I am relatively new to DAZ Studio and was enjoying it until I started to build more “complex” scenes with more than one or two characters. Right now it’s impossible to work with DAZ Studio because it keeps crashing all the time.
I am using DAZ Studio Pro 4.5.0.114 on a MacBook Pro (latest, non-Retina model) with 8 GB of RAM, running Mac OS 10.8.1. I am experiencing this issue with both versions, 64 and 32bit, although I must say the 32bit version is far more stable (it seems to use less memory for the same operations). The MacBook itself has lots of free RAM left when working with DAZ, but as soon as DAZ needs more then 2.5 to 2.7 GB of RAM it crashes. With the 64bit version I can reproduce this crash by loading 5 Characters into an empty scene, applying different skin MATs to 4 of them, and when I try to load the fifth skin (I already tried different skin MATs to eliminate a corrupt skin) the memory usage of DAZ goes higher than 2.7 GB and DAZ crashes (with the 32bit version DAZ reaches this memory limit after the 7th or 8th character).
Shouldn’t the 32bit version be able to handle up to 4 gig of memory, and the 64bit version even more? Both versions are repeatedly giving up before they even get close to 3 GB!
Is there anybody out there who is having a similar issue? Or is it something specific to my system? Any experts here, who use DAZ on MacOSX and do they have any ideas? Should I “downgrade” to version 4.0/3.0? Maybe this is a known issue and there are workarounds, which I wasn’t able to find yet?
Any help would be very appreciated!
Thanks a lot in advance…
Best regards,
Mickey.
Ah, one more thing: I’ve already checked the MacOS crash reports but I am not getting a clue why DAZ keeps crashing. Maybe are more experienced “crash report reader” is able to point out why it crashes:
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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…
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
