CD3 crashing when trying to "save as"

BwenGun

I am faced with something of a conundrum, I decided to create the city I have over the last two years created in the forum game/rpg that I and my friends have been playing. Thus far it's been going rather well as I've gotten to grips with CD3 rather well, even if I am still somewhat amateurish at it thus far. I've gotten about a fifth of the way through the map, and had really only just the rather time consuming task of adding in all the alleys, side-streets and using the street creating tool to fill the city up (plus add the incidentals like bushes, trees, fountains, statues, etc.) when last night I decided to call it quits for the evening, but before I quit I decided I'd quite like to save a JPG version of the map so I could go into it tomorrow and start working out the names for all the land-mark buildings and area names around the various city wards.

So I started the save as process for a 4,000 by 4,000 image and let it crunch the numbers for a bit as with CC3 whenever I'm rendering out a large map it always takes a while for the maps to render out. This time however I had no such success, indeed after ten minutes the program completely froze up and windows sent me the little report telling me the program had stopped working and asking me whether I'd like to close it. Bemused I tried again, this time at a far smaller resolution, indeed a resolution that normally my computer has no problem handling, the same thing happened.

I then tried to find an answer via google, to see whether anyone else had had similar problems and resolved them. All I could find was the suggestion to save it as a PDF using PDF creator, as advised by the support section here on the site, so I followed the instructions and set it to printing, but after leaving it for an hour nothing had happened and I really needed to get some sleep, so concluded that either I'd done something wrong or the project was breaking that as well.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had experienced similar problems or whether there was a workaround for these sorts of things. Or even whether I've managed to create a map that has problems inherent in it's construction that are causing the problems.

I'm using Windows 7, and if you'd care for a DXDiag please ask. In the meantime I've attached the city map itself, (you'll need the Jon Roberts cities annual pack as I've used a number of the textures and symbols from it in the map) in case anyone cares to take a look and see whether the saving problem is limited to my computer or to the map itself.

Monsen

I exported your map to 4000x4000 without a hitch here, so there shouldn't be a problem with your map.
How much memory do you have on your computer? This process is basically memory bound, so RAM matters. (Note that CC3 is a 32-bit program though, so it is only able to make use of 2GB of ram). Obviously, it is available memory that is important here, so do make sure no other running programs are consuming huge amounts of memory. A reboot might often be worth a shot.

Additionally, what is your anti-aliasing setting when exporting the image? A large value here means that CC3 must calculate an export much larger than the desired end result, so setting this too large can cause problems even for otherwise modestly set export settings.

BwenGun

Thanks for looking at it! I have 4 GB of ram, and anti-aliasing isn't turned on when exporting. I also tried again just now and for whatever reason saving out the images up to 6000*6000 works fine, as long as the sheet effects aren't turned on and the setting to draw all aligned fills as solids is on as well as not drawing shadows. Without that I can't get up to 4000*4000, and trying to do that with the effects on as well just causes a crash sooner. I suppose that indicates that the map is doing far too many things for my poor computer to handle.

I don't suppose there's a way to cut a map up into smaller chunks to save out individually so I can glue them together with GIMP when the map is finished?

Monsen

To cut a map into multiple parts, simply use the "rectangular section png" save as option, and then specify an area of the city to save. Note that since CC3 scales the map to the selected export resolution, make sure each piece is exactly the same size, otherwise you will need to recalculate export resolution for each piece. Making all the same size, and ensuring accurate seams is easily accomplished by using snaps and/or modifiers.


For the record, when I exported you map, I had sheet effects on, and anti-alias turned off, using an old computer with 3GB of ram, so it should definitely be exportable at that resolution. I didn't test how large I could push it though.

BwenGun

Thanks! I can't believe I didn't notice that earlier. =D