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Really cool !!! For this, I would also like to thank here deeply my private beta tester. Without this person, the product would have been much less clear and efficient! 80% of the improvements come from my tester's ideas, requirements, and feedback during the various stages of development.
This is just great! I picked up the Sci-Fi Square
when it came out and it didn't fit on my 8 GB 1080 (provided total scene); a quick run through this script and not only did it fit, I was able to keep two copies of the render while playing with camera settings.
I was on the fence about this one as it's been a skint end to the month and what's laughably known as my budget could almost be heard screaming as I squeezed the last pennies from it. The way I see it though, I couldn't afford not to - it was hardly pricey, and speedier renders mean saleable art sooner. Me and my steam-driven computer love this product and are feeling all the benefits that the sales page claims. Like others have mentioned, I'm also rendering scenes that weren't possible before and those that were never a problem are now much quicker. Last night, I got a render started that would normally take around two hours, figuring that I'd let it run overnight. I went downstairs to make a drink and was amazed to come back to the computer and find that it had finished. I was barely gone ten minutes.
This product should pay for itself in no time. Renders are flying through here compared to usual - it's like grease for your graphics card :)
Thank you, I think it does. :)
Great news! It's good to know it is also useful for people big video cards. Mine is an old 780 Ti with half the memory you have... I must change but each time I plan to change I hear that "a new biggest card" will soon come out...
Thanks so much for this very nice feedback :)
Fine! For info I had checked by opening a scene (with reduced maps) duf file in a script editor that all the paths are relative the the content libraries. So this is fine.
I know you looked at something awhile back to create a list of all the content used in a scene, so when reinstalling Windows\DS, one can use the list to see what content is needed to recreate the scene. What information does the Store Maps save in the text file, is it e.g. "Runtime\Textures\Product Name, etc\map name"?
I'm just thinking maybe I can use this to do that.
For all the props or figures with mapped properties, it writes the scene label of the prop or figure, the surface name, property of the surface concerned, and full path of the map associated to this property (I mean the full full path with the hard drive:/folders/content folder/runtime. .. /filename). From the full path you may have an indication on the product maybe.
Concerning the project of listing all the products used in a scene, I have not gone further than last time we spoke about it when I did not know how to handle the material sets, poses, or shaders. I think a pluggin listing the products while you build your scene (this is why it would be a pluggin not a script) and saving this information in the case you would close and re open it, could be a nice solution. But I don't think I am going to go further on this project on the short term except if I suddenly have a new idea, which happens from time to time. Not on the short term but it doesn't mean I give up forever too..
Will this work with 3Delight renders? Or just iRay?
Bought this as soon as I saw it. Great idea and worth the money.
It works much better with Iray than with 3Delight. With 3Delight, resizing images has very poor effect. The render time gain you will have will be, in 3Delight, obtained by removing useless maps and translucency than by resizing maps or mesh subdivisions. The render time I could gain on 3Delight was between 0% (if I only resized maps) and 30 % (when I removed some maps and translucency).
Thanks a lot!
Will Scene Optimizer work in DAZ Studio 4.9.2.7? I would like to get it but I am hesitent to upgrade to DS 4.9.3 because that would require me to also update my NVIDIA drivers, which I don't want to do until I can get a new graphics card.
Although I am disappointed, thanks for the reply. It will at least save me from purchasing what looks like an extermely useful product and then having to return it.
I got this to improve the render speed on my laptop and to see if it would improve the navigation (forums etc) while rendering. I am happy to say that it does indeed. Just using the scripts straight out of the box, and not really fiddling, I loaded a scene that normally would have shut the whole thing down (like, compeltely frozen my entire system) or at the very best, would have taken days to render and I would have been unable to do anything else. It rendered in 19 hours and I was still able to move around the internet etc. although a bit sluggish still usable. That's a HUGE improvement (my poor laptop is 6 or 7 years old now and while great for gaming, it struggles with Iray). Can't wait to see what it does on my PC which is much faster
I just read through the manual:
http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/41479/41479_scene-optimizer-user-guide.pdf
It should not be a matter of "luck" but a matter of having accurate data how changing settings in the tool affect available VRAM space.
