KS 6 Beta - uses all memory, renders slow, crashes computer

[theAVator]

Using KS 6 Beta build 224
Im trying to render out 30 pretty small/low res images using the queue.
Images are 640x359 @150 ppi

1. runs up 32Gb of RAM
2. renders slow - 10 min+ to render these images (~4x longer than KS5 would do a 1920x1080 @ 300ppi image with double the sample and ray tracing values)
3. only reaches 6% of the queue then throws errors and crashes
4. Completely crashes Windows (only way to fix is a hard shutdown and reboot)

I tried installing the 227 build, but the installer keeps saying that it's not the right versions for my computer even though it is. Am downloading 229 build and will try updating with that.

KS 6 beta build 224
Windows 7 Enterprise x64
Dell Precision Tower 7810
Intel Xeon CPU ES-2630 v3 @ 2.40GHz 2.40GHz
32 Gb RAM
16 Cores
(Sorry, file can't be shared)

[soren]

Does it happen consistently for the same scene? If so, would you be able to share it?

[theAVator]

Update:
Build 229 doesn't affect/solve the issue.

It is all the same scene. I have an animation built and I am just pulling out a number of frames that illustrate the different views/visible parts during the animation and using the render queue to manage these renders so that I don't have to go one-by-one rendering each individually.

[syrom]

Something is eating up the ram.

[soren]

First, are you running any other programs alongside KeyShot? We have had reports of e.g. Microsoft OneNote using a significant amount of memory. If your system is running out of memory it will be very slow.
If you open your scene, how much memory is KeyShot using? You should be able to see this in your Task Manager. If you are using above 16 GB of memory for the scene, you will likely run out of memory when processing the queue. A possible fix would be to add your items to the queue, create a new scene without any geometry and then process the queue. That should reduce the memory load on your scene significantly.

If you still have problems, the following information it would be helpful:

- Can you try to watch your task-manager before adding anything to the queue and then see if the memory usage of KeyShot grows every time you add to the queue?
- If so, can you provide any more details about your scene?
-- How many triangles and parts?
-- Do you have NURBS imported?
-- Are you using any advanced materials? I.e. complex material graphs e.g. Translucent (Advanced) etc.
-- What is your render settings? E.g. Interior mode, caustics, etc.

You can write a personal message to me if you prefer.
Søren

[Will Gibbons]

Good suggestions. I'll keep this in mind as I ran into this when rendering out an interior 80 million triangles using the render queue.

[theAVator]

So here are some screenshots regarding the above suggestions. It is a large file, but I've not had this issue on other large models I've worked on.  I'm also going to clear my render queue and re-fill it so that I can record the exact settings, and try some of the other suggestions. Will let you know what happens.

Question though is why would it ramp up or need so much memory if it's a core/CPU based rendering program?? I get that the model should take up some memory, but rending isn't changing the model or making it larger. The realtime rendering pauses as soon as you hit the 'process queue' button. Sure, it probably has to commit the rendered pixels to memory until it assembles them and saves the data, but this can't take any more than Photoshop or Premiere or AfterEffects does.

[theAVator]

Ok, so I went back and cleared the queue, set up my settings, captured the settings, re-added most of the views to the queue, and tried rendering it.
1. overnight it made it to 14% and then ran out of memory and "crashed". This was with the model open while rendering.
2. upon restarting, I loaded a blank file and then rendered the queue. It made it to about 16% and then ran out of memory and crashed. Below is the Task Manager and what it was showing during this time.

To me it seems like it's not clearing things out of memory after each image is rendered. It just keeps bloating and bloating until it hits the top. I don't seem to recall version 5 doing this at all. It always seemed to stay pretty flat in its memory usage.  It also seems like the CPU levels are low for rendering. Like it's trying to use the memory for rendering everything, instead of using the cores...

[KeyShot]

Are you using one of the more recent versions? We have made some fine tunings to the memory usage.

[theAVator]

At the beginning of the thread it was KS 6 Beta build 227. At the end it was build 229.

[Will Gibbons]

I ran into this just the other day. I think I was on build 233.

I noticed that every time another image was rendered using the queue, RAM consumption went up by about 4 gb. After a rendering finished, it would drop by about 3 gb. Then the next rendering that went through bumped it up by about 4 gb again. This process would continue and every rendering that made it through the queue would move my baseline RAM consumption up by about 1 gb until I got the 'Out Of RAM' message.