Relatively new to DAZ, having issues with rendering
TATSU 3D
Posts: 224
Hey everyone,
First of all, this is my first ever post in the forums, so I hope i'm putting this in the right place.
I've been experimenting with basic scenes in DAZ for a couple of months now, slowly getting better and learning all the time. However, since I decided to wipe my PC and re-install everything from scratch (was running very slow), I have encountered a strange recurring issue when using DAZ Studio 4.9.
I only ever use IRAY as I find it gives quicker (and arguably better!) results, however since I reinstalled it will render one (maybe 2 if I am lucky) scenes, before ceasing to use my GPU's and instead rendering only via CPU. In the render settings both my graphics cards are checked (NVIDIA GTX980TI, and a GTX960), and CPU is unchecked. From memory the CPU is a 6 core AMD Phenom 1090? It's about 5 years old. The sysrem is running 64bit Windows 10 and has 16GB RAM.
I'm by no means an expert with the many settings inside DAZ Studio, and I have no idea why it's decided to start doing this. As you can imagine once it starts using CPU the machine slows way down. When it's using the 2 GPU's I can still pretty much do anything on the PC while it renders.
I don't want to just rendomly play with settings so I'd really appreciate any help you guys could give me with this! I just want it to keep rendering using GPU's!
I did read somewhere about texture compression maybe being the problem. It was set by default to Medium Threshold 512 & High Threshold 1024. I have tried adjusting these settings up and down in multiples of 256 to no avail.
Don't know what else to try, short of a complete re-installation (which I really don't want to have to do!)
Thanks in advance!
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Comments
Are you leaving the previous render windows open, this uses up Vram, Iray stores the scene data for each render, try closing them and you shouuld be able to do more renders before dropping to CPU.
Hey Scorpio,
No, I know about the perils of leaving previous render windows open. I can truthfully say I never leave those open.
I don't know your individual cards specs, but usually the 980 has 4GB VRAM, the 960 probably has 2GB?
If so, the maximum Iray can use (in your situaion) is 2GB of VRAM. Not having dual cards myself, so not sure how to setup, but you're probably better off disabling the 960 for use with/in Iray when creating a little more complex scene....
Having a 2GB card myself, I usually have to restart DS after a render to make sure it gets rid of any 'leftovers' in the GPU (but usually, my scenes are too large to fit in the VRAM anyway)
You need to figure out how much memory your scenes are taklng up. Use something like the free TechPowerUp GPU-Z.
If you are using more memory than you have in either of the GPUs then DAZ Studio it will drop you into CPU only.
Also, do a search for GPU and memory. I have posted about my problems with my GPU not releasing memory when I max the VRAM and so have a few others. When that happens I just exit DAZ Studio and run it again.
Such as:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/74255/flush-gpu-memory-between-renders
Ok, I have taken on board what you said and disabled the 960 card. Will give that a try.
As for the scene memory amount - it can literally be a base figure and a single light. One (maybe 2 renders) and that's it. The thing is, I had no such issues at all pre-reinstall. Even with more complex scenes!
I'm having a read of the thread you sent me to aswell. I'll see how that goes.
Thanks for the help offered so far :)
No, DS wouldd rop the 2GB card but continue to use the larger (the 980Ti is 6GB) as long as the scene fitted into that.
So is there any settings I can take a look at in DAZ to see what's causing it to return to CPU rendering only?
Note: I have disabled the 960 and now solely have the 980 checked. It's still doing the same thing, even after multiple restarts.
Leaving the window open simply keeps the current scene -- not current render -- in memory. Unless your VRAM is already marginal -- and 4G on a one character scene is not marginal -- you don't need to do this. It only causes each render to take longer as D|S has to rebuild the scene all over again before sending it to Iray.
If you didn't have this problem before, and you're using the same version of D|S 4.9, I'd look at the graphics driver. No doubt you downloaded and installd the latest one. It's possible they've updated it since, or you'd be better off, for now, with a driver that's a version or two earlier. This should work as long as you're not using the latest 4.9 beta, which requires a very recent driver.
FYI, on my system I have a 2G and a 4G card. The 2G card is also connected to the display monitor. I have no problem rendering single character (with clothes and hair) scenes in the 2G card, as long as the setting is simple. I often don't render with a setting at all, but except for some very large ones, the sets don't often consume lots of memory, either geometry or textures.
You should definitely get one ot the utilities mentioned above (or get openhardwaremonitor) to see how much ram your cards have. the 980Ti comes in a 4Gb or 6Gb, and the 960 with 2Gb or 4Gb. The utilities will also let you see (in a general sense) how, and when memory is being used. As noted above, it sounds like it could be a card driver issue, so you may want to either update the drivers (or downgrade to the last version if you recently updated), or possibly re-install the drivers (maybe an upgrade didn't install cleanly).