Why not provide actual data how much VRAM a specific texture is using and how much VRAM can be saved by reducing the size?
Why not provide actual data how much VRAM a specific object is using and how much VRAM can be saved by reducing its resolution?
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You're right.
Thanks a lot, I'm really glad it helped you! Yes for a 19 hours render it is cool to be able to do something else.
Because I think it also depends on the texture compression thresholds and I am not able to calculate what impact they have. There is no clear data about that.
For the memory used for geometry, I don't know how to calculate it.
Fair enough. Predicting VRAM changes may be asking too much.
But then why not at least
- display accurate numbers how much VRAM space is currently used by each texture
- display accurate numbers how much VRAM space is currently used by each geometry
?
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Examples:
And why not at least provide a summary for the whole scene how much VRAM space textures and geometry are using?
That way the users would at least have a way to see actual and not estimated VRAM usage numbers before and after using resize and resolution reduction options.
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As far as I know it is not possible to calculate memory use in advance - or at least, not practical. The same questions were asked bout the SimTenero Memory Assistant tool.
Well what you show here seems redundant with the already existing Iray Memory assistant by Simtenero. And from the images you show, it seems that you already have a tool showing you the estimated VRAM consumption.
I don't know what to answer to you. I did not think it was fundamental for the users to have these data, this was not the goal of the product. For people interested by knowing these data of memory consumption, a product already existed, so there was no real sense for me to remake something already existing. I wanted a concise, efficient and easy to use interface for the largest panel of users, from beginners to advanced users.
My best answer to your question why not adding a memory assistant is that the memory assistant already exists.
Thanks a lot Ice Dragon Art. I think that for a large part of the users, as you do, not only this information would not necessarly help, but also the most complex the interface gets, the more users will be lost. A lot of users do Daz Studio as a hobby and are not technical at all, they are artists. What they expect is things working as much as possible as a one click solution. Now I guess that a lot of advanced users have already the Memory Assistant interface displaying which mesh consumes which VRAM (texture/mesh), so that they can, if they need, know before lauching Scene Optimizer which are the "most guilty" nodes for memory consumption. But for the largest part of the users, the more "one click" the solution is, the more people are happy.
- updated / edited several times
- added link to feature request
In the other render engine plugin I use with DAZ Studio it works similar. As long as the viewport is not active there is no VRAM information available. Nevertheless the moment the live viewport was activated once all the VRAM information based on the current scene remains available until the moment the user makes any changes to the scene.
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I hoped that sooner or later someone at DAZ3D would be able to make a similar workflow possible with Nvidia Iray:
-> When the Iray live preview window is in use then all the information about VRAM use should in theory be accessible.
- step 1) user activates the Iray live preview windows so VRAM information of the current scene is gathered
- step 2) VRAM information for the current scene is displayed in DAZ Studio, plugins and addons
- step 3) user makes changes to texture size and geometry in addons based on the information gathered
- step 4) automatically or manually refresh the Iray live preview viewport and update VRAM scene information
- repeat as necessary until scene fits into VRAM
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It also does not display any accurate VRAM information. It also just displays an "estimate".
Currently DAZ Studio does not have a sinlge tool that gives the user accurate information if the scene will fit into VRAM or if the scene will be rendered in Iray CPU mode.
It is not an efficient way of working with Nvidia Iray to be forced to switch to another render engine plugin each time to check VRAM space.
Every time the user reloads the scene in another render engine the user is wasting time sitting there idly.
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I really was under the impression that by now DAZ3D staff and artists have understood the need for accurate VRAM information. But this does not seem to be the case.
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@ moderators:
If you feel that my posts in this thread are disrupting it feel free to delete them.
I created a separate thread about this issue and submited a feature request:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/165601/why-does-daz-studio-still-not-have-any-official-tools-that-show-vram-usage-of-the-current-scene
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I had not seen your answer Richard. Thanks for that. Indeed I never found how to estimate how the compression thresholds will influence the real RAM size of an image.
Well in brief something more automated than Memory Assistant / Scene Optimizer / Memory Assistant / Scene Optimizer....
