Windows, stop eating my VRAM >:o(

[DrHemulen]

Does anybody have any tips for minimizing the amount of VRAM windows uses? I have a 2 gig card, and 500 megs are lost to a black box in the "System" tab in the plugin. I assume this is Windows 7 using it for whatever. I tried changing my wallpaper (2 monitors), switching off aero and similar stuff, but it didn't really have much impact

Is there anything I can do that'll make an impact here?

[t_3]

Does anybody have any tips for minimizing the amount of VRAM windows uses? I have a 2 gig card, and 500 megs are lost to a black box in the "System" tab in the plugin. I assume this is Windows 7 using it for whatever. I tried changing my wallpaper (2 monitors), switching off aero and similar stuff, but it didn't really have much impact

Is there anything I can do that'll make an impact here?

unfortunately it is not easy to find out what processes request how much gpu resources - saying this reminds me that i use the nvidia driver api (for temps), so i'm going to have a look if there is a way to report non-octane usage - as this also bugged me for a long time.

so, what else can help: studio uploads maps to the gpu for its ogl display; you can reduce the amount of vram this needs by going (in studio) to edit > preferences > interface, and drag the texture quality slider to "performance" and turn the pixel buffer off. you can also take a look at the nvidia driver settings for ogl and reduce quality settings in a similar way.

given that the studio viewport is just a preview anyway, this not only saves vram, but also makes studio more responsive.

pls let me know if any of these steps makes a notable difference...

[abstrax]

One more thing you can try is disabling Windows Aero, by choosing the Windows 7 Basic scheme under Control Panel -> Personalization. Aero uses OpenGL I think.

[DrHemulen]

t3: I had already done these tweaks. Turning off aero and restarting DAZ gave me 1780megs usable, which is a lot better (The "turn aero off" button in the plugin doesn't seem to do anything for me).
Edit: Restarted windows, up to 1826 megs usable
Edit2: Disbale Stardock fences, up to 1864 megs usable.

[t_3]

t3: I had already done these tweaks. Turning off aero and restarting DAZ gave me 1780megs usable, which is a lot better (The "turn aero off" button in the plugin doesn't seem to do anything for me).
Edit: Restarted windows, up to 1826 megs usable
Edit2: Disbale Stardock fences, up to 1864 megs usable.

unfortunately there seem to be more and more applications that utilize gpu resources all the time. never would think about stardock, but good to know. would be great to put a list together with applications known to eat vram.

regarding the plugin aero switch: that's strange. my guess would be stgh. windows uac dependent; the plugin inhertis the host rights, so it may depend if studio is running with admin rights to let the plugin be able to turn off the service; you can try to run the daz studio exe as adminstrator, to see if that makes a difference.

can you btw try if this works on your sys: open a command prompt window, and type "net stop uxsms" + enter - this also should stop aero (or "net start uxsms" to activate it again).

you can also use a batchfile/.cmd to first stop aero whenever you run studio; let me know if you need help or if any of the above gives new insight...

[prehabitat]

1864MB is already great - so I don't know if you'll need this: BUT...

You can reduce overhead to 0mb by using VNC or Splashtop streamer: set up your scene(using reduced res for example), then if you need that higher res & MB usage connect via laptop/iPad via VNC/SpT with them set to 'disable monitor/logout when cliet connected' - tadaaa! 0mb usage.

p.s. only tested with Revit plugin and standalone: but I cant see why it wouldn't work for DAZ

[mbetke]

My system easts up 192MB of Vram if I just started my computer without aero.

Also (I use the 3dsmax plugin so it my not apply to DAZ) while loading several scenes with textures displayed in viewport the vram fills up. If I want to do a final render of a scene I switch to bounding boxes view which only displays all assets in their bounding boxes, save and restart 3dmax. Now all vram is freeed.
Maybe DAZ has some similar possibility?

[DrHemulen]

regarding the plugin aero switch: that's strange. my guess would be stgh. windows uac dependent; the plugin inhertis the host rights, so it may depend if studio is running with admin rights to let the plugin be able to turn off the service; you can try to run the daz studio exe as adminstrator, to see if that makes a difference.

Yup, that was it, working perfectly now

[t_3]

My system easts up 192MB of Vram if I just started my computer without aero.

Also (I use the 3dsmax plugin so it my not apply to DAZ) while loading several scenes with textures displayed in viewport the vram fills up. If I want to do a final render of a scene I switch to bounding boxes view which only displays all assets in their bounding boxes, save and restart 3dmax. Now all vram is freeed.
Maybe DAZ has some similar possibility?

hm; actually i don't know; the daz viewport has some bounding box display mode, but the question is if this actually keeps the maps from loading - need to try that out; good idea anyway...

[sikotik13]

From a quick experiment with a scene I'd previously done, it appears that either the plugin or Daz itself holds whatever textures are applied to an object in memory, regardless of display.

Example:
1. I loaded the scene as is (Octane materials applied to all surfaces previously), scene used roughly 1300 MB (according to textures tab in plugin).
-Result: Amount of vram used did not change (39%), regardless of display in viewport (left viewport display on 'bounding box' for remainder of experiment).
2. Opened Chrome, available space dropped by about 600 MB. Verified for me that the display updated automatically since I wasn't sure it did.
3. Noticed that one texture which I reused for multiple surfaces, and smaller than several others in the scene was using 79563 KB of memory by itself.
4. Went to Daz Surfaces tab and removed the diffuse image from the character.
5. Reapplied the texture to all surfaces relevant in Octane Plugin.
-Result: Usage dropped from 39% to 37%. Not bad, considering the same texture was still applied to the same surfaces, just utilizing less space.

Conclusion: It appears, as I said, that either the plugin itself or Daz Studio pre-caches the textures in memory, regardless of what you actually ask it to display.

I would assume Daz Studio does it, because the size doesn't really change much when you remove it, but removing the surface in Octane render changes absolutely nothing if you leave it applied in Daz. Sort of seems it uses less memory in Daz in general, but uses it regardless of what you ask it to show you on screen. I suppose that explains why it doesn't take forever to reappear when you go back to 'shaded texture' from 'bounding box.'

Edit: I lack the patience to do so and clearly have sufficient vram for my needs, but if vram space is a concern (or you're just barely over the limit on a large/complex scene), you may consider applying whatever textures you're going to apply, modify them in the plugin, then delete them from the surfaces tab, then reapply them in the plugin (presets would likely speed this up significantly, as I went to each suface group, opened NGE, and changed the now rgb spectrum to image and reapplied the image map from the list, which is a rather lengthy process to repeat over and over for a larger scene) and see if that helps at least a little bit. I also tend to leave the viewport open, but set the display to direct light/200 samples/pixel for preview while I work on a scene, so in my mind, it wouldn't be inconceivable, if one has presets that are already close, to load everything in Daz, remove all textures, and tweak presets in the plugin, which would theoretically be even faster. As long as you don't require immediate feedback in viewport for textures you're working with.