Daz Studio using too much RAM
v1si0n4ry
Posts: 82
Hello, fellow Daz Studio users,
I've been having a rather strange problem lately... I want to render a scene that has an environment and 3 characters. I scaled the characters' textures down so they could fit my GPU memory. When I try to render, however, DS tries to allocate almost an additional 12GB of RAM (it was taking less than 2GB before rendering and goes to 13GB while processing scene), leading to a crash, since I have only 16GB. Before the crash, though, I can confirm that my scene is taking around 7GB of my VRAM (which is completely withing my GPU's limit). What is up with that RAM usage?
Any insights are appreciated
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Dose it render (slowly, on the CPU) before resizing the images?
I didn't try to render it before resizing, will try to do that. By hiding some elements of the scene I managed to take the RAM usage to a total of a little more than 12GB while rendering (which doesn't instantly crash DS), with a 6GB of VRAM usage. It renders on CPU without crashing.
So, I tried replacing the maps with the original sized ones, DS goes to 4.7GB RAM usage before rendering, pushes up to 13GB while processing. I get the geometry memory usage message, "CPU processing scene..." message, and crash.
Do any of the scene elements have very high SubD levels (Render SubDivision level on the model or displacement subdivision on any of the surfaces)? Hight here being 5+
Characters are at SubD 3, clothes are at SubD 1 tops, many are at base level. Environment is entirely at base level. Many pieces of clothing have level 3 displacement, though, I am clueless why. Could that be it?
Now much VRAM does your Graphics card have, and is it the only one you have?
The SubD value could be the culprit more often than you'd think. I had a fairly simple scene the other day that was consistently and instantly putting my computer into thrash mode (constant disc accesses due to running out of RAM and going into disc swapping). Eventually I realised my figures in the scene were at Render SubD level 5 — although the Viewport value was only 3. This meant the RAM requirements when I started the render were a lot more than my actual RAM size. I turned the Render SubD values back down again and the scene rendered as usual without a hiccup.
I mean... I have a Titan Xp with 12GB VRAM, it REALLY shouldn't be an issue to render 7GB scenes... I've done it many times before, actually.
Will try messing with that
If you are using a Windows machine then it sounds like you need to increase the disk space used by the swap file. I have 16GB of ram and I have done scenes that take 15.8 GB and my laptop doesn't crash, becomes unresponsive though
I am rendering CPU only too, no graphics card. Start up the Task manager and go to the Performance Tab. There is a reading that says Commit (GB), this is the amount of virtual memory allocated. The first number is what is being used and the second one is the total allocated for use. At the moment mine shows 12/31, the actual RAM usage, of the 16 available, is 10GB. So, even though there is still 6GB of RAM left the system is still using 12GB of virtual memory, which is disk space. When you use all the RAM on the computer and there isn't at least double, or more, than that allocated to virtual ram the computer will crash, which I think is what you are seeing happen.
Hey, that helped a lot! I think I had only 8GB of page file and increasing it actually made it stable. Between reducing SubD and increasing page file memory, I managed to make it work. Thanks
Too much - suggests it should be using less; I'm curious what you're basing this supposition off; it will use what it needs.
It shouldn't crash, even if it uses more than the RAM you have installed. SWAP should come into play, which is managed by Windows.
Wow. just wow.
I've returned products because they locked up Studio, and CS wouldn't help me because I'm working in 4.9...
Quit buying from those artists, as well.
I just tried "Tree and Swing" which I kept because it was a freebie, and SubD was set at 6.
I set it to 1 and it's rendering fine.
Wish I'd known before I returned those products. Ah, well, they'll be on sale someday.
Just what does SubD do, anyway?
SubD smoothes the mesh by increasing number of polygons before viewing or rendering.
But each subD level increases the polygon count with a factor of 4.
So a subD of 5 will increase number of polygons with around 1000 times, i.e. a mesh with 10 k polygons become 10 M polygons. And that can get really hard for the machine.
Windows swap file should be set to grow as needed. That is the default setting. It is possible people are changing that setting due to a full disk warning or something or that one of the prebuilt companies changes the default on their installs or there is some other explanation for the number of reports of people having issues with this setting.
Anyone with it set to any fixed size is asking for trouble.
Ah, thank you.
So something like the old VW beetle that renders with visible sharp-cornered bends would look smoother if I increased the Sub-d?
(I almost returned My Little Lake because the Sub-d was set at 12! Glad I found this thread. I wish CS had told me earlier.)
Yes, a figure will look more smooth with higher SubD. Some items migth have no SubD active, so it initially must be aplied in Edit > Object > Geometry > Convert to SubD.
I do not own My Little Lake but I must say a SubD level of 12 sounds extremely high and I can't imagine any reason for that.
Thank you. This is some really helpful information!