Digital Art Zone

Greetings. I’ve been working with what I think is a memory handicap for quite awhile now and am finally reaching out for a little insight.

When I first came in with DS3 32 bit, I understood that it had a cap of 2GB memory use. I then upgraded to DS3A about 6 months after that, and memory never seemed to be an issue.

Fast forward to the present, I’m working with 12GB of fast DDR3 memory on a great and modern rig, and I ALWAYS run into what feels like a memory leak. Studio slows down further and further after working for a few hours, and eventually it gets to a point where it’s nearly unresponsive. However, in Task Manager, it shows Studio using ~1.01GB of RAM.

Is there a massive amount of memory leak going on, or is there a way to uncap Studio to take advantage of more memory??

Win 7 64 Ultimate
AMD Phenom II 1095T Black hex core
12GB HyperX Ram @2000mhz
(2) GTS 450’s in SLI
Running all the latest drivers
Studio 4 Pro 4.0.3.47

why not try version 4.5.0.26 or latest 4.5.0.49

if you still have the problem in one of above versions.
create a bug report about your problem at http://bugs.daz3d.com

I’m a heavy Reality/Luxrender user, to which 4.5 is not yet compatible. Thanks for the suggestion though. I put a help ticket in about 6 months ago and never heard back, so that’s why I’m hoping a community member may know. Spread the word

If TaskManager shows Studio is only using ~1GB of RAM, then that is all it is using, and it’s unlikely it’s leaking memory.  I’ve not noticed Studio leaking on my machine, either.  The only way it could be leaking and not shown by Task Manager is if its a kernel memory leak, such as if your graphics device drivers have a leak.  Have you checked if they are up to date?

This isn’t to say that your gradual slowdown isn’t real; just that it’s probably related to something other than memory consumption.  Unless you’ve got a bunch of other stuff running at the same time that is causing your total memory usage to exceed physical RAM.  How much free memory does Task Manager show available in your system?  Are you seeing a lot of paging activity?

cwichura - 17 June 2012 05:00 PM

If TaskManager shows Studio is only using ~1GB of RAM, then that is all it is using, and it’s unlikely it’s leaking memory.  I’ve not noticed Studio leaking on my machine, either.  The only way it could be leaking and not shown by Task Manager is if its a kernel memory leak, such as if your graphics device drivers have a leak.  Have you checked if they are up to date?

This isn’t to say that your gradual slowdown isn’t real; just that it’s probably related to something other than memory consumption.  Unless you’ve got a bunch of other stuff running at the same time that is causing your total memory usage to exceed physical RAM.  How much free memory does Task Manager show available in your system?  Are you seeing a lot of paging activity?

Today I’m doing promo shots, but strangely Daz is using ~4.5Gb for this scene and isn’t slow to respond. I guess that answers that. I begin to wonder if it was just too much geometry, as I had a veritable armory on one glass table, a room and a figure with clothing.
Last night when I had my monster slowdown, I had appox. 6 GB of free memory and more programs running, including a Lux render that was hitting in at ~1.48GB in memory.

Thanks for your thoughts Cwichura. It led to my discovery of strange conclusions

The polygon count does make a pretty big difference in viewport response speed for me.  E.g., if you have a base gen 4 figure and convert it to subdivision, the viewport gets slow.  Then bump it to two levels of subdivision (so now 16x the original polygon count for the gen 4 figure) and the viewport starts crawling.

So if you had a lot of figures/props loaded, then your polygon count has gone up and that is perhaps why it was slow.  Whereas LuxRender seems to deal with high polygon counts pretty much the same as it does less polygons, other than it requiring more RAM to hold the additional geometry.

(I use Studio’s subdivision on figures, rather than setting subdivision on them in Reality, since the loop subd that Lux does usually results in noticeable patterns (like striations) in the figure’s skin whereas the CC subd done by Studio makes for very smooth skin on figures.  But to keep Studio responsive, I leave the gen 4 figures at base resolution until I’m ready to export to Reality, and then I switch them to high resolution with 2x subdivision.  Genesis figures don’t seem to slow down Studio as much as gen 4 figures do, despite also being subd’ by default.)

cwichura - 17 June 2012 05:47 PM

The polygon count does make a pretty big difference in viewport response speed for me.  E.g., if you have a base gen 4 figure and convert it to subdivision, the viewport gets slow.  Then bump it to two levels of subdivision (so now 16x the original polygon count for the gen 4 figure) and the viewport starts crawling.

So if you had a lot of figures/props loaded, then your polygon count has gone up and that is perhaps why it was slow.  Whereas LuxRender seems to deal with high polygon counts pretty much the same as it does less polygons, other than it requiring more RAM to hold the additional geometry.

(I use Studio’s subdivision on figures, rather than setting subdivision on them in Reality, since the loop subd that Lux does usually results in noticeable patterns (like striations) in the figure’s skin whereas the CC subd done by Studio makes for very smooth skin on figures.  But to keep Studio responsive, I leave the gen 4 figures at base resolution until I’m ready to export to Reality, and then I switch them to high resolution with 2x subdivision.  Genesis figures don’t seem to slow down Studio as much as gen 4 figures do, despite also being subd’ by default.)

I did have SubD on a V4 in this instance. I’m slowly turning over to Genesis for just such these reasons. I’ll have to remember to subD at the end as you suggested. Great tip! Its the little things.
Do you happen to know where the display of poly counts is in Studio 4?

SuperBoomTurbo - 17 June 2012 06:09 PM

Do you happen to know where the display of poly counts is in Studio 4?

I do not, sorry.

I’ve also suggested to the Lux devs that they add an info line to the log file when scene parsing is complete that reports the total amount of geometry and total memory used by textures.  Hopefully they add that.

Window > Tabs > Scene Info will show you what you want.  You can get by selected item or by all item views.

adamr001 - 18 June 2012 07:11 AM

Window > Tabs > Scene Info will show you what you want.  You can get by selected item or by all item views.

Thanks Adam. I got so excited I found it by accident I came to post just that. You beat me to it!