RAM problems rendering with Corona

[Gonzalo Prades]

Hi all, at work they have bought a new computer:

AMD ryzen 2990 WX 32 core

Asus graphic card: vga rog-Strix-RTX2080-08G/8/GDDR6

64GB RAM (4 x 16GB) Kingston DDR4 2666Mhz

 

I am doing a big masterplan with around 40 million polygons, around 700 trees in proxy (references no copies), I have x-ref big part of the scene, all buildings are x refs.

I am rendering at 4000 pixels, and I’ve got a warning in Corona about running out of RAM, the computer crashes.

I’ve made a few tests, and the computer can render up to 40 million polygons with no problem...

 

A friend mentioned that the kind of RAM I’ve got should be above 3000Ghz...

 

Am I really running out of RAM? The trees are proxies not loaded in RAM (static) shall I get more RAM? Change the one I have? I remember going very complex images with similar computers in other companies...

 

Any help welcome!!!

[James Vella]

Polygons wont add very much to the ram.

 

First id proxy out the every tree you will use and instance them as you need or forestpro/scatter.

 

For ram it includes all external references (proxies, xrefs, textures etc). So the total size of these will give you a good estimate as to the ram size required. If you have lots of 4k+ textures reduce these as you probably wont need it from a masterplan height anyway (textures use lots of ram), you can use the free resizer plugin from renderpeople for quickly reducing textures sizes and making a copy elsewhere/remapping etc.

 

https://renderpeople.com/plugin/

 

Turn off xrefs you wont need or use clipping for the view to reduce whats needed to be loaded into ram at render time. Forestpro can also handle this based on density, distance or camera view which is handy for large amounts of grass/trees etc.

 

If all else fails you can render in tiles and restitch in post or something similar to this effect.

[Gonzalo Prades]

Thanks for your reply, the plugin to resize the textures seems very useful.

I was thinking to use forest pack to see if there is less memory consumption with it (you mention forest pro, is it the same?), another consideration do you or any one know if my memory RAM should be over 3000MHz instead of 2666MGhz? someone told me that with this kind of processor i should have better ram (over 3000GHZ) more than more quantity...

By the way I am using corona 3.0 and max 2018,

Edited September 15, 2019 by 3dmac

[James Vella]

itoosoftware forestpro.

 

in regards to your problem, the ram speed isnt usually an issue. Saying that you should probably do some individual hardware tests to ensure the ram you have isnt problematic. You can read more on this here, Juraj has some experience with AMD setups and goes into some depth about some common issues:

 

https://corona-renderer.com/forum/index.php?topic=21416.0

Edited September 15, 2019 by redvella

[Francisco Penaloza]

Thanks for your reply, the plugin to resize the textures seems very useful.

I was thinking to use forest pack to see if there is less memory consumption with it (you mention forest pro, is it the same?), another consideration do you or any one know if my memory RAM should be over 3000MHz instead of 2666MGhz? someone told me that with this kind of processor i should have better ram (over 3000GHZ) more than more quantity...

By the way I am using corona 3.0 and max 2018,

 

The RAM speed is almost irrelevant for us, because we load information in large batches and no specific timing is necessary.

Having said this, just be sure your RAM is compatible with the Processor, but I am sure in your case it may be ok, otherwise, you'll have random crashes, no matter how big or small is your scene.

 

Just follow James comments in optimizing your scene, textures will be your main point to attack and I totally recommend using Itoo software, Forest pro and Raicloner, they are a lifesaver for this type of project.

 

I am usually rendering projects largers as yours or even worse

[Gonzalo Prades]

Thanks!!!

Forest pack has been very good and now am able to

Populate all with trees, it is still a midterm why the proxi in Corona are that RAM consuming.

About the speed of the RAM someone told me that I’m not using all the potential of the machine because I’m not using a ram that is at least 3000 GHz. We have been offered by the shop we’re we bought it to change the ram from 2660 Ghz to 3000 for free... I will inform you if I notice something.

About the textures, just resizing a couple of 8K ones have speed up the rendering a lot,

[Francisco Penaloza]

Random Access Memory AKA RAM has many uses in the computing system, For us 3D Artist working with 3D Files it has a single main use, that is how much crap can we put in the scene, we don't care if it takes one millisecond or two, we just just care that it loads it. The RAM is so fast that your real bottleneck is your Hard Drive or your Network speed. So changing your Ram to 3000 GHz or whatever they are trying to sell you won't really affect your workflow.

 

If you are playing games or doing crazy computing math, then the speed of the RAM will have more significant usage.

Some please stay with the nostalgic memories from when we only had 2Gb or 4 Gb of Ram, then if anybody was lucky enough to get their hand in 16Gb, the whole computer felt 'faster' but that was because 4Gb was barelly what you need to run Windows and 3D Max.. nowadays the "speed' bump you get with more than 32 Gb is barely noticeable for regular task, you see it only when you load a lot of apps or in our case objects in the scene, but even with that it is one time loading.

 

What some people may think is that when you click render, Corona has to load everything that is visible in the scene in to RAM to start rendering your image, then it dumps a chunk and uses the RAM to store the image, and goes like that, in that case, as mentioned earlier your real bottleneck is the Hard drive speed and your network, if you have assets in the network.

 

Regarding proxies, those needs to be loaded in to scene anyways when you render, if you have millions of proxies and everything is smooth while modeling this doesn't mean that you have enough memory while rendering, As mentioned above when you click render, then Corona or VRay or any other software, will load everything necessary in to your RAM to start cooking your scene, then you'll see if you have enough RAM or not, before you can do educated guesses and see how your scene is performing.