Memory problems with photons

[Prowokator]

I've ran to a problem when trying to save a photon map in 3ds max 2009.

If I generate caustic photons more than 5 000 000 I get this error:

Mem 0.3 fatal 031008: can't allocate 180020024 bytes

I've done some research and noticed that other people have run to a similar error message, but in their cases it has been (probably) becouse of high polycount. Also it feels there is some sort of randomness with this problem as I have managed to create a photon map with 8 000 000 caustic photons.

The reason why I have such a large number of caustic photons is that I am trying to get some nice sharp caustic reflections to the image.. here is a the current stage:


I havent had any problems when rendering the image (with pre calculated photon/final gather maps). I also have adjusted the amount of disk space for my windows XP to use as ram.

Here is a link for one of the MR error logs:
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/774532/MR_log_hamis.txt

Any ideas what to do? Is 8 million photons un necessary high amount anyway?

Thanks,
prowokator

[JeffPatton]

8 million photons is a bit on the high side IMHO. What is your lighting setup like? I'd probably only emit caustics from one tightly targeted spotlight. Doing so should allow you to emit fewer caustic photons.

Also, what's your caustic settings? Perhaps your settings can be adjusted to provide sharper caustics as well, ex: If you're not using the cone filter you should be as that will give sharper results than the default box filter.