[FIXED] DAZ 4.5 crashes very often - Known memory bug?

Comments

• Szark Posts: 10,634

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  32 bit system for me on Vista can only read 3.25 of the 4 BG I have installed. Two Genesis figures, skin, hair and clothing and a background prop and advanced lighting is my limit. For me I am not surprised you are crashing a lot suing all the figures in one scene. Also I have found DS4/4.5 uses a lot more Ram than version 3.

  Plus the only thing I have running in the background is my FireWall/Antisvirus software and Daz Studio's CMS
• theMickey Posts: 0

  September 2012 edited September 2012

  Hi,

  3.25 gig memory usage seems to be ok for an 32bit application -- but I never got this far, not even with the 32bit program.

  I spent all time today to do some additional testing:

  I do have an older MacBook with only 4 Gig of RAM (and a muuuuuch slower CPU). I did install a complete fresh Mac OS Lion (10.7.5) onto its SSD and then DAZ Pro 4.5.0.114 64bit. I repeated the tests with the customized characters again and DAZ *exactly* crashed at the same point, although the system had free memory left! DAZ was only using about 2.4-2.6 gig of RAM when it crashed.

  My conclusion is that it has nothing to do with my system setup, because it crashes on a different, newly installed system, too.

  This really sucks.

  And to be limited to two characters, background, props and lightning isn't what I expect of a "Pro" version of DAZ.

  Thanks for your reply anyway. Anyone else with memory issues?

  Regards,
  Mickey.

  Post edited by theMickey on September 2012
• Jaderail Posts: 0

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  This is often NOT a Mem issue but an ITEM issue. I have helped others find the ONE item in the scene that crashes DS. Many older items have Meshes that are at fault. The Older versions of DS would Warn or not but the new version just hangs or crashes. Load your file and delete one Item at a time and you MIGHT find the item that causes the problem. I say might because I'm PC and not Mac. This method has helped many others. I hope it helps you.
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  It's beginning to sound like it is a problem with a specific item you've added to the scene.

  What, exactly are you loading into the scene and how are you changing the materials?
• theMickey Posts: 0

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  Hi,

  thanks for your answers. But as I already described in the first post, this is what I am doing:

  1) Start DAZ with an empty scene
  2) Load original Victoria 4.2 (with Morphs++)
  3) Apply Body and Head Morphs
  4) Apply a skin MAT
  5) Repeat steps 2-4 until DAZ crashes

  With the 64bit version it crashes when I try to load the 5th skin MAT.

  And, most important: In every test I use different (!) morphs and skin MATs to be sure that is is NOT an item related issue.

  I just tested it with Michael 4 and some of his skin MATs: same result (ok, DAZ could load 5 skin MATs and crashed while loading the 6th -- maybe the skin files are smaller).

  When I load Victoria or Michael without Morphs++, I can load 1-2 characters and (differnet!) MATs more than usual, but as soon as DAZ uses more then 2.5-2.7 gig of RAM it keeps crashing. Repeatedly!

  I am 99% sure it's memory related.

  And I just downloaded the new Beta 4.5.0.137 and tested this version. It crashes, too.
• Jaderail Posts: 0

  September 2012 edited September 2012

  Well yes! I missed that part, Sorry! I just jumped in thinking I had an answer. When you load a MAT (texture) it goes on the STACK (memory that DAZ holds for textures and other items, the stack grows as you add items) when you run out of memory CRASH!!. The STACK only clears at Save as scene file (it only saves the Mat (textures) used) or on a shut down re-start. Daz has no way to know that Part one of this texture is used on that part and Part Two from that texture is used on the other part until you SAVE. It then saves only a pointer to that file. But it will load All the textures needed to use Part one and Part two if you do it that way. Clothing is bad about all the TEXTURES being one file. So if you load Mat 1 for the belt and then Mat 2 for the pants you will have BOTH textures loaded into Ram.
  
  I'm sorry I was no help.
  
  EDIT: At 2.plus MB Ram used your out of free RAM to run the Software and do updates to the viewport as controlled by the OS and software.
  Edit Two: Only inject the MORPHS you use when needed not the FULL package of Morphs++ they also eat RAM, used (the Morph) or not.

  Post edited by Jaderail on September 2012
• theMickey Posts: 0

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  Hi, it's me again, with new test results:

  Loading just character files (i.e. V4.2 or M4) without Morphs++, no body/head morphs and no MATs works like a charm. I loaded up to 15 characters (with each character DAZ uses 270-300 MB more memory), so DAZ uses all my free memory and after that my system starts swapping, but I was able to continue loading characters.

  With 15 unmodified characters in the scene, as soon as I load a single skin MAT (i.e. the original DAZ "V4 Sample-Res" - "!All_Mapless") DAZ crashes.

