Tips for Working with Large Scenes with Little Ram?
Richard John S
Posts: 391
Hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone has any tips that could help me. The problem I am having is that my computer is running out of ram, I only have a max of 8GB. When I load two G3 figures it often begins to slow down badly, I'm assuming because of ram. I am rendering with GPU only (GTX 970), so I know it's not my CPU. When I load one GF it works fine. Is there anything I can possibly do besides getting a whole new computer in order to load bigger scenes without this slow down?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
If you don't want a cute viewport but an effective one :
Preferences \ Interfaces \ Display Optimization : Best
Preferences \ Interfaces \Backface lighting : Off
Preferences \ Interfaces \Texture Resources : Performance
You might try switching your viewport into Smooth Shaded -- keeping it in Texture Shaded means taking a performance hit because of the textures during posing and camera positioning.
You certainly don't need to get a whole new computer. Upgrading the ram is one of the easiest hardware upgrades to do. You should consider it. Find out what kind of ram your computer uses, and what the capacity of your motherboard is. Most boards have 4 slots, and these days can hold up to 32 gig. I work pretty big scenes and have found that 16 gig of ram is adequate, but more is better. You could probably get it done for 100 bucks. Of course, some of the older computers have a lower capacity. If yours doesn't go higher than 8, then you're already maxed out. I would think an i5 capable motherboard goes higher than 8, though.
I can only comment in general here, but still. Thing is, my PC also isn't exactly the fastest and I still manage to create decent renders with it. First, what the other said: check your settings. F2 (Preferences), then checking the Interface tab can do a lot. Sometimes, when working on too big sceneries, I also often cut the whole thing in half. For example: I wanted a scene with 5 figures but the Millenium Dragon was a bit too much. So I cut up my scenery (made one scene with the Millenium Dragon and a nearby figure, and another one with the other 3 figures) and then imported all of them into Bryce where I did the actual rendering. Although Bryce's render engine is a little behind that of Daz Studio I still enjoy the results I can create with it. And it's my experience that it gobbles up much less RAM.
Another option, when looking at the viewport, is your shader. 'Texture shaded' will obviously gobble up more resources than 'wire' or 'smooth' shaded. Perhaps you can get some extra advantage there as well? (this is a rough assumption on my part!).
Which brings me to another possible approach: external render engine. I never tried this with 3Delight (even though I know you can download & use it for free in a non-commercial way) but LuxRender works pretty well. So: I export my work onto Lux render, then close Daz Studio and leave my PC more or less dedicated to Lux, this can also help save resources. Although that obviously also requires a little different workset, Lux can be quite taxing on the time it takes to render something.
I assume that in theory this should also be possible with 3Delight (so: render your scene outside Daz Studio) but as I said: I never tried to experiment with that.
Hope that this can still give you some ideas.
i'm grabbing this thread since 1) my own question is somewhat related to the OP's - 2) i don't want to ressucitate a moldy thread or create another new one with (maybe) related content...
please feel free to relocate it if necessary!
i have just received this "new" (i.e. 2nd hand about 5y.o.) laptop. it's an acer, i7-2670QM (8 cores i think if i count the processor number in System), 64-bit, 2.2GHz, 8 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M ... i guess that's it.
and i thought wow, now i can really create/handle/render much bigger scenes, larger pictures, and ofc iray - all of which i obviously couln't with my old netbook.
i have not tried the impossible yet, i.e. extremely large scenes, a big bunch of humanoids, or a huge render - first because i'm still tiptoeing with the new wondertoy, and second, because even without exaggerating the largeness/weight of what i render, when it's rendering i can already feel the heat coming out from the hardcore working whatever, be it gcard or processor.
actually, even i have now the long awaited nvidia, the heating is worse with iray so i don't dare using it as an engine, i still use 3dl.
is there a way to know BEFORE my laptop totally fries parts of its components if it can render a specific scene/setting/size etc?
i barely dare trying more than 1-2 people, middle-sized renders, not too many FX or light bouncing etc, no iray either.. am i paranoid?
i must add i'm not particularly tech savvy, and totally challenged with numbers. also, very limited cash-wise, i waited over 1 yr to get this as a gift, and frying it would not just mean "a bad month or three saving up a lot of salary" or "taking yet another credit i can't afford" - it would mean i would, again, be computerless for at least the next 2 years & besides really piss off those who saved their hard earned cash and gifted me the laptop...
It does generate lots of heat (no use guessing without actually checking it), that's ok as long as it does not go crazy, install something like Speed Fan for example ( http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php ), it will give you information about the temperatures that are available, most consumer computers has pretty crappy cooling (laptop's even worse) and are not designed to work at 100% for long time like with rendering, laptops are almost designed to overheat, low noise is more important these days.
The actual size of the scene has not that much to do with rendering temperatures, small or big scene, the GPU will render at pretty much 100% anyway, if you go beyond what fits in the GPU memory it will use the CPU instead, that's all that is going to happen.
Both CPU and GPU has builtin protection to slow down/shutdown/crash before temperatures go crazy.
ah, thanks a lot for the heads up - it's exactly the type of advice i was hoping for ^_^ - have to check it exactly and try to install this!
i remember, as i inspected my "new" laptop, that i saw an interface somewhere where i could tick boxes with a choice of having either the gpu or the cpu or both participating to a render (i think). but i couldn't find it again, i don't even have a clue which software it was part of, was it daz itself, was iray specific, was it nvidia or what.. >_>
and even i find ut again, i wouldn't know which option(s) to tick since i have not the tiniest clue what's appropriate. maybe i ticked/unticked something i shouldn't have, no idea :/
that's good news! :)
but why are there still people who manage to fry their units, then? or does this happen when you don't heed that kind of warning and repeatedly overwork your system - like it could cope with an occasional stressful situation, but would literally burn out a bit more every time - like its human counterpart? more in the sense of using out components ofc.
anyways - thx for the answer already, mikael ^^
TechPowerup GPU-Z also gives temp information. EVGA Precision-x allows you to actually control the fan speed, and I think it works for non-evga products. I haven't tried it on my laptop, but I can.
interesting, i need to re-read all those infos a coupla' times on their sites since for me right now, it's like if all 3 (i.e. including Speed Fan above) were written in runic or something ^^.
evga seems very interactive, however right now i am NOT meddling with my fan, i don't even have a clue what i'm aiming for, except max cooling...
I had same problem with only 8 GB but since 16 GB I rarely get crash. With 8GB with should restrict your render sizes to 1280x720 maximum is the only practical and widely applicable accross various scenes thing you can do.
8GB is too little; 16GB is better but not enough imo.
We're talking 3D rendering here; there is no such thing as too much RAM, Cores and general processing power.
... There is, however, only so much cash we can throw at the problem: sadly.
Whilst I'm thinking about it (it's open atm) try: https://www.hwinfo.com/
I also use: http://www.cpuid.com/
Both are useful; cpuid gives more info, and I prefer when troubleshooting, but HWin gives a good summary.
Then there is GPUz and CPUz, both of which I use.
there is not real tips for 3D support limitation!
- more you have (memory and process) more you are productive
at last the only we have as advice is the "minimum required"
I would recommend you take the laptop to a techperson who will install some artic silver 5 on your cpu and your gpu and purchase a laptop cooler