Need help with a heavy scene

Jumbotron

Hi,

I'd like to render this scene out, but Daz Studio 4.22.0.16 Pro will find a fatal error and close every time.

The environment is the Sacrament set for Iray.

The two characters in the foreground are SubD 3.

Then there are six characters sitting on the two front pews. Each one of these characters are SubD 1.

Then there are the rest of characters behind, who are all of them billboards. Also, I'm using instances for half of these if I recall correctly.

In the attached screenshot you can also glimpse most of the photometric lights in the scene. There's also another one behind the camera on a high level to provide soft light to most of the characters in the pews. I'm using rectangular geometry on all of these lights, except for the three rim lights and the distant light included with Sacrament.

The rest of the light is provided by the Sun-Sky system, although its effect is marginal because of the interior location.

Finally, I've set up DOF on the camera in order to focus the attention mainly on the two characters closer to the camera.

My graphics card is an RTX 4090 and my system has 64 GB of RAM memory.

Would it be possible to render this scene modularly while retaining a cohesive light? I've used canvases before if that helps.

Thank you.

felis

I would say that a fatal error is caused by something else than running out of VRAM.

Try to hide half of the objects in the scene, and see if it will render.

If it renders, just as a check try to hide the other half, and see how that goes. I would assume it crashes.

If it crashes continue till you know which item is the culprit.

If the other halfs also render it must be something else, although not sure what that could be. Try to monitor your RAM usage.

Fishtales

Try increasing the virtual memory on the disc drives.

Richard Haseltine

Which hairs? If some of them are OutOfTouch makes ue you aren't missing any updates.

Jumbotron

Hi again,

Thank you. I could render if I hid half of the objects in the scene. I could also render the scene when I hid the other half. Next, I monitored the hardware usage with the task manager after I started the render process. Soon the render stopped and I noticed that the RAM usage gets capped. I also noticed that my GPU usage does not even rise beyond the 0%.

As for the OOT hairs, I'm not using any in this scene. And I think I have my OOT hairs up to date.

Would increasing the virtual memory on the disc drives, as Fishtales suggested, help? Since only the two front characters are in focus, I might run the Scene Optimizer on the background subjects as well, I suppose.

What do you think I should do next?

crosswind

As for SubD levels you mentioned... are they view SubD or render SubD 'cause they'll result in different RAM and VRAM consumption.

Anyway, increase Virtual Memory first of all, then monitor VRAM usage with GPU-Z. If DS still crashes, try Scene Optimizer...then see what'll happen...

Jumbotron

crosswind said:

As for SubD levels you mentioned... are they view SubD or render SubD 'cause they'll result in different RAM and VRAM consumption.

Anyway, increase Virtual Memory first of all, then monitor VRAM usage with GPU-Z. If DS still crashes, you have to go for Scene Optimizer...

Hi,

Thanks, I'll do what you suggest. :)

I meant Render SubD levels. Viewport SubD were 1 mostly, with few 2. I think for the render itself it only matters the Render SubD, right? In that case, I could also lower those '2' viewport SubD levels to '1' instead, to see if it helps saving some resources.

 

crosswind

Jumbotron said:

crosswind said:

As for SubD levels you mentioned... are they view SubD or render SubD 'cause they'll result in different RAM and VRAM consumption.

Anyway, increase Virtual Memory first of all, then monitor VRAM usage with GPU-Z. If DS still crashes, you have to go for Scene Optimizer...

Hi,

Thanks, I'll do what you suggest. :)

I meant Render SubD levels. Viewport SubD were 1 mostly, with few 2. I think for the render itself it only matters the Render SubD, right? In that case, I could also lower those '2' viewport SubD levels to '1' instead, to see if it helps saving some resources.

 

Yeah, that's right. If so, I think the couple with Render SubD Level 3 should be fine. Level 4 might be a reall challenge in your case... But you can lower 3 to 2, see if that'll help... Sometimes it will... especially when your RAM / VRAM usage reach the "threshold".

Jumbotron

Hi again,

First I modified the virtual memory on my Windows 11 Pro. Before I had 20000 MB allocated to my C:, which is where DS's installation files and my content library are. Now, I've let Windows manage it completely.

Next, already in the Studio, I rechecked all of the figures' render SubDs. And actually, I noticed that I also had lvl3 render SubDs on some of the background figures. I fixed that.

But the render process still failed. With the help of GPU-Z (thanks, crosswind), I could see that the problem was that I was hitting the VRAM cap. In the end, I ran Scene Optimizer to divide by two the resolution of the maps of the subjects in the background, who are out of focus anyway . After running the Optimizer, I'm reaching around 21 GB of VRAM usage, but the render process still works normally. :)

Thanks all for the help.