Composition fails to render in After Effects using lights

[Tales25016143nh4o]

Hello there! I've been working on a comp in After Effects. But, it just doesn't render at all. Not on Media Enconder, not on RQ in AE, I've tried to resize it from 4k to 1080, turned off hardware aceleration. Nothing woeked. It is one minute long and the only effect it has is Keylight on two layers. And, it has 4 point lights and one ambient light. I was wondering if the lights were the problem and removed them from the comp. And, it rendered in less than one minute, in 4K. It's strange, I have done other projects with similar comps, using different lights and some much more complex ones, with more effects applied and I had no problem with rendering. Can someone please help me? There's no point doing this project without lights! Thanks in advance.

[Andrew Yoole]

Keylight can be a bit quirky, and a memory hog sometimes.  Try pre-rendering your keys to intermediate files with alpha channels.  Then replace your Keylight layers with these pre-rendered versions so that AE doesn't need to do any keying when its rendering the lighting.

In addition, take a look at your light and layer settings.  If you're rendering shadows, try turning shadows off to see if they make a difference.

[Tales25016143nh4o]

Good evening! Thanks a lot for your support, Andrew. I tried this with no success. I rendered the layers with Keylight alone with alpha channels, then, I used them to isolate the subject on the original layers, removing the Keylight effect from them. (Was it what you suggested?). But, still I couldn't export the comp and there was no more Keylight on the comp. Then, I tried turning shadows off. Still, no success. Anyway, thanks a lot for your reply!

[nishu_kush]

Hi Tales25016143nh4o,

Sorry for your issue.

I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble exporting your project. The workaround shared by the expert is a great option, but if you'd like, we can try to find the root of the issue. I tried creating a similar setup on my end and I was able to export without any issues. Could you share the following details so we can try to diagnose the issue:

• What are your system specifications (CPU, GPU, RAM, OS version)?
• What happens when you try to export? Do you see any error messages?
• What are your export settings?

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Nishu

[Tales25016143nh4o]

Good evening, Nish. Thanks for your support and I'm sorry for not providing this info before. Here are my specications:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900K CPU @ 3.70GHz 3.70 GHz

RAM: 48 GB

Nvidia Geforce 3060 - 12 GB

When I try to export using ME, it shows no progress on the rendering screen, even after some hours. Remaining time never shows up and output preview is always blank (it shows: Preview not available), than it stops and in show "failed" on queue screen. I copied this from ME log file:

- Encoding Time: 00:28:00
05/26/2023 07:57:17 PM : Encoding Failed
------------------------------------------------------------
Export Error
Error compiling movie.

Accelerated Renderer Error

Unable to produce frame.

Writing with exporter: H.264
Writing to file: C:\Videos\Videos\Bar\bar2_AME\barr_6.mp4
Writing file type: H264
Around timecode: 00;00;00;09
Rendering at offset: 0,000 seconds
Component: H.264 of type Exporter
Selector: 9
Error code: -1609629695

Thanks a lot for your support.

[Tales25016143nh4o]

BTW, I use WIN 10, all up to date!

[Andrew Yoole]

Okay, more things to try:

Try rendering directly from the After Effects Render Queue, rather than Media Encoder.

Try rendering to a lossless format, rather than to MP4.

Try changing the 3D render mode of the project - from Cinema 4D to standard, or vice versa.

Turn off all the lights.  Can you render a few frames?  If so, repeat the exercise while turning on one light at a time to see if one specific light is causing the issue.

If none of this works, can you post a screengrab of the whole AE window, with all settings for the lights visible?

[Tales25016143nh4o]

Hello, again.

With all lights off, the comp renders in less than a minute. I tried to render with only one light on . Tried with all lights and it rendered fast with all of them (one at a time). So, maybe all lights together are too much for may hardware? Could this be the problem? Well, with all 4 files exported (one for each light) I can "mix" them in Premiere with masks, since the lights are in different points in the comp and then render one final file. Not the ideal solution, but should work. I tried almost all formats and the results were the same. I could be wrong on my judgements, but I believe I've done more complex projects before, with up to 5 different lights, shadows, effects and it didn't fail to render. But I'm not an expert on systems and hardware. Thanks a lot!!