  I've redone my test with files from the original Victoria 4 Base fileset only:
  - I loaded 15x Victoria into an empty scene (No morphs!)
  - I loaded 1x the "Sample Mapless" MAT (see above) for one figure --> CRASH
  - I repeated this test, removing one by one instance of Victoria before applying the mapless MAT.
  - As long as DAZ uses more than 2.3-2.5 gig of memory before I load the mapless skin DAZ crashes.

  V4s   Memory    Result
  11    3.53 GB   Crash
  10    3.24 GB   Crash
   9    2.85 GB   Crash
   8    2.52 GB   Crash
   7    2.23 GB   OK

  - With 7x V4 remaining in the scene (DAZ then uses 2.23 gig system memory) loading the !All_Mapless worked.

  So, either my original Victoria figure or the original Sample-Mat is corrupted -- or it is a memory issue. On my fresh Mac OS X install I will also install a new V4 instance and do more tests tomorrow. This is the only "object" which I used on almost every test.

  And thanks for the very useful tips regarding memory use and morphs. I will try to keep this in mind on future works...

  Regards,
  Mickey.
• Jaderail Posts: 0

  September 2012 edited September 2012

  Removed, for being brain dead.

  Post edited by Jaderail on September 2012
• fixmypcmike Posts: 19,565

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  Another way to reduce memory usage from morphs is to load up V4, inject all the morphs, then save as a .duf set. Then close DS4.5 to clear memory. Now, instead of loading V4 from the .cr2, load that .duf file. It will have all the morphs available but will only load the morphs you actually dial from the default value into memory.
• theMickey Posts: 0

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  Hurray!

  I got it fixed! Thanks for all your hints and your suggestions, it helped a lot.

  @Jaderail, you wrote:

  This is often NOT a Mem issue but an ITEM issue.

  And it seems like you have been right. And the corrupt "item" has been *drumroll* ... the base figure Victoria 4.2! I don't know how this happend, but as I announced yesterday I did another test with a new installed Victoria 4.2 Base and it worked! I was able to load 15x V4 (+Powerloader+Base Morphs) and apply skin MATs to them without DAZ crashing. DAZ then uses 4.5+ Gig and some swap space.

  Now I will install the V4 addons (Morphs++, Skins, ...) one by one to check which could have cause the corruption.

  Thanks again for your replies, and sorry DAZ for my harsh criticism which seems not to be justified ;-)

  Best regards,
  Mickey.
• martinkeitel_e65f08430a Posts: 83

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  Hi.

  I have a similar problem with 4.5, and it seems to be clearly related to memory. I have a quadcore PC wiht Windows XP and 4 GB RAM.
  Working with a scene originally created with DS3, with V4.2 and Uberlighting. Crashes at rendering and also doesn't load Victoria morphs as they were saved. I've managed to make some small size renders (like 600 x 800) but when I increase to something like 1200 x 1600, a crash is evident.
  THen I have to restard DS, make the changes to the morphs and try with other render size, different settings with uberlighting anh hope for the best.
  I even tried the trick suggested here: Delete V4 and reload it. I tried this, but even that didn't help.
  What else can I do?

  I still have DS3 installed, but naturally the changes I've made with 4.5 can't be loaded. Also DS3 is awfully slow when you render hair with uberlighting. I was delighted to see thatt 4.5 works much better with this, but not much fun if the render the crashes.
• Szark Posts: 10,634

  September 2012 edited December 1969

  When I posted my comments above I was running DS4.5.0.49 RC2 and everything was fine, yes a few bugs but nothing that would stop me rendering. Having a dual core, 32 bit system with 3.25 GB of usable Ram I have learnt to keep down the memory usage. I couldn't render huge images but large enough for my 22" LCD monitor at fairly high quality settings and IDL. Anyways come to DS4.5.0.114 and .137 the crashes were so frequent I rolled back to 4.5.0.49 and rendered the same scene made in .137 with no problems at all.

  I then thought about if it could be a prop in the scene that was causing it the issues, nope that wasn't it. I even tried to render a number of scenes some with brand new items, some with Genesis and some old content and all crashed out. I then tried each scene in DS4.5.0.49 RC2 and not one crash.

  I tried to save the Error reports when I got one but my system was so locked up I couldn't save the report. I even tried to copy and paste but again with the system locked up I couldn't even open Notepad. This is when I got the bug report window as most crashes were just that, poof gone without a word or goodbye. :)

  I did catch one which refered to memory and one refered to something about kernel 32 which is part of C++ which I already have updated.

