OTOY Forums

MoGrafik wrote:Juyst one other quick question, if you don't mind...

I actually saved my project with textures and it came in at only 180mb including textures. I have a 3GB graphics card, so so how is it that the GPU is nearly full? What is using that other memory?

If anyone has any ideas, or can link me to any documentation I'd be very grateful!

Thanks

Size on disk and size in VRAM are two different things. Like mentioned, render resolution plays a role. Things like subdivision and tessellation take up much more space while rendering. Another thing that can take up space is the application interface, especially if you're using a plugin. All that VRAM your host app, say Cinema 4D, is using to display your scene in it's viewport is eating into your available Octane VRAM.

Hey riggles,
thanks very much for getting back to me.

I hear what you're saying about the resolution I'm rendering, but it's not so big, only 720p.Looking at the GPU info, the usage didn't seem to be affected by the resolution I rendered either.

What other processes use up the VRAM? Is it common that a scene that's 180 mb including textures should max out the VRAM when rendering? The maths doesn't work out to me! - Could it be that there's a problem with my scene?

Thganks for your help!

if you go to your Octane properties and click on the CUDA tab, it will show you exactly what is taking up your computers VRAM.

Hey,
that sounds like it would help a lot! Problem is, I'm actually using the cinema 4d plugin, and I can't find cuda / properties. It's a long shot, but I don't suppose you know if there'a similar way to view the CUDA usage in cinema 4d? Thanks.

I just read back through the forum. If you don't have a dedicated display card, everything on your computer is using the card and that means a lot less VRAM for Octane. Also, textures are uncompressed when placed into VRAM, so a texture can often take up much much more VRAM than you think it would.

Try opening up the demo scene in Octane stand alone and checking out the CUDA tab in properties. It will show you how much your other programs are using.


Best thing to do is get a primary display card. For our work, we got cheap 620s (I think we may upgrade them at some point because our big scenes are bogging down in our 3d App (Blender). But for less than $100, they work great for display.

aha... that makes perfect sense! Thanks so much, Kavorka! That could end up being a life saver. And just for a moment I thought I was going to have to shell out a ton of money on 6GB titan card!

Also, that's kind of a shame that it brings in all images uncompressed - I've been trying to squeeze every MB out of my textures!

Yeah, I'll look into getting something cheap for display purposes as you suggest. I'll download the octane standalone demo scenes too - to the CUDA usage.

Really appreciate your help! Thanks so much.