Memory issues

[stevesideas]

This is a rather annoying problem I'm having with an underwater scene. The ocean bed is displaced and takes a lot longer to calc the LC. That's not the problem. When zooming in the scene starts taking about 20gb...the actual scene itself takes 2 mins to render but forever to complete...as in, for the 3dsmax UI or vrayFB to become responsive. I'm assuming this is because of the amount of memory used. I've been sitting here 6 mins after the render has completed and I'm still waiting for it to allow me to save.

What can I do about this ?

Edit: It took 12 mins more for the scene to become response after the render had finished.

[Morbid Angel]

Couple of things I can suggest. First are you out of ram? if yes, it could be a reason why. If not, your displacement might be oversampling a lot. See about reducing its settings until its fast. Using dynamic memory? perhaps using static might help.
Whats your max displace subdivs? is it 256?, you could get away with 8-12. Whats your edge thresh? is it super low? is it view dependent? See about balancing those values a bit.

[stevesideas]

I have 32gb of ram so it isn't that. I'll try out some of the other values you have mentioned. Thanks

[stevesideas]

Even though max is now using 15gb of memory it is taking forever to stop doing whatever it is doing and allow me to carry on working. I'm looking at the system process and the memory is gradually reducing but so very slowly. It is taking ages !

[Morbid Angel]

Even though max is now using 15gb of memory it is taking forever to stop doing whatever it is doing and allow me to carry on working. I'm looking at the system process and the memory is gradually reducing but so very slowly. It is taking ages !

Can you send me your scene, I'll have a look. silhouetteimages at gmail dot com.

[stevesideas]

Thanks for the offer but I've managed to reduce the memory load. I haven't got time to see how much the vraydisplacement is actually affecting the geometry now but raising the edge length to 64 has worked. I'm not even sure at this length the displacement will show any detail. I have to get the render done now as I've run out of time so I'll test afterwards.

Thanks for the help.

[Morbid Angel]

For large areas though, I'd suggest to not use view dependent option. Then you can treat your edge length as a size of your grid unit. Anything below that will not be subdivided. So its easier to manage large areas and moving cameras.

[super gnu]

i believe this is simply related to how vray clears the memory after rendering a scene with displacement or other types of dynamic geometry. .. it empties the ram painfully slowly when you cancel or finish a render. the more ram you use, the longer it takes to get back to being responsive.


when im doing scenes with loads of displacement, like now, i get in the habit of saving before rendering, as its quicker to kill max from the task manager and reload the scene, than it is to wait for vray to sort itself out.

i questioned this behaviour a couple of years ago, when using fur:

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...er-sloooooowww

to be honest i cannot see what benefit i get from this slow unloading, unless it is caching stuff for the next render. if i can kill max and empty the ram in 1.5 seconds, then reload the scene and start working without issues, then surely vray can do better than 10 mins + ?

[stevesideas]

i believe this is simply related to how vray clears the memory after rendering a scene with displacement or other types of dynamic geometry. .. it empties the ram painfully slowly when you cancel or finish a render. the more ram you use, the longer it takes to get back to being responsive.


when im doing scenes with loads of displacement, like now, i get in the habit of saving before rendering, as its quicker to kill max from the task manager and reload the scene, than it is to wait for vray to sort itself out.

i questioned this behaviour a couple of years ago, when using fur:

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...er-sloooooowww

to be honest i cannot see what benefit i get from this slow unloading, unless it is caching stuff for the next render. if i can kill max and empty the ram in 1.5 seconds, then reload the scene and start working without issues, then surely vray can do better than 10 mins + ?

Yes, I think this is the thing I'm talking about. It really is so slow. Why it has to unload like that is odd !

[vlado]

This is actually a bug in the Windows memory manager; it can be worked around but I haven't gotten round to it yet. No problems on Linux... Anyways will get to it soon, I hope.

Best regards
Vlado

[vlado]

This is actually a bug in the Windows memory manager; it can be worked around but I haven't gotten round to it yet. No problems on Linux... Anyways will get to it soon, I hope.

Best regards
Vlado

[stevesideas]

It would be great if you could Vlado. I'm doing more and more large complex scenes and really having to compromise a lot on production time because (although I've learned how to be more efficient with displacement) I'm waiting forever for the application to sort its memory out. I am tempted to use Linux for my 3d rendering. I wonder if that is a good idea ?!

[stevesideas]

Also. Do you know if windows 10 is any better regarding this memory issue ? I'm currently using win 7 64bit.

[vlado]

I'm not sure about Windows 10; somehow I doubt there's any change, but I will let you know once I try it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morbid Angel]

There is no max on linux. Not that im aware of anyway.