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Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 5:07 pm
by Edward1986
Hello all,

I am trying to render a very complex scene with a lot of quite complex meshes (around 350) from Rhino. Every time I try to crank up the render it just crashes/ freezes. or comes up with an error message about not enough memory (my machine is not a particularly slow one and never usually struggles with renders)

Admittedly I am running an old version of Maxwell (v1.8 - I know) but is there any way of reducing the amount of memory used- or are there particular settings I can try to turn on/off that may speed things up? (there are on 3 materials applied- a gold material, glossy white plastic and diamond)

Or should I just buy the latest version and stop being a tight arse?- would the new version cope better?

Cheers

Ed

Re: Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 5:20 pm
by polynurb
comes up with an error message about not enough memory
but are you running out of ram or not?
you can check in the task manager performance/physical memory/available

Re: Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 5:28 pm
by Edward1986
Probably yes, it is my work PC and only has 2gb ram- but without getting more RAM is there a way to reduce the amount of memory used? any tips or tricks?

Re: Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 5:58 pm
by polynurb
if you don't use displacement,sss or multilight/hughe HDR maps/textures ram usage is mostly dependant on triangle count and output resolution.

maybe your mesh topology allows for tiangle-reduction?

Re: Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 6:09 pm
by JDHill
It depends what you mean by "crank up the render" -- if that means increasing the output resolution, and the chosen resolution is running you out of memory, then there will not be much to do about it, besides installing more memory. If it is more mesh-related, then version 2.7, with its MXS references, may be able to help. As polynurb points out, also check that you're not using overly-large textures; you only need as much texture resolution as the camera is able to see.

Re: Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 6:11 pm
by Edward1986
I just mean start it up :-)

Is there a way of turning these off or is it just a matter of not using materials that use displacement and sss?

All the meshes are quads- does that have an effect?

Re: Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 6:39 pm
by polynurb
make a meshplane in a new rhino file.. 1000x1000 faces.

this consumes approx 1gb of ram in maxwell 2.7
copy the meshplane and it takes about 1,45 gb and so on..


if you run a polygon count on your scene you should be able to see if your geometry is the limit.

Re: Ways of reducing memory usage??

Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 12:11 pm
by Edward1986
Hi Guys,

I ended up buying a load more RAM and that has done the trick.

Thanks for the help.

Ed