  So i cannot make bug reports as I have no info on what is casuing it or to even start to define the issues as they are so hap hazard.
• martinkeitel_e65f08430a Posts: 83

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  Thanks for sharing that, Szark. I've installed the latest version of 4.5 and don't have any earlier version available.
  I just tried rendering a different file, with less stuff in it A few renders is small size worked, but then crashed again.
  It seems there IS a bug in this DS version, is it possible to get the earlier version from Daz while waiting for a fixed update?

  Veli
• Szark Posts: 10,634

  October 2012 edited October 2012

  A week later: I uninstalled DS4.5.0.49, CMS and all the plug-ins manually, well used the Windows Uninstall a Program feature in the Control Panel (Vista)

  After that I did a defrag and after a restart installed 4.5.0.137 etc.

  And in 3 years of using Daz Studio on this same computer this version does IMHO use more memory and this is with my maxing out the Ram (32BIT). I cannot use half the amount of geometry and textures and advanced lighting that I could a month ago.

  I can use it and I am but not as I would have hoped. But I am using a beta so I shouldn't moan that much,besides the software is free and usable up to a point.

  When I do get a full render out I am happy with the results and time it takes to render. I am wondering if this extra goodness has come at a memory cost.

  As for getting the previous versions soory I don't think any links work for the older ones. I will see if I can find any but don't hold much hope.

  I have burnt every version since DS2 on to Disc and portable HDD but I am afraid we cannot distribute old versions.

  Post edited by Szark on October 2012
• RLSprouse Posts: 288

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  I am also having constant crashing problems since updating to the latest version. I am hoping DAZ is aware that this is a widespread problem and it is being addressed. Sadly I cannot access their bug reporting system so I cannot submit the MANY crash reports I have accumulated.

  If there are content problems I would sure like to know which products I need to update. It seems I have these crashes regardless of what scene I create, even very simple ones.

  As soon as Paolo has Reality 3 ready for Poser I will probably abandon DAZ Studio, as I have wasted way too much time fighting its technical problems, much as I like the program otherwise.

  ~ Russ (a.k.a. Ansel)
• Szark Posts: 10,634

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  Ansel I don't think it down to content at all. All my testing has brought me to the conclusion the A; Daz Studio has memery leak or B; a 32bit system with 3 GB of Ram just doesn't cut it anymore.
• RLSprouse Posts: 288

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  Or, in my case, C; Win7 64 bit system with 8GB of Ram doesn't cut it either.
• Szark Posts: 10,634

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  I normally keep my opinions to myself but since starting with DS2 I have never had this much trouble with Daz Studio..ever.

  Because I have little understanding of computers, all I know how is how to use them, I find it hard to troubleshoot these issues.
• scorpio Posts: 8,312

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  Russ Sprouse said:

  Or, in my case, C; Win7 64 bit system with 8GB of Ram doesn't cut it either.

  Since I have moved up to Windows 7 64bit and 8 gigs of ram, DS 4 hasn't crashed on me once.
  Previously on a 32 bit system 4 gigs of Ram I had constant crashes and had to learn how to do images with more than 1 figure in several renders later composing them in photoshop.
• Szark Posts: 10,634

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  scorpio64dragon said:

  Russ Sprouse said:

  Or, in my case, C; Win7 64 bit system with 8GB of Ram doesn't cut it either.

  
  Previously on a 32 bit system 4 gigs of Ram I had constant crashes and had to learn how to do images with more than 1 figure in several renders later composing them in photoshop.Yeah I have had to revert back to doing that now. Oh well gives me more Photoshop/GIMP practice. See trying the get a positive out of this. :)
• scorpio Posts: 8,312

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  I have learnt sooo much about postwork through necessity and I am glad to have had to, I doubt I would have bothered otherwise. There are so many tutorials on the web that it was always easy to find a way to get the effect I wanted, except for water I'm lousy at water.

  Even now I still find rendering in layers preferable as I have more control, I don't really go for the photorealistic style so I enjoy seeing what postwork can do.

  I know how frustrating it is but I do think it has a positive side to it. Hopefully you will be able to upgrade soon, I didn't have a choice my old system died, first the graphics card then one stick of memory then the harddrive and then the processorr went - all within a few weeks of each other, worked out an expensive way to upgrade and its left me really skint.
  And now that I can do those big scenes I've always wanted to do in the past I keep doing portraits.
• fixmypcmike Posts: 19,565

  October 2012 edited December 1969

  Russ Sprouse said:

  I am also having constant crashing problems since updating to the latest version. I am hoping DAZ is aware that this is a widespread problem and it is being addressed. Sadly I cannot access their bug reporting system so I cannot submit the MANY crash reports I have accumulated.

  If there are content problems I would sure like to know which products I need to update. It seems I have these crashes regardless of what scene I create, even very simple ones.

  As soon as Paolo has Reality 3 ready for Poser I will probably abandon DAZ Studio, as I have wasted way too much time fighting its technical problems, much as I like the program otherwise.