Personally, I am not technically able to give an accurate node by node VRAM information. The "estimate" level already exists in Memory Assistant at least. I don't even know if it is technically possible to give a real accurate node by node VRAM consumption.
I honestly appreciate that some people like to know this kind of stuff and that they would find it useful. But 90% of the people that I know who use Studio and buy these kind of tools don't need it. I don't honestly have time to learn to use something like that nor do I have time to spend trying to figure out what to do with the information once I have i. I have very little time to spend on this hobby, and the less complicated things are the better. I have tools that are probably fantastically useful but they are too complicated and time consuming to learn how to use, so they sit in my runtime and wait for a time that I might eventually, be able to do something with them. I don't mind a certain amount of fiddling and expect it, up to a point. But this one works quickly and well and is quite easy to figure out, and it works. I honestly don't need or want anymore informatiion.
Thanks a Sonja lot to confirm that. I have a PA friend who regurarily says the same to me : try to keep scripts as easy to use as possible (because he knows me, and he knows I'm tempted to add and add and add always more). I always try to find the right balance so that people "in a hurry" (or who don't want to take time) are happy, and that people "who want more", who like to play with parameters are happy too. What you say here is very important because it is sometimes frustrating for me to "limit" the scripts because they must be as clear and easy as possible for the majority. I always add stuff for the users who like to play, but never as much as I would like to, because at some point I feel it can begin to be confusing. Thanks again for your comment!
For information in the scene optimizer, what I put in this script is the number of maps and the biggest map size of each node. This way, if you see a node with 20 4096x4096 image maps, you guess that it troubles more your video RAM that the one with 3 images 1024x1024... I think everybody can rapidely have the same conclusion.
FWIW, with the sci-fi square again, I got it to fit on my laptop 960M (4 GB) - just took the default (all objects/maps) and selected 4X. Render took just over 19 minutes. If I get the time tonight I'll run a cpu render on the big box with no optimization and then compare the resulting images. I'm not seeing anything that looks lo-rez in the results so far.
Personally, my feeling is that smaller is always better, so it's always worth getting rid of unnoticed detail, whether you are near the CPU dump point or not.
Also, the more complicated something is, the more time you spend fiddling rather than rendering, and you might end up spending more time 'saving time'
I consider the verbose Rendering Image window an adequate tool for this. It quickly and easily shows you when you've exceeded your VRAM (messaging that it dropped to CPU). GPUZ, while not from DAZ, is another highly accurate tool for showing how close you are to exceeding VRAM.
I agree with Ice Dragon. The breakdown of VRAM use by individual textures would be overkill for me, and as has been mentioned, the detailed information isn't easily accessible.
If V3D had included such detailed VRAM estimates, I wouldn't mind, but I believe this to be a 100% complete and excellent product even without it. I see detailed VRAM breakdown info much the same as seat warmers in cars -- a cool gadget but not something I'd personally pay extra for. :)
Sorry to have to bring this up again but I'm sure there is a problem with the way DS/Iray handles VRAM. I posted elsewhere that there is often a spike to a high VRAM value at the point those VERBOSE messages appear and that spike is enough to drop out to CPU even though the render continues at a lower VRAM figure (as reported by GPU-Z). Also, VRAM is not cleared between renders of the same scene, especially if there is still a test render window open. I am finding that I need to exit DS completely (sometimes even reboot) to get a GPU render on my 1070 (8GB). I'm not even using the 1070 to drive the display - I have a 970 doing that.
So my question is, what is the main cause of VRAM usage? Geometry or Textures? I will buy this product if I can be sure it reduces VRAM significantly in all cases but, from what I can see, it is most helpful with crowded scenes. I often have scenes with only two characters and a room with a few items of furnitue. That should be fine for my 8GB GPU but I am still getting times when it drops to CPU. According the the Sam Tinero Assistant a G3M Dale character is 4 times as VRAM-hungry as a G3F character. Also, I am using fibre hair (a product called Short Cropped Hair) which has no textures but has a lot of geometry.
Ahh - I just noticed why Dale is so VRAM-hungry ... SubD level 4!
Here's the same scene with Dale at level 3 ...