April 2017 update: AE crashes on start up while loading ray-traced 3d

[Zach the human]

This might be more of a bug report cause I doubt there will be a quick and easy fix until a patch but, here's the situation:

Since the latest patch (April 2017), I've been unable to launch AE. It's crashing at the same point every time I open it. The splash art loading text says "Cleaning Up Ray-traced 3D," and an error message pops up saying, "After Effects error: crash occurred while invoking plug-in "ray-traced 3D"."

If any one has any quick fix ideas, let me know.

Basic system info:

OS X Yosemite 10.10.5

Mac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)

4 GHz Intel Core i7

32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB

[Dave_LaRonde]

I suspect this was made in a previous AE version.  Open it in that version.  Turn off the Ray Tracing.  Save it under a new name. Open that file in the new version.

[Rick Gerard]

First, make sure you did not install the CUDA drivers by checking your System Preferences.

Second, try starting a new project, pressing the Caps Lock key, importing the old project, opening the composition settings without opening the comp by selecting the comp in the Project Panel and changing the renderer to Classic or C4D. That will probably get your comp open.

[Zach the human · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the replies guys. I was trying to open AE independent of a project file but I think I have it fixed. Rick, your comment lead me to the CUDA panel in my system preferences. This machine has the CUDA driver installed for some reason despite having a Radeon card in it (I'm sure this probably makes little sense so I could try to remove it all together).

None the less, there was a CUDA driver update, and when I installed it, things began working again!

I appreciate ya guys!

[Rick Gerard]

You MUST uninstall the Cuda drivers. The instructions are on the NVIDIA website. You are working with a timebomb if you don't. Unfortunately the NVIDIA driver installer does not check for a compatible card. For the sake of future projects and your sanity uninstall the CUDA drivers.

[Szalam]

What Rick said. Having CUDA drivers installed on a system with AMD cards is just asking for trouble. There is even an Adobe blog post about it.