[GeorgesAA]

in the vtc tutorials, jason maranto said something about allowing your computer to use all its ram or something like that to run fully maxwell ...

can anyone give me more details, ive got only 15% of my rams running while rendering ...

[JDHill]

I'm not sure which video you're referring to, or what it was talking about, but it may have been discussing the use of 32-bit Windows, where there is a trick you can use (google "/3GB switch") to raise the normal 2GB limit for individual applications to 3GB. That can lead to some system instability, though, and it is a non-factor if you are using a 64-bit operating system, where the amount of memory usable by an application is limited only by whether or not that application is 32-bit.

If you are on Windows, you can check how much memory is being used by a particular application by opening Task Manager, going to the Processes tab, and making sure that Private Working Set is checked in View > Select Columns. You can find how much memory is installed on the machine using Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information. On OSX, this information is available in Activity Monitor.

[Half Life]

I'm also not sure exactly what video (or even series) this might be in reference to (and what JD has said covers most of the possibilities there anyway) -- however, I should also say Maxwell does not really need to use all of your RAM. RAM is only memory, and Maxwell will only use the memory it actually needs (based on the size of the scene). So unless you have renders that are failing because Maxwell is running out of RAM there is not much reason to worry about this.

However CPU usage is a completely different issue, and one that is very relevant to Maxwell performance. My advice is usually to set the Cores/Threads Maxwell setting to zero, which will enable Maxwell to use everything that is available to render.

If you are using the SketchUp plugin this is set in 3 places:

1. In the Maxwell Scene Manager>"Output" tab>"Engine" subsection -- which controls the engine when you send to final render with the Maxwell Core Render app
2. In the Maxwell Scene Manager>"Options" tab>"Materials" subsection -- which controls the number of cores/threads used for material previews in the plugin
3. In the Maxwell Fire window>"Settings" icon -- which controls the threads/cores used for FIRE only

In MXED and Maxwell Studio there are similar settings and I typically leave them all set to zero for the same reason (this is the default setting so you shouldn't have to change it).

Best,
Jason.

[GeorgesAA]

thx