a basic imac install) … it crashed out the same, right at the end.
Also checked the release notes on 10.5.6, as I see Aurick is running 10.5.5 - it states ‘general graphic improvements for gaming’, and also a specific update to ATI cards but that leaves out the nVidia card in the MBP. Without some more info on the ‘general improvements for gaming’ it’s reading like it could be a process or resource conflict in 3rd party apps. To get much further I’d need to start with a clean system… I have a blank drive at home I can format and test, will see if I can’t dig a little deeper this weekend. I have a hunch it’s disk related though… the performance difference I experienced in clearing space on my HD freaked me out. I’d really like a way to override the scratch space…
Aurick, you’re running the same 3.12 we all have right?? Not 3.12b9 or something right?
Same crash on plugin removal test. Tested twice with the same results.
I managed to get succesful renders if I have no subtools. The second I add a subtool for rendering, it crashes, no matter the number of polygons. It’ll render most of it and crash in the absolute end when it gets to the bottom right corner.
That’s interesting.
I happen to have subtools as well. When I go back home I’ll try a render without them and see what happens.
For the time being I’ll post my specs.
Mac Pro 2x2.66, 6GB of ram of which 1-2 is dedicated to Zbrush, 250GB boot drive with 60Gb free, ATI 1900XT 512MB.
I’m running the same version of ZBrush that you are.
I’ve tried multiple sizes. I’ve tried models with one SubTool and models with multiple SubTools. I’ve tried being in Edit mode when rendering, and rendering with the model dropped to the canvas. I’ve never been able to crash the renderer.
Dude, I am so jealous!!!
I just installed OS X on a blank drive to use a test bed, updated to 10.5.5 and guess what… my renders are working tremendously and NO refresh errors so far. Granted I haven’t installed anything else on this drive (insert maya, cs4, logic, fcp etc). but the fact that it does work is very interesting.
I don’t know if it’s good or bad at this point, but at least it’s progress… next up will be installing 3rd party apps and then the sys upgrade to .6 - and a lot of iterative testing.
Aurick have you upped to 10.5.6 yet? Gotten any reports from others suffering similar errors after the update, anything?
thnx as always (I do very much appreciate your help)…
~sG~
i have crashed about 13 times tonight rendering. zbrush as a stand alone computer is simply out of the question for me, I have plenty o’ power there is just no excuse for this erratic yet 100% predictable behavior… if it doesn’t want to play nice … what’s the deal with a “clean reinstall” is my download buggered up? 
has the same test been done on other mac pro machines using 10.5.6?
I don’t get it then. The only variable here between us and Aurick seems to be OS X 10.5.6. That’s the only thing I can think of that’s causing the crashes. I can’t render anything here with the anti-aliased, doubled document size setup without a crash at the end.
I’m still pretty pumped to be able to use ZB on the Mac without starting up my Bootcamp. i love having the little “Z” guy in my dock and sculpting and all of the cool stuff that ZB has to offer. At some point, though, I hope this app functions as a solid working version without all of the major bugs and missing features (ZApplink, anyone?) I know that no application is perfect, and I’m hoping the v.3.5 (or v.4) addresses some of the concerns.
I know the Pixo guys won’t let us down. Fingers are firmly crossed to hear news soon.
nothing more positive here… I tried a few more render attempts in best quality… first couple succeeded (at the default scene resolution) - so I doubled the res and went into half mode to try the render, crashed at the end again. This was on the isolated 10.5.5 volume. Anytime I increase the canvas size and try a best render, it dies at the end. I don’t see any point to installing other packages or upgrading the OS here to .6 if the behavior is already occurring…
Is there anyone out there actually able to get large renders on the Best setting in OS X who’s running a tower?
Aurick, have you tried increasing the canvas size prior to doing a best quality render? That seems to be what does it for me.
Just saw this thread…
I’m running an 8 core MacPro with 4GB ram.
Mostly I get the crash with the quad shader I used for skin materials just about every time I rendered with it. I hardly ever crash with simple matcaps.
But a few weeks ago, after a repeating crash with the skin material, I was wondering about how many calculations it was doing with my best rendering settings and if lowering the quality settings would help. I lowered my lights aperture to 10 and reduced the ray count and it rendered completely without problem several times consecutively, it just didn’t look very good…
I immediately increased the values back to what I had when it crashed the first time and rendered again. No crash this time. So now every time before I render a high quality render with lights with a high aperture, I do a render with a small aperture setting and ray count, then change it back to the higher quality settings and render again. It works almost every time now when I do that first.
I don’t know the reason why this works. Maybe during the lower quality render it caches certain parts of the render somehow which gets around the parts that cause the crash after I increase the light quality, I dunno. I’m no technical expert. I just try to fiddle with things until they work and this seemed to work for me, until a real solution is found. So hopefully, maybe this will work for others too.
Super Glitcher, doing this has allowed me to get renders over 4000 pixels wide. I haven’t tried renderings any higher than that yet though so I don’t know if it holds up.
You know, that seems to be kind of the running theme here. Maybe it’s resizing the canvas prior to trying a best render that is the problem. It’s what I’ve done every time I get a crash at the end of said doomed render.
This is kind of a sticky problem for me, as I don’t really like to use external apps for super technical rendering. Zbrush serves me best as an illustration tool. I usually do composite passes and get them together in Photoshop for a paint job, like a lot of others. Since running on Mac 3.12 though, I just can’t seem to get the larger render passes without a crash.
Maybe tinkering with a default document size will help? I’ll give 'er a try (too lazy to read if someone has done this already.)
funny thing… my new model “werewolf” has only crashed once (5renders) on a tool render on x2 size> aahalfed with rswedclayextreme. all of my matcaps are present and all zplugs available are installed.
I’ve just seen this thread and wanted to add that I’m having the same problem. Anyone found any solutions since February?
I’m trying to do a best render at 4000 x 4000 and ZB crashes every time about half way through the render or a little more. I’ve tried rendering with my model in Edit mode and dropping it to the canvas. I’ve tried with AAHalf and without, both zoomed in and zoomed out to see the whole canvas. I shall try some of the suggestions above.
Machine Specs:
Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
5 GB RAM
Max OSX 10.5.6
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT
Startup/Scratch disk 232 GB (136 GB free) used just for system & applications
Are you using 3.12B, or are you still using 3.12?
Thanks for the reply, Aurick. I’m using 3.12 - didn’t realize there was a 3.12B. I’m downloading it now and will post here whether the problem is resolved.