Image Texture Memory

[joshuamkerr]

I'm just looking for a bit more info on ways to free up image texture memory. I have a city scene that uses quite a few different textures, buildings, cars, roads etc and I'm using about 3.5GB of image texture memory.
I have a few questions below but any further info or advice would be appreciated.

Does Octane use image textures once even if they're used across different materials
Is it better to use material instances multiple times rather than materials.
Woudl the size of a material make more of a difference over it's file size and format?
Are virtual textures taken into account and would they help save vram?

[ChrisHekman]

Does Octane use image textures once even if they're used across different materials

Image textures are shared across different materials.

Is it better to use material instances multiple times rather than materials.

Material instancing is not a thing in octane. Both are converted to their own octane material.
You can use whatever is more convenient for you.

Woudl the size of a material make more of a difference over it's file size and format?

There is some material overhead, but I suspect it would not be significant enough.

Are virtual textures taken into account and would they help save vram?

Sadly no. Virtual textures are implement just like normal textures in octane.

I'm just looking for a bit more info on ways to free up image texture memory. I have a city scene that uses quite a few different textures, buildings, cars, roads etc and I'm using about 3.5GB of image texture memory.

The best way to reduce texture data usage atm is to use smaller textures.
Additionally, Octane grabs the lowest lod there is for each texture (The largest lod version of a texture).
So reducing the highest lod can help out.
Look out for 4k/8k textures, they eat an extreme amount of data, eventhough you often dont need the precision.

[joshuamkerr]

Hi Chris,

That's all really super helpful. So is Octane not resizing textures based on distance, using mipmaps or LOD's?

[EvolverInteractive]

If you need help rendering that scene hit me up.