  ~ Russ (a.k.a. Ansel)

  What problem are you having accessing the bug tracker?

  There's clearly something unusual going on -- DS4.5-64bit with 8GB RAM should not be crashing all the time. Which version is giving you problems, and what was the last version that didn't? What does DS say in Help > Troubleshooting > About your Video Card?
• bt1234567892009_1e8b750638 Posts: 5

  January 2013 edited December 1969

  I'm having difficulties too as of late. I have tried contacting tech support and they have been a lot less than helpful, which is strange because usually they solve my problems.

  Anyway, I have had DS4 since it was released, and never had a sign of problems, UNTIL around mid December. Any time I go to switch morphs with Genesis, DS crashes within a few seconds, and since that is the only reason I really use DS4 over Poser most of the time, it sucks. I do not know what the problem is, first Tech Support said OpenGL problems, but when I told them, despite me using an Intel HD Graphics 3000 mobile GPU, I have never had a single problem, even rendering at the highest settings. Now all of a sudden it happens constantly, I've tried updating the drivers, reinstalling the drivers, and reinstalling DS, the only thing I haven't tried is using legacy drivers, and I don't want to make some of my games unstable if that won't fix the problem. Hopefully I can get some assistance here.

  My system specs are:

  Windows 7 64-Bit
  Intel HD Graphics 3000 mobile GPU
  Intel core i3-2310m 2.1 GHz processor
  6GB RAM

  if I need to move to a new thread I will, but I was here looking for answers, so I thought this would be best.
• mark128 Posts: 1,029

  January 2013 edited December 1969

  I have used DAZ Studio 4.5 on 3 different computers.

  1) Laptop, Win XP, 32 bit, 2GB Ram, Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset - DAZ Studio frequently crashed. 3Delight renders crashed on anything but very small images.

  2) Laptop, Win 7, 64 bit, 4GB Ram, Nvida NVS 3100M video - DAZ Studio ran very well on this laptop. I had no problem with crashes. I was able to render scenes with 3Delight at large sizes with no problem.

  3) Desktop, Win 7, 64 bit, 16GB Ram, Nvida 640 graphics card - DAZ Studio runs very well on this desktop. Have been able to render huge scenes with 3Delight.

  From my experience and other posts I have read here, I think DAZ 4.5 has problems with Intel graphics chips. The 32bit version of 3Delight may have problems too.
• bt1234567892009_1e8b750638 Posts: 5

  January 2013 edited December 1969

  mark said:

  I have used DAZ Studio 4.5 on 3 different computers.

  1) Laptop, Win XP, 32 bit, 2GB Ram, Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset - DAZ Studio frequently crashed. 3Delight renders crashed on anything but very small images.

  2) Laptop, Win 7, 64 bit, 4GB Ram, Nvida NVS 3100M video - DAZ Studio ran very well on this laptop. I had no problem with crashes. I was able to render scenes with 3Delight at large sizes with no problem.

  3) Desktop, Win 7, 64 bit, 16GB Ram, Nvida 640 graphics card - DAZ Studio runs very well on this desktop. Have been able to render huge scenes with 3Delight.

  From my experience and other posts I have read here, I think DAZ 4.5 has problems with Intel graphics chips. The 32bit version of 3Delight may have problems too.

  That's not entirely true about it being Intel chips, as I said in my post, I have an Intel HD, and could render decent sized scenes with no trouble, using 64bit 3Delight, on max settings, I had one with the Intel 4 before this one, and I couldn't even run DS3, I have no clue exactly what DS's problems are @_@ I just know they pop up out of nowhere, at least in my case.
• frank0314 Posts: 13,357

  January 2013 edited December 1969

  DAZ Studio has always had problems with the Intel chipset.
• bt1234567892009_1e8b750638 Posts: 5

  January 2013 edited December 1969

  That's what tech support said, but WHY would it never show any problems before this? if it were the chipset, I am pretty sure it would always act up.
• Richard Haseltine Posts: 96,731

  January 2013 edited December 1969

  Rendering using 3Delight does not use the video chips, except for displaying the image, so it doesn't prove anything either way. My guess would be an update, to the drivers or to Windows, is the issue - it may be worth trying to roll back to an older driver, rather than a newer.
• bt1234567892009_1e8b750638 Posts: 5

  January 2013 edited December 1969

  that's what tech support said, so that's what I shall try I guess, thanks for all of the assistance.
• sjjesso_78ca0e6d0c Posts: 79

  July 2014 edited December 1969

  I really hate to Necropost put I've been having the same issues. Lately DAZ has been crashing every time I attempt to use the Look at my Hair plug in. After I finally managed to to get the plugin activated.