Squeezing 20 G3F figures into 4GB of VRAM using Caymen Studio's latest product
Havos
Posts: 5,644
The image below is a proof of concept project to see how many G3F characters I could get into a scene and still render with my 4GB GPU. Normally just 2-3 Genesis 3 characters need 2-3 GB of VRAM just for themselves, due to the high resolution textures they are all supplied with, however using this product http://www.daz3d.com/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-3-special-edition-victoria-3 it was possible to load up a lot more figures by taking advantage of the lower number of maps, and lower resolution of Generation 3 skins. Some notes on the image.
1) All 20 figures are G3F, including the male figures.
2) All figures are separate G3F meshes, no instancing was used. All except the front one (the photographer) were set to base resolution.
3) All characters have separate skin textures, none are shared between multiple figures. Likewise no procedural or the like skins are used, all are Generation 3 skins.
4) I needed 3.2GB of VRAM to render, however the 20 fully textured, (but unclothed and without hair) figures needed just 1.8GB of VRAM to render.
5) DAZ Studio used 8GB of RAM to load the scene, which rose to 14GB during rendering. The RAM needed would have been significantly reduced if I had converted the characters into props after posing them.
6) The render took 20 mins on my GTX 970.
My feeling is using Generation 3 skins is acceptable, quality wise, for figures in the medium ground (which I define as being no more than half the height of the image, but at least a quarter of the height). I find low resolution figures like Lorenzo and Loretta to be okay for far background figures, but look pretty bad for medium ground figures like those pictured here. Where the whole image is taken by one figure, naturally it is preferable to use high resolution skins like those on Genesis 3.
Naturally you could achieve the same thing as in this photo by downsizing the Genesis 3 native skins, and removing some of the specular, bump etc maps they use, but I found this solution to be easier, and I did not need to create new versions of any textures. Note that a generation 3 skin needs just 2 large diffuse maps (one for the head, and one for the rest of the body), whilst Genesis 3 skins have 4 large diffuse maps (head, torso, legs and arms).
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Comments
Very clever! This approach would be good for city street scenes.
Nice. I wonder, what the difference in VRAM memory use will be using V4/M4 skins on Genesis 3, instead.
Great idea! I wonder if using Esemwy's "Reduce Textures" script would help even more. I'm finding it's very handy for squeezing scenes onto my 750Ti.
Not as much, but some. Generation 3 skins were typically 3000x3000, and there are just 2 large maps. M4/V4 skins are frequently 4000x4000 and there are 3 needed, so would need a fair amount of extra VRAM to hold them.
It could help certainly, but Generation 3 skins are lower resoution anyway (most of them anyhow), so are in less need for texture reduction. M3's std resolution textures are just 1500x2000, although I did not use them in the above image.
Thanks for posting. So, you used George on G3F?
Yes, I used Gen X to transfer the George morph (and all the other male morphs I used). He does not bend as well as on G3M, but from a distance a G3F George does not look too bad.
Ah-kha! Thanks. Was there any reason you opted for all G3F rather than including some G3M?
The Caymen studios product only works on G3F, so I could not use it to put the older generation 3 skins onto the male genesis figure. Since the whole purpose of the project was to use these lower res skins to save VRAM, then I had to use G3F only.
Of course! How ingenious of you. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Hey, Havos, that's pretty neat.
I hadn't thought about the memory benefits of using generation 3 textures.
I am glad you liked it :-) For me the memory saving was the main selling point of your product, although it was nice to have an excuse to dust off some older skins that had been lying unused for some time.
I have just tested iray rendering (GPU only) on my computer with graphic card VRAM 8GB. I have managed to put 7 different Genesis 3 female with hair and clothes,
and all of the scene fit in available VRAM. Adding 8th Genesis 3 caused iray to switch to CPU only mode, so your solution is great for a larger amount of characters.
cool information
now if only Nvidia would develop an out-of-core textures feature like there is in OctaneRender, people would not need to do such things to render large scenes
True, but there is more to this than just saving VRAM. I suspect if I had had a card big enough to render 20 people with full Genesis 3 skins, it would have taken a lot longer than 20 mins to render. The specular etc of the skins would have looked better than above, but the skin details might not have looked all that different. Chucking more RAM at the issue makes people lazy so that they end up using more resources than they need. Characters whose skins are not taking up most of the screen simply do not need the kind of high resolution textures that come with Genesis 3 figures.
It's sounds very cool, but why doesn't have Victoria 4 version? I usually buy V4 AND m4 products and genesis, genesis 2 and genesis 3, but avoid V3 :( It would be amazing to use my monsters V4 and M4 textures on G3
There is a V4 version:
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-3-v4/113767/
There is also an M4 version, http://www.daz3d.com/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-3-michael-4
The purpose of my test was not that generation 3 skins were the most suitable for a beach photo, but that they yielded the biggest saving in VRAM. If the 20 figures pictured above had been using V4/M4 skins instead of V3/M3 ones, I would likely have needed much more memory, and the scene would not have fitted onto the 4GB of my GPU.
thanks, there's is a hidden reason about why is not in daz? it's banned?
No, he started selling at rendo first and has kept his older products there. Works the same, just a different store.
It would be the first thing I buy outside daz. Hope he gets his old material to daz one day, I think rendo is declining and someday purchases there could be lost from net host
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Then there's the Iray Memory Assistant to figure out where all the scene can be optimized, not just the textures.