"Out of Memory" Crashes in Bryce 7. Please Help!

newteet-2153753

My computer is a PC running a Core 2 Duo processor with 4 Gigs of Ram. Its video card is a state of the art Nvidia something or other with a bunch of gigs of memory (I can't remember how much). The operating system is Win7 with all service packs and updates.

The problem I'm having is in Bryce 7 Pro. Presently I'm building a small world with a large castle and several figures created in Daz Studio. You can see the latest successful render of it in my gallery consisting of the castle, two guards and a mounted figure.

While trying to import the latest object (another mounted figure) I get several error messages about Bryce not able to find texture bitmaps--even though they are right there in the same folder as the object file--ending in an "Out Of Memory" warning that ends up being fatal and making the whole thing crash.

I've tried several unsuccessful remedies to this which include reducing in Photoshop the pixel size of the largest texture bitmaps from 4000 x 4000 all the way down to 1000 x 1000, as well as importing the new figure into separate Bryce file and the attempting to "merge" both files. The result is basically the same: "Out Of Memory" and a subsequent crash.

Also, I've tried several export modes in Daz Studio that include "Convert Maps for Bryce". The scale of the objects I've exported is set at 0.410105.

Can anyone please explain to me why this is happening and how I can resolve it?

I don't expect a prompt response from anyone as I realize you all must be busy wrapping X-Mas presents or otherwise making holiday preparations.

In any event, thank you in advance and have a Merry, Merry Christmas!

New Tet

Chris Camacho

Miami

Chohole

Moving this to the Bryce forum, where you will probably get some assistance

Szark

Firstly Bryce can only read 2 GB of ram and considering the OS needs a chunk of that it doesn't leave much for Bryce.

My advice is to download and install Large Address Aware http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112556 this will help Bryce read a lot more Ram and since you have over 3GB LAA will work or should work as in the world of computers there are no guarantees. :)

Dave Savage

Another helpful tip when importing people into Bryce (and I got this from Chohole so all credit to her) is if there are body parts that are covered by clothing, make them invisible so they don't export. It will save you hundreds if not thousands of polygons.

Also any textures that can be created in Bryce using Bryce procedural textures should be done that way instead of mapping .jpg or .png textures, so export the models with default grey colour and then texture them from within the Bryce material library or material lab.

Chohole

Another thing I od with texture maps in convert them in a paint prgram to a lossless format (png is my fave as it will save alpha channels if you need them)

Bryce uses uncompressed textures, so even if you save as jpg Bryce will use the uncompressed texture.

Far better to play around with the texture maps beforehand and find the best compromise in size, both kb and pixel size , to get the best looking effect for the least cost.

You will see, if you have ever used any of my free textures, that I rarely use much more than 2000 x 2000, or 2500 x 2500 when I make them, contrary to the size most vendors use for their "hi res" textures, and as long as the quality is as opitimum as possible in the raw image, which I prepare in PSD format before converting, then you will get a reasonable finished image in Bryce.

I only save as jpg for distribution, I laways use my raw images in my own work.

LordHardDriven

Well most of the most usefull suggestions have already been made. The only thing I can add is that due to it's memory limitations you really need to avoid populating a scene with too much detail and then wherever possible, for figures, use the least detailed figure at your disposal. Like if you have a figure that's not close up using Genesis or Generation 4 figures is going to take up alot of space and the extra detail would be hardly noticeable. For Distant shots of figures it would be far better to use one of Predatron's lorez figures or a reduced resolution version of M3 or V3. Even for close ups it would be best to avoid Genesis or Gen 4 unless you absolutely had to use a character only available for those base figures. Also avoid the temptation to populate parts of the scene that aren't visible in the render. Being a 3D environment it's tempting to treat it like a virtual world and completely set up a scene but anything not visible is just going to take up space in memory. Along those same line don't feel like you have to fully dress your figures. If you can only see the figure from the waist up then there is little point in the figure having shoes, pants, skirts or anything else below the waist since that part of the figure is outside the rendered zone.

Finally Bryce does every thing in memory including saving settings for the undo buffer. So every time you make a subtle change or addition to your scene a little more memory is being used up to be able to undo that change. So just prior to importing something you might want to save your scene and close Bryce as that's the only way to clear the undo buffer. Then you can open it and go right to importing without the undo buffer. Also due to the memory limitations of Bryce and the fact that you only have a little more memory then what Bryce can use, it would maybe be better to import things thru Bryce's import command rather then thru the Daz Studio / Bryce Bridge. This will mean a little more work as you'll likely have to apply the textures manually but it should save you a bit on memory usage.

One last thing, if you've tried all these things and you are still getting errors consider doing your scene in layers. In other words set up the environment/background first and render that. Then set up your figures and objects in the background, make the environment elements invisible and render just the background figures and objects. (you'll need to do it in a way you can make the blank areas transparent). Then repeat the process with just the foreground figures and objects. Then once you have all the elements of your scene in various layers, assemble the whole scene in something like Photoshop or Paintshop.