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Macbook Pro: Is anyone else suffering from frequent Studio-related freeze?

DMaxDMax Posts: 637
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Macbook Pro: Is anyone else suffering from frequent Studio-related freeze?

I have never successfully shut down my Studio before, it always hangs and freezes ("Application is not responding") and each time I have to force quit.
Once in a while, it freezes my Mac entirely and I have to attempt a hot shut down instead of rebooting.

Is there something wrong with my Studio installation? Should I uninstall and reinstall Studio?
Any other Mac users experiencing this problem? My Mac is only one year old.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781
    Do you have the octane plug-in, if it has a Mac version?
  • DMaxDMax Posts: 637
    Richard Haseltine said:
    Do you have the octane plug-in, if it has a Mac version?

    No I have never heard of Octane... this? https://home.otoy.com/octane-x-wwdc2019/

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781

    I was asking as that does seem to implicated in some hanging on close. You can use this script http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/plugins/plugins_load_config/start to disable all non-Daz pl;ug-ins, then restart DS and see if it closes cleanly - if it does then a third-party plug-in is at least part of the problem, you can turn them back on one-by-one in Help>About Installed Plug-ins, restarting DS after each change and seeing if it then closes properly or has started to hang again.

  • DMaxDMax Posts: 637
    Richard Haseltine said:

    I was asking as that does seem to implicated in some hanging on close. You can use this script http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/plugins/plugins_load_config/start to disable all non-Daz pl;ug-ins, then restart DS and see if it closes cleanly - if it does then a third-party plug-in is at least part of the problem, you can turn them back on one-by-one in Help>About Installed Plug-ins, restarting DS after each change and seeing if it then closes properly or has started to hang again.

    Thank you, I will check out your ideas!
    I haven't really loaded any 3rd party plug-ins as I just returned to Daz after a 14 year hiatus. But as I initially had some issues with Smart Content and PostgreSQL not logging in, I did temper with some permissions etc which might have messed up with something... would it be possible for me to simply uninstall, delete and reinstall Studio alone?

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781

    You would need to reinstall any plug-ins, and some shaders and scripts, if you uninstalled the application and deleted the foder. Of course that wouldn't help with permissions elsewhere - relating to the database, or to saving the layout in the application support foder for DS for example.

  • mavantemavante Posts: 734
    DMax said:

    I did temper with some permissions etc which might have messed up with something... would it be possible for me to simply uninstall, delete and reinstall Studio alone?

    There is a pretty extensive discussion about permissions related to Daz on a Mac at this thread I started when having a different issue:

    MAC USERS: Request for info/help re permissions on DAZ 3D folder

    It might have some pointers and clues to help you track down if there is a permissions problem.

    (Mine wasn't, and I still haven't done the uninstall and reinstall I need to do, as discussed there, but that's a long story that nobody here needs to suffer with.)

  • bytescapesbytescapes Posts: 1,841

    DAZ Studio frequently -- usually? -- hangs on close on my MacBook Pro, and needs to be force-quit.

    I've never had it freeze the whole machine though, so far as I know. (I have had occasional full-on freezes, but they seem to be associated with other software).

    I don't have the Octane plugin or anything else wildly non-standard.

    I think the hang is related to the complexity of the scene I've been working on. If I launch DAZ Studio, then quit it immediately, it shuts down and exits fully after 30 seconds or so. But if I've been working on a scene, then it's more likely to hang up on exit. It's possible that it's simply clearing memory, and that if I left it alone long enough it would eventually exit successfully (but I'd expect allocated memory to be simply reclaimed automatically by the OS when the application exits; none of my other memory-hungry apps behave like this).

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781
    bytescapes said:

    DAZ Studio frequently -- usually? -- hangs on close on my MacBook Pro, and needs to be force-quit.

    I've never had it freeze the whole machine though, so far as I know. (I have had occasional full-on freezes, but they seem to be associated with other software).

    I don't have the Octane plugin or anything else wildly non-standard.

    I think the hang is related to the complexity of the scene I've been working on. If I launch DAZ Studio, then quit it immediately, it shuts down and exits fully after 30 seconds or so. But if I've been working on a scene, then it's more likely to hang up on exit. It's possible that it's simply clearing memory, and that if I left it alone long enough it would eventually exit successfully (but I'd expect allocated memory to be simply reclaimed automatically by the OS when the application exits; none of my other memory-hungry apps behave like this).

    How long are you waiting? And is it actually hung, or is it working (clearing memory etc.)?

  • DMaxDMax Posts: 637
    edited May 2020
    bytescapes said:

    DAZ Studio frequently -- usually? -- hangs on close on my MacBook Pro, and needs to be force-quit.

    I've never had it freeze the whole machine though, so far as I know. (I have had occasional full-on freezes, but they seem to be associated with other software).

    I don't have the Octane plugin or anything else wildly non-standard.

    I think the hang is related to the complexity of the scene I've been working on. If I launch DAZ Studio, then quit it immediately, it shuts down and exits fully after 30 seconds or so. But if I've been working on a scene, then it's more likely to hang up on exit. It's possible that it's simply clearing memory, and that if I left it alone long enough it would eventually exit successfully (but I'd expect allocated memory to be simply reclaimed automatically by the OS when the application exits; none of my other memory-hungry apps behave like this).

    Yes, what I usually do before I shut DS is to close the current scene so that I am on a blank slate. Then sometimes I notice that if I leave it hanging in a closing state for 15 minutes or so, it will successfully shut off entirely without being in a non-responsive state. Every once in a while, it will not shut down at all and that's when I force quit it.

