is my lack of memory making my Daz scenes this slow?
Drekkan
Posts: 460
It appears my system starts seriously lagging after I load up just only ONE G3 character clothed into a scene. What would you say should be the most important requirements to make a daz scene run smoothly with a few or a bunch of G3 or G8 figures with clothing and scenes? I only have 48GB free of 111GB total so I would assume its the lack of GB is the main reason right now. What should the minimum be to have at least a few characters set up in a scene with clothing and props before it lags to hell? I am not wanting loads in a scene but just a few would be nice without it lagging and making things very difficult but it can barely handle ONE!
My graphics card I should mention also isn't that bad its a GEFORCE GTV 1060. Thankyou.
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Sounds like you are talking about Hard drive space instead of CPU RAM?
GPU is the most important thing. What graphics does your system have? Also, how much system ram do you have, and what processor?
40GB of hard drive space should be fine for now, but yeah might not hurt to get a larger hard drive for later. Daz content can soak up hard drive space pretty quickly as new stuff is added to your library.
K I don't know what you mean what graphics does my system have but I said above my graphics CARD.
Anyway to answer about ram and CPU please click pic:
OK, the FX-4350 is a somewhat older processor, but that's a bit less important than which graphics card you have. The 16GB of ram should be fine.
On that same page where you found those specs, look for 'Device Manager', click on that, and then scroll down to Display Adaptor and open up it's subfolder. That should show which graphics you are currently using.
If you are using a non Nvidia (or older Nvidia) graphics solution, the graphics will only help with the viewport in Daz, but wont' help at all with Iray. Other rendering modes in Daz (3Delight, etc.) don't need an Nvidia card, they primarily use the CPU. You have a quad core CPU, so that's helpful.
But viewport uses your graphics chip, regardless of brand, so it's good to know which graphics chip you have.
K here..
The GTX 1060 is a good card, so you are looking good there. There are a handful of better cards, of course, but that's a 'current gen' card so no worries there.
Next question, regarding your Daz stuido settings:
Under Render Settings/Advanced (if using Iray), is the GTX1060 box checked, and Optix Acceleration enabled?
And, if you could open up preferences (F2 key will open up your preferences, or look under edit>preferences), Check under the interface tab. It'd probably be fastest if you take a screenshot of this tab, so that others here can see it and make suggestions as to which settings will improve the performance of the viewport.
Finally, I find it best to work using the Texture Shaded setting under viewport when setting up a character and scene, and changing over to Iray to make final adjustments. It takes a bit of time for the Iray viewport to dial in/show your changes. And this is coming from a dual GTX1080 guy - yes the viewport is still painfully slow at times in Iray mode, even with dual 1080s...
BTW, Hidden Wireframe mode in viewport is good for posing and positioning, so that you can see if, and if so how much objects are embedding within each other more precisely than when using Texture Shaded. I use this a lot when dialing in hand and and finger poses when they are touching/grasping other things.
The Spot Render tool is made specifically for this purpose (i.e seeing how it'll look if not in Iray viewport mode already). I.E. select spot render tool, drag open a smaller box area on the viewport, and wait for the render of that section to happen...
If your lighting is 'blacking out' the characters, etc. in Texture Shaded, well there are temporary workarounds, but one thing at a time.
K sure here...
All those background processes, especially VLC running in your image can be a big drain on resources. Shutting down any app or process that is running before rendering would be a big help also. It also depends on what is in your scene as well. Many of the newer addons are overkill on textures and rsolution.
OK, the only major differences I have in my settings is that I have Per Pixel shading set to on, and Display Optimization set to Best. Others may have better suggestions on how to fine tune those settings.
And, as I pointed out already, Iray Viewport can be slow at times - using the Texture Shaded or other viewport modes. will respond a bit more quickly to adjustments.
And FSMCDesign's observation r.e. background processes is a good one. With ram and CPU, and particularly with 16GB or less of ram available, the fewer processes you are splitting that between, the better.
Does it matter if I work Iray or not if I haven't actually started rendering yet? I mean I am just applying figures and props in a scene so am not even at the rendering point yet why why would Iray matter or not? just asking.
So as an overview you think theres no main reason so far?
Iray makes pretty renders, and a number of the newer products are being designe with Iray in mind. You have the right card for it, so no reason not to use it, other than if you prefer the '3Delight' look over the Iray' look. And yeah, there's those OpenGL settings for render engines, but I think pretty much everyone here uses either 3Delight or Iray.
As for my 'overview' of your situation, I think the main thing is to find the best way to work within Daz, which will develop over time. You can work with the viewport in Texture Shaded mode with no issues as you set up the basics of your scene, but still have your render tab set for Iray, you don't need to 'change' the viewport just to do a test Iray render
Also, as FSMCDesigns pointed out, some products are more resource intensive than others, so some things will respond more slowly than others. That's not necessarily a bad thing, so don't be surprised when it happens.
And, as I pointed out, the Spot Render tool is great when you are using Texture Shaded or Hidden Wireframe in the viewport.
You'll probably want to switch to Iray Viewport when you are dialing in your lighting, though. So you can 'put off' the painful wait for the viewport to resolve until the tail end of the process.
Yeah, a faster/newer CPU might be nice (AMD Ryzen or the latest Intel CPUs), but thanks to that GTX1060 you have, you are already in pretty good shape for Iray.
I'd definitely suggest looking into a larger external USB drive, or an additional/larger HDD soon. That 40GB will dissapear in no time if you decide you like this Daz thing...
One other note. While it's extremely valuable to learn how lighting works, if you just wnat to mess with models for a bit, a HDRI sphere can light your scene well enough, and they seem to be a bit 'kinder' r.e usage of system resources. HDRI Haven has a bunch of these, and there are other free HDRI resources out there. HDRI's are essentially 360 degree spheres, that emit their own lighting, similar to how a 'natural' environment might.
Does your GTX 1060 have 6 GB VRAM or only 3 GB VRAM?
His Device Manager claims that it has 6GB. I have no particular reason to doubt the device manager.
I found that setting "Display Optimization" to best really improved system responsiveness when setting up scenes or working with large environments. I have an older i7 and 16 GB of RAM, and for things like Airport Island, the difference was night and day.
How can I do this 'display optimization' option please Chezjuan :D
Go to the Edit Tab, Preferences (or click F2) then head to the Interface Tab and part way down you will see Display Optimization, with a selection of None, Better, Best..
thanks for that tip there guys about the display optimisation. K I clicked on it :O the scene seems to be so much smoother :O this is at the expense of what though?
As far as I can tell, this is just taking advantage of features that your video card already has. If there's a performance hit, I think the more responsive viewport more than offsets any potential performance hit. Rendering time shouldn't be affected by this setting. I haven't noticed any downside whatsoever, although I'd imagine that on really low end systems, then there may be a reason to NOT do this. I wouldn't consider your system low end, although your CPU is a bit older.
So in short, no worries.
Well done, TJ!
Nice. Thanks all :)