Photoworks and memory management

Hi guys

Trying to render a pretty big plant layout here and it seems like the memory
management settings is screwed up in some way. I have tried to lower all PW
settings as much as possible but nothing seems to work. Starting at roughly
1000 Mb usage before rendering .....set "maximum memory allocation" to 100
MB...."ray trace depth" to 20...."anti aliasing quality" to
medium.....memory usage still climbs up to over 1700 Mb while rendering both
to file and screen, and SW runs out of fuel.
Any ideas about what I might be missing here....done this a number of times
before, but can't figure this one out.

SW 2004 Sp3
2x2,8GHz Xeon
Nvidia Quadro4 900XGL
2Gig Ram

Krister L

 

Krister,
your around here all the time so I probably don't need to remind you of
this, but just in case...
Look up a thread about the /3GB switch from about last October. The reason
you crash at around 1700 is that is about the most memory that windows can
allocate to a single application without enabling the 3GB switch. I think
that Wayne Tiffany learned that the /3GB switch also opens up virtual memory
(discussed in another thread, from maybe February or March?) if you want to
enable the switch, read the instructions in the thread carefully, or else
you can permanently prevent your computer form booting.
Enabling the /3GB switch will help you out a lot, and may solve your
problems. It will allow you to use about 2.4GB before crashing.

I would like to confirm that you have the maximum memory allocation set to
100MB... You are correct that a lower number is what you want, because it
sets a limit to memory usage. At 100MB, your memory use should not get very
high at all - when the program reached 100MB of memory use above the 1000MB
baseline that SWx is using, it should release and drop back down to 1000MB,
then climb again, then release, etc... it slows down renderings, but you
won't crash. Since you have it set to 100MB, you shouldn't be crashing. I
only ask for the confirmation because in my experience people make the
number really big assuming that it opens up more memory (I sure thought
that!)... which it does, but only to open you up until you reach the crash
thresholds of 1.7GB or 2.4-2.6 GB depending on whether you have the /3GB
switch. The fact that the memory allocation number can go up to 10GB, which
is 6GB more than a 32bit operating system can ever, ever, ever access, was
just an unfortunate oversight by the guys writing PWx.
Since you are crashing at 100MB memory allocation, you have a bug that ought
to get reported. Your memory usage ought to cap out at 1100MB.
..

 

Hi Ed

You helped me out once before so I learned from then about these
settings....and what bothered me now was that although the max memory
allocation really was set to 100....it climbed up to and well passed 1700Mb.
I seem to have fond a way to get through though. I started rendering to file
with a tiny image size....320x240 pixels and low image quality......got that
one through and after that it seems to be working again....don't know if
there might be a custom material file that got out of track maybe...didn't
get any message about it. Still it feels a little like PW ot SW was looking
for something it couldn't find .....I don't know ... just a wag....(wild ass
guess)

I know of the 3GB switch ...have tried it on both computers but none of 'em
worked .....the work station with W2K started but got a lot of strange
messages about missing files and onknown fileformats so I got it back to
normal again.
I learned from Mike Eckstein that one can have two lines in the boot.ini
.....one original and one to play with....that's what got me in to trying
....otherwise I don't think I would have dared.
The M60 wiht WXP wouldn't even start....blue screen of death...that's' all I
got.
I'm gonna look deeper into it and see if I can get the fix for XP from MS

Krister L

 

Sorry I wasn't a help.
A couple of other things that have helped/might help?:
1) lower the image quaility in the document settings. On big assemblies
this can chew up enough ram when rendering to make a difference.
Personally, I don't see why it would effect it at all beasue all fo the
surfaces render fine - the edges of round things just get a littel choppy.
But it saved my tail on a rendering of a 5000 part assembly, and it might
helpo withyou.
2) you have, of course, limited your reflections?
3) have you bumped UP the memory setting to 500-700 MB? My WAG is that 100
isn't enough to even get the show started, so it never gets a chance to kick
in.
4) turn on one thing at a time to diagnose what is killing you. Soft
shadows could be doing it, maybe you could render with just one fewer
ligths, etc?

I hope soemone comes up witht he magic bullet for you. I have been where
you are, and it is infuriating

 

I know that the 3gig switch may help alleviate the problem but the fact
remains that PhotoWorks2 still has some memory leaking issues. I have
noticed this too, but in my case it hasn't gotten high enough to cause a
problem. Most of the time it will keep me around 600mb paged and works just
fine but when playing with different materials for a single part and
changing them rerender change again rerender so on... it seems to page up to
over a gig and never releases the memory until sw is shut down. Can't get
it consistent enough to call the VAR though.

Corey