    I am still on the fence about upgrading to Catalina and/or re-installing DS. Kinda dont want to fix what is not broken (don't want to relive any PostgreSQL issues) but somehow feel that a fresh install would smooth things out.

     

    Post edited by DMax on
  • bytescapesbytescapes Posts: 1,841
    edited May 2020
    Richard Haseltine said:
    bytescapes said:

    DAZ Studio frequently -- usually? -- hangs on close on my MacBook Pro, and needs to be force-quit.

    I've never had it freeze the whole machine though, so far as I know. (I have had occasional full-on freezes, but they seem to be associated with other software).

    I don't have the Octane plugin or anything else wildly non-standard.

    I think the hang is related to the complexity of the scene I've been working on. If I launch DAZ Studio, then quit it immediately, it shuts down and exits fully after 30 seconds or so. But if I've been working on a scene, then it's more likely to hang up on exit. It's possible that it's simply clearing memory, and that if I left it alone long enough it would eventually exit successfully (but I'd expect allocated memory to be simply reclaimed automatically by the OS when the application exits; none of my other memory-hungry apps behave like this).

    How long are you waiting? And is it actually hung, or is it working (clearing memory etc.)?

    I did an experiment. I loaded an existing scene, then quit the application.

    DAZ Studio took 2 minutes to fully exit. Activity Monitor showed Studio as "Not responding", but the memory in use by the application counted down, starting at 3.9GB and getting down to 600MB before it exited. So that suggests that while it's not handling events, it is still working and clearing memory.

    Two minutes is pretty quick by its usual standards. I think that if I'm actively working with a scene -- adding and deleting elements, doing test renders and so forth -- Studio will be allocating much more memory, and will therefore have more to clear when it finally exits. Presumably, as the memory adds up, more of it will be virtual rather than wired, which probably slows down the deallocation further. (I've got 32GB in this box, so Studio could get some pretty huge chunks of wired memory if it wants, but that's up to the OS, and I suspect that MacOS will start paging stuff out to swap well before it theoretically needs to).

    In the past, I've seen hang times in the order of tens of minutes. I usually lose patience and nuke the process before then (which is possibly a bad idea). I'm now prepared to believe that it will eventually exit if just left alone for long enough.

    For reference, I'm still running Mojave (10.14.6). I haven't had the courage to upgrade to Catalina and give myself a whole new set of problems just yet.

    Post edited by bytescapes on
  • leemoon_c43b45a114leemoon_c43b45a114 Posts: 866

    I'm using DS on a Mac Mini (2014) and initially experienced the long closing time when quitting the application.

    I fixed it by turning off the option to automatically login in DS preferences>Startup tab.

    It still takes a minute or two to shutdown sometimes, but it's way better than the very long time it was taking before.

    Might want to try what I did and see if it works.  You can always turn automatic login back on in preferences if you need to.

    Lee

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781
    bytescapes said:
    Richard Haseltine said:
    bytescapes said:

    DAZ Studio frequently -- usually? -- hangs on close on my MacBook Pro, and needs to be force-quit.

    I've never had it freeze the whole machine though, so far as I know. (I have had occasional full-on freezes, but they seem to be associated with other software).

    I don't have the Octane plugin or anything else wildly non-standard.

    I think the hang is related to the complexity of the scene I've been working on. If I launch DAZ Studio, then quit it immediately, it shuts down and exits fully after 30 seconds or so. But if I've been working on a scene, then it's more likely to hang up on exit. It's possible that it's simply clearing memory, and that if I left it alone long enough it would eventually exit successfully (but I'd expect allocated memory to be simply reclaimed automatically by the OS when the application exits; none of my other memory-hungry apps behave like this).

    How long are you waiting? And is it actually hung, or is it working (clearing memory etc.)?

    I did an experiment. I loaded an existing scene, then quit the application.

    DAZ Studio took 2 minutes to fully exit. Activity Monitor showed Studio as "Not responding", but the memory in use by the application counted down, starting at 3.9GB and getting down to 600MB before it exited. So that suggests that while it's not handling events, it is still working and clearing memory.

    Two minutes is pretty quick by its usual standards. I think that if I'm actively working with a scene -- adding and deleting elements, doing test renders and so forth -- Studio will be allocating much more memory, and will therefore have more to clear when it finally exits. Presumably, as the memory adds up, more of it will be virtual rather than wired, which probably slows down the deallocation further. (I've got 32GB in this box, so Studio could get some pretty huge chunks of wired memory if it wants, but that's up to the OS, and I suspect that MacOS will start paging stuff out to swap well before it theoretically needs to).

    In the past, I've seen hang times in the order of tens of minutes. I usually lose patience and nuke the process before then (which is possibly a bad idea). I'm now prepared to believe that it will eventually exit if just left alone for long enough.

    For reference, I'm still running Mojave (10.14.6). I haven't had the courage to upgrade to Catalina and give myself a whole new set of problems just yet.

    There will, potentially, be a lot of data in the undo stack after you've been working on a scene which would presumably not have been the case in your test. I think the complexity of the items loaded also matters - a static prop with a lot of polygons will clear, judging by my past experience, more quickly than a figure with all sorts of properties and links even if they on the face of it take similar amounts of memory. Essentially if it's still freeing memory it is still working, so it's best to let it be (force quitting may well cause issues with file corruption).

  • DMaxDMax Posts: 637
    Richard Haseltine said:

     so it's best to let it be (force quitting may well cause issues with file corruption).

    I think I am learning this lesson too. I just did a Disk Doctor to fix files and extensions, followed by Optimizer and it seems to have improved things a bit.

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