Iray Memory Assistant

kwannie

Hoping I can get a few tips on how to really use Sim Tenero's Iray Memory Assistant Correctly. I have a scene that is a night club stage setting with a stage base, curtais and few spotlight, and of course a character.

When I run memory assistant I see everythin in the scene with the node check boxes on the left (which I'm not sure what those do, since there is not a refresh for the memory calculation) The totals at the bottom are easy to understand, but the Potential VRAM shortage is always a negative number but doesn't say if that number represents .kb or .mb. It is stated as a shortage so I don't know if it means that the negative number represts how much VRAM memory I do or don't have.

   In the system info tab I am getting 6.47 MB for available VRAM and 3 GB Available SYS Ram. So,can I take that as the legitimate value that I have to play with? I mean if I change a texture that adds 6.48 MB for example am I getting kicked out of GPU processing? How can I get a recalculation if I check or uncheck available nodes? Which numbers do I need to be looking at from the results to make decisions abbout changes to make to the scene to conserve memory?  Thank You!!

kwannie

Does anybody have Iray Memory Assistant and use it at all?

barbult

At first it looked promising. But after using it, it became apparent that it is too inaccurate to predict whether a scene will fit in GPU memory. There are too many things not taken into account in the calculations.  I returned it. Have you read through the commercial thread on the product? That probably has the best overview of the issues. 

kwannie

Thank you for clarifying what I suspected. I have ben tweaking my characters and animations for a long time, and I was rendering about 5 to  frames a minute. As soon as I tried to place an environment in the scene ( in my case a night club stage) the rendering bogged down to about 2 frames a minute. I tried to use memory assistant to help decide what to leave in or take out, but no matter what I changed the numbers displayed remained the same. I bought it way to long ago to return it, .............oh well. I heard it is possible to use windows tools to get an accurate picture of memory usage but I'm not sure which ones to use or how to set it up.

By the way I noticed that on larger scenes that even if they fit in in GPU memory there always seems to be a sluggish pause in the iterations of rendering of every frame. Does that have anything to do with the amount of system memory available?

barbult

I don't know much about animation. Do you think Daz reloads the scene into the graphics card between each frame? I use GPU-Z to see how much graphics card memory is used by the scene being rendered. It is not predictive and cannot tell you how much is used by any particular asset, but it lets you know how close the whole scene is to the limit of your card.

kwannie

Ahh, OK Maybe I give that a whirl. What is the difference between the Standard Version and the ASUS ROG Themed?

barbult

I use Standard. I figured it was just an appearance (skins) difference, but I never investigated.

kwannie

Alright, well thank you barbult. So, could you tell me when you say that DAZ reloads the scene into the GPU between frames does that translate to much more system ram will speed up rendering overall because of the more space for exchange between GPU and system ram? Sorry if its a dumb question.

barbult

I didn't say Daz reloads the scene, I only asked whether you thought that was happening, because of the delay you noticed.

kwannie

Ohhh...........sorry, my aging eyes. Hmmmmm, I have absolutely no clue. I just know that if I happen to place more items in a scene that there will be an initial pause and slow down to how fast the iterations happen on each frame that is rendered. I does kind od act like it is doing a load then the rendering iteration quickly happen after the full scene is loaded. If I could boost the initial time between frames by using a seperate video card for display and adding more system ram, that would be an easy thing to fix. I hope maybe a guru chimes in to tell us if that would be the case........!