Scene Optimizer - Environments
dogcat
Posts: 52
Hi,
I saw a lot of discussions regarding scene optimizer but I failed to see any discussions if and how it deals with environments
I bought a few environments that take a lot of VRAM (https://forum.daz3d.com/glowing-beach and https://www.daz3d.com/collective3d-neighborhood-block-1). I have RTX 3070 with 8GB of VRAM and I can't even render them without a single character.
in the https://www.daz3d.com/collective3d-neighborhood-block-1 I need to remove all the houses and keep only one in order to fit a character. I use GPUZ to see the ram consumption and I see it near 6.5 GB.
in https://forum.daz3d.com/glowing-beach I need to remove the whole Island and it consumes 7-7.5 GB of VRAM.
Will scene optimizer help with that?
Do you have any tips for me? how can I know how much VRAM the environment is going to take (it's not written anywhere)? I can't buy a fancy 3090 now. I need to be able to render a few characters in an environment. Maybe I picked the wrong environment for my VRAM limitations. I don't want to make this mistake again.
Thanks,
Yoni
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Comments
Scene Optimiser handles textures, so it dpends on what the heavy memory use is - if it's the geometry then no, though you may be able to replace some of the models with instances; if it's maps then probably, though you will need tot ake account of how close the models are to the camera (which Scene Optimiser tells you, for the current camera at the current position).
The glowing beach environment is one big island and on top of it, there are three tree bundles that I can hide. The issue is the island. From what I understand there is a good chance that it won't affect the VRAM.
I am adding a screenshot. The perspective view is far away from the island.
Scene optimizer can help a lot with that. Glowing Beach uses 4k textures for candles, seashells, etc, which is excessive. You'll want to leave the island itself alone, because your beach will look terrible otherwise, but the rest can be reduced drastically.
Another item that should help is Camera View Optimizer, which will hide objects not in the frame of the selected camera.
The thing with Glowing Beach is the very large vegetation props. There are 3 of them. If you can hide 2 and make due with just one of them forming the background for your scene, you'll save a lot of memory.
Another utility that can help is Instancify. In Glowing Beach, the PA did not use instances to reduce polygon count. Instancify will look for duplicate objects, and change all but one to instances, which often helps with heavy scenes.
Glowing Beach, however is a really heavy scene because of all the vegetation. If you can see your way clear to minimizing that, it might fit on your GPU. My 11Gb 2080ti struggles with it, as well. Whatever you do, save your scene, and close and reopen Daz Studio before trying to render.
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Regarding Camera View Optimizer - The island is one big piece. Will the camera optimizer be able to hide parts of it?
I hid 2 of the 3 vegetation props but I had to remove the island in order to render a photo.
Is there any chance it will be able to fit with all optimizations? When you render the island - how many GB does it take?
Vegetation can really add to polycounts, and terrains that have lots of small details can as well. Sometimes having a look at the scene in wireframe view can let you know how dense the individual meshes are.
You can also use Windows/Panes (Tabs)/SceneInfo to find out the overall polycount of the scene. You can use it for individual items as well.
You may find out that the big scene items are not the resource hogs, but the small insignificant items you barely see like blades of grass or pebbles. Keep the few in your camera view and delete the rest.
Instances are a good way to gain resource space. Appropriate texture size relative to the size and detail of the model are another. Smaller items can have smaller textures thus saving resources.
Other things you can do when it comes to the Neighbourhood or architecture in general, is if you are doing a shot from outside, You might be able to delete interior details that can't be seen but are loaded into the scene and taking up resources. The reverse is true too if you are rendering from inside delete all the hedges and trees that are not visible through a window or door. It will help free up space for your characters.
Well scratch glowing beach off my wishlist. It's gets tedious having to fix items, especially environments that are to resource heavy. PAs need to realise that environments are usually backdrops and there needs to be headroom for users to add actual scenes into them and be able to still use them out of the box
That is absolutely a reasonable expectation, that's why I build my sets on a GTX980 4 gig machine with only 16gigs ram, and make sure it can load and GPU render with atleast one fully clothed Gen3 or Gen8 character dressed in outfit. They get tested on RTX 3000 series machines and render without problems. Stonemason is also very good with resource management in the design of his sets.
That's a logical and smart workflow and the products I do have from you work very well (might have to look into more now). Wish more environment creators shared the same process.
this
I just tried out the Collective 3D Blocks and it has 3 blocks, and I loaded the first Block 1. its a big scene with 9 houses and front drives and backyards and garages. And chainlink fences across all the property lines. There is good use of instancing with the vegetations both trees and shrubs, the textures sizes range from 1k to 4k, and the house have blinds on the windows and empty interiors to keep the set as efficient as possible. And the PA reused textures when possible. and it render quickly with my 3060. It is a very nice set.
I don't have the beach so can't check it out.
3060 has 12GB of VRAM.
I managed to use this product with my card with two characters. I removed many things that are not visible to the camera, and I don't need the whole block. I wished I could get an upper view to render of the neighborhood. But I can't fit into my VRAM. I will try to find a creative solution.
I will purchase the Scene Optimizer and other products and Camera View Optimizer. Hopefully, I can use some environments I have with those products.
Thanks, everyone, for your answers!
...and having decade old hardware myself I am really thankful for that.
While I've upgraded it to the maximum specs it could support I'm also known for doing some very detailed scenes.and using multiple characters. I do have the Scene Optimiser and Instancity which along with the MMX Resource Saver Shaders and Hedgemaker (the latter which works with all sorts of objects) are all a real help
I wanted to update you that I used scene optimizer and reduced textures by 2. The island has 8k maps. So it was reduced to 4k, and now I can render an image that looks quite good! It takes 6 GB with a sailboat that can be a scene by itself.
Thank you all.
This quick render is thanks. From me :)