any new suggestions for staying under the limit in animated renders

WendyLuvsCatz

I am circling the drain near the limit of my VRAM

it renders, for up until 60 frames last run

previous runs were 43 and 35 respectively 

once it decides it's going to hit my limit and stop because dropping to CPU is definitely not an option so disabled 

the only option is to restart Studio and proceeding from the frame I left off

I do want to avoid the obvious solutions of dropping to base resolution, removing or reducing texture maps

already optimised much, the fact it can render the images until it cannot is what irks me

what pushes it over the edge after up to 60 frames

removing things from the scene in most of these cases no difference whatsoever to the VRAM used too

it just uses the maximum it can but takes less time to do it

I am looking for new suggestions I haven't thought of that consume VRAM or rather intermittently do so pushing my render over the limit and point of no return 

I suspect it's something Windows is doing outside of studio taking away VRAM

I am logging to file with GPU-Z also this run to see if I get any insights

smaller images is also not a solution, it's faster, much faster to go 760p instead of 1080p, but it just reaches the final destination of running out of VRAM quicker

for now I am plodding along restarting studio and continuing on

I did notice this next run of 50 frames since I posted this, it just sat at 10580MB of VRAM without any GPU activity and the render dialogue still open, I cancelled and it hung onto the VRAM, my trick with single images of switching to CPU and unchecking my GPU to free the VRAM doesn't work with animations. Even upon canceling before it drops out.

It can actually hit 11000 without topping out and never actually does according to the log

11200 is the absolute limit, 1 have a 2080Ti

there are no dforce simulations in the scene 

 

Padone

You ask if there's something more without telling what you already did. However, one thing that comes to mind is disabling the denoiser, that you didn't mention you don't want, and can reduce vram usage. Another thing is "ray tracing low memory" in the render settings, if you didn't.

Personally I don't have this limit you mention, if a scene fits the vram I can go on rendering forever. You could try a couple tests to eventually identify the culprit. Start with a simple scene then add elements.

p.s. If you use extra plugins that's another thing to look for, as plugins may have memory leaks.

p.s. Keeping your viewport as "wire bounding box" will avoid stealing vram while rendering, if you use the same card for rendering and the viewport.

WendyLuvsCatz

Padone said:

You ask if there's something more without telling what you already did. However, one thing that comes to mind is disabling the denoiser, that you didn't mention you don't want, and can reduce vram usage. Another thing is "ray tracing low memory" in the render settings, if you didn't.

Personally I don't have this limit you mention, if a scene fits the vram I can go on rendering forever. You could try a couple tests to eventually identify the culprit. Start with a simple scene then add elements.

p.s. If you use extra plugins that's another thing to look for, as plugins may have memory leaks.

p.s. Keeping your viewport as "wire bounding box" will avoid stealing vram while rendering, if you use the same card for rendering and the viewport.

I need denoiser sadly as full of emitters for glow, not actually lighting so using sun/sky only

they still add noise though

my frames are 20 samples with denoiser from frame 0

the first up to 50 frames render fine

I always have the viewport as wire bounding box when rendering to file

am actualy eyeing off my antivirus 

already not doing anything else especially browsing,

scenes well below that's never an issue and animations complete 

it when it's to the wire with only 600ish MB of VRAM to spare this becomes a problem 

I am rendering this scene 

it is a lot, I usually do backgrounds and characters separately so don't have this issue either

Luthbell's outfit plus the Xi Steampunk Slums is a very big ask 

still want to solve it

am trying earlier versions of D|S now

additional scenes for this video will be separate backgrounds and foreground 

just finishing this 8 second shot ... slowly 

donniekeidic

you can render without the denoiser and then use this script that was also talked about in another thread (don't have that link handy) but everything you need is here:

https://taosoft.dk/software/freeware/dnden/

then you can drag and drop your frames here (you can select more than 1 at a time) and it will batch denoise them afterwards saving you quite a bit of vram memory during your renders, i've been doing this and it works great. 

WendyLuvsCatz

I could give that a try again if all else fails

did use it in the past but preferred the D|S denoiser

am actually watching my render and GPU-Z now to see when it happens 

also using an earlier version of studio without the latest plugins I bought installed

saves disabling them, in case that's an issue

I also am forced to use an older Nvidia driver anyway which could too be an issue with later builds as I have other older expensive software (Octane Render4, iClone6) that doesn't like the latest ones

I also went through TaskManager and killed Microsoft Edge processes, news etc and a few other programs like Everything 

Padone

Sharing my render settings if it can help. They work fine for me. However filling the vram to the top is always a risk, better leave some spare space. I'm curious how you render the background separately, I may have something to learn here, apart if you just compose.

WendyLuvsCatz

just compose and what I do 90% of the time

I will look when I can but mine are pretty low and usually fast as in 6 frames a minute

this scene is a frame per minute

my older saved version of D|S, last with the 3Delight engine (irrelevant but reason saved) is so far going well but probably jinxed that by saying so

I have added Ultrascenery 2 to the latest among other plugins I don't have in this one I am now using 

the logical thing is leave plenty to spare and I do mostly 

just want to know why after rendering 50 odd frames perfectly it suddenly gives up

WendyLuvsCatz

it stopped immediately after I posted this on my iPad

WendyLuvsCatz

update

having denoiser not enabled actually makes no difference to my render or the VRAM or time taken

but will see if it helps it keep rendering 

Padone, your settings not much different to mine except less samoles and small dimensions, mine are pretty much draft anyway 

but will see if it helps it keep rendering 

it did, I got it to render almost 3 hours

90 frames

it stopped 8 frames short of completion  

no obvious reason

anyway done with that scene, will composite rest of my video

jmucchiello

I'm confused. Render in batches. Only do frames 0-19. Then do frames 20-39. Etc.

If you have render queue, have it restart Daz between renders.

WendyLuvsCatz

jmucchiello said:

I'm confused. Render in batches. Only do frames 0-19. Then do frames 20-39. Etc.

If you have render queue, have it restart Daz between renders.

I don't have render queue

and I have no way of knowing when it will fail

D|S has to be totally shut down and restarted because it won't let go of the VRAM 

donniekeidic

i think the DnD denoiser can be configured to use the same denoiser as Daz (your Nvidia GPU). Mine is set to only use Nvidia denoiser, so I assume this is the same denoiser that happens if done in Daz on your GPU. I could be wrong, but I can't tell a difference between the two when I set like this. Anway, glad it worked for you.

jeronimocollares

Solution for rendering extensive animations:

Don't use Daz; use Unreal, Unity, or AI.

Richard Haseltine

You can limit the number of frames to rnder in Render Settings, Just do a safe (at a guess) number of frames, restart DS, do the next batch of frames, and so on.

WendyLuvsCatz

Richard Haseltine said:

You can limit the number of frames to rnder in Render Settings, Just do a safe (at a guess) number of frames, restart DS, do the next batch of frames, and so on.

well this is in effect what I was doing except when it stops rendering instead of possibly before

I guess the only thing I can take away from this is treat my VRAM limit as 10GB in D|S

and,jeronimocollares, I do use other software a lot too

rendering the rest as mp4 backgrounds in Twinmotion and just my characters with matching EXR panoramas for lighting in DAZ