monitoring RAM

[STRAT]

im not usually an advocate of this, because it usually makes no difference and takes up a shed load of pc resources in itself, but....

 

i downloaded this free little app -

 

http://www.bysoft.com/freeram.html[/url]

 

it basically 'live' monitors your ram usage in whatever process your running. it's fully customisable, and more importantly it automatically frees up as much free ram on ur system is it can, BETWEEN each render of a frame in your animation.

 

i works nicely in viz/max, but is a life saver in cinema 4d. i've been able to re-render a 2000 frame animation last week which previously, at a lower resolution and much lower radiosity settings, took me 4 weeks solid rendering.

 

with the help of this new device i managed to up my gi settings and up the resolution and render the whole anim out in 7 days!!!

 

it just does it's best to keep things within ram. as Greg obviously points out, more ram is the answer, but if like me your hardware budget is out of your hands, this little baby works wonders.

 

this thread explains further - http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4923 i highly reccomend it

[muzzy]

Hey Strat,

 

What is your automatically free value 32-64-128 mb ? I tried it but when it try to free mem (64 mb), my max windows freeze a minute, and then after complition of freeing everything is returns normal.

[STRAT]

well, ive mainly tested in in c4d.

 

i set it to autofree ram when the ram levels get below 150 mb. at this level it starts to re-build the ram. not super fast, but at a slow steady rate until it gets past my danger level.

 

when there's physically not enough ram to free, it works in constant recovery mode doing it's best to keep ram up at .5 second intervals.

 

as i say, if you have massive renders you will inevitably run out of ram, even with this app, but it certainly helps. where as before your system wont auto flush the cached ram, this does.