How is it that G3 figures are taking up so much ram?

Richard John S

I just did some testing today, and I saw that loading jsut a single non-clothed G3 figure takes like 2GB of ram when I render it. The textures and such are not even close to that amount of memory when downloading. What is making it take up so much ram?

EDIT: I'm using iray to render.

cm152335

depend of character and data + your system
i am under Windows 10, i3 4 GB memory (windows 10 use compress memory) 
in my situation full scene room with four Genesis 3 character +clothes my task manager show 2GB memory

3D light render is arround 3-4 minutes  per screen 

ram goes up if you do many changes, clothes, character position (poses) delete, moves and so,,
once your scene is ready,, save, exit the program reload the scene,,
every time you do changes and delete in scenes the memory always go higher and restore back your changes by undo (ctrl+Z)
new scene is low in memory,, no undo in memory, temp is also low
 

Richard John S

I forgot to mention that I'm using Iray. I don't have memory problems with 3Delight. Before I hit render with iray the memory is fine, but a soon as I hit render and after about 2GB of ram is filled then the GS3 figure begins rendering. I'm also using a GTX970 to render, shouldn't it just be going into the GPU memory to render?

KindredArts

Richard John S said:

I forgot to mention that I'm using Iray. I don't have memory problems with 3Delight. Before I hit render with iray the memory is fine, but a soon as I hit render and after about 2GB of ram is filled then the GS3 figure begins rendering. I'm also using a GTX970 to render, shouldn't it just be going into the GPU memory to render?

Do you have your GPU checked in render settings/Advanced? Otherwise it's probably falling back to cpu.

When your scene is being loaded into Ram/Vram, it's not only G3F that's being loaded - its your projected final render size, your hdri, calculated geometry and more. 

Richard John S

My GPU is checked and it renders fast, but it still takes up a lot of ram. CPU mode is disabled. It's like it's using both system ram and my GPU ram.

KindredArts

Yes, from what i've gathered your scene is saved to physical memory whether you are GPU rendering or otherwise. If you stop a render, and leave the window open, your ram usage should stay pretty much the same. If you try to render again with your previous render window open, the scene will start rendering with barely any pre-load time because it's stored locally in the Ram. This is very useful for animations, since you don't have to re-load assets for each frame. 

BeeMKay

Also keep in mind that, in iray, using HD will increase the data consumption beyond the mere "basic" of what you can see, as will normal maps.