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View Full Version : MentalRay Not Using Enough Memory

Firerbert
12-10-2009, 08:01 PM
switched over to 64bit and installed 8gigs of ram.
the motherboard reads it
the os reads it
maya even reads it in the memory limit for mental ray
when i render any file, it refuses to touch anything past 2 - 3 gigs of ram, and sometimes less than 2 gigs.
i've tried multiple things here, and even tried local single frame, app launched batch render, and command line, and with every new approach, it uses less memory (in the app it would use about 2.25 gb, where as command line is using 1.56gb)
something is way wrong here and i can't figure out what.
BSP adjustment makes a difference, but only in seconds and no major increase in memory consumption.
any help or pointing in the right direction would be greatly appreciated as i've googled the heck out of this with no avail.
InfernalDarkness
12-10-2009, 11:22 PM
Sounds like you're complaining about your scenes being efficient enough to render properly?

Make a more complex or bigger scene. Then try it again? If your scene is only using 2.5GB or whatever at rendertime, and you're using x64 and have that much RAM, then that's simply all the RAM that particular scene needs.

Increasing RAM usage to a scene doesn't make it render any faster, necessarily. RAM usage doesn't mean that your computer is doing more math or crunching numbers faster...
SlipAway
12-10-2009, 11:29 PM
Agreed. I have 8 gigs of RAM as well and I like to think of it as nice insurance against crashes if I still have 75% of my RAM available even with multiple apps open. Think of it as pouring hot coffee into a mug. Filling it half ways is nice and safe and you still have lots of room to swish that coffee around if you want. If you fill the mug to the rim you'll make a mess and get burned.
Firerbert
12-10-2009, 11:32 PM
thanks for the clarification... you can call it ignorance, but i wasn't complaining... just uninformed is all.
InfernalDarkness
12-10-2009, 11:35 PM
Not ignorance or uninformation, I was just making a smiley comment but of course sometimes text is dry and doesn't convey a friendly jibe all that well...

Just saying, it's a good problem to have! It's a problem you WANT to have!
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12-10-2009, 11:35 PM
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