RAM, Memory, Power

[TheToadStool]

Hey, I'm guessing this topic has been discussed before and I've seen reference to it, but I am interested to know about the application of RAM with Animation Master. I have 32G of ram for my Mac and I feel that I should have some powerful efficiency with using dense meshes and more complicated hair set-ups but I feel that I am not getting what I need still. I am desperate to know how efficient I can get my set-up to be. I also run A:M on PC with solid state hard drive and 24G ram. I want to make some pretty complicated scenes that require a lot of processing. Is this possible with A:M? Can it utilize the RAM and processing to make the magic happen?

 

Adam

 

 

[robcat2075]

The standard advice for heavy models is to make the separate parts as individual models and assemble them in a chor. This strategy also lets you temporarily set any parts you don't need to observe to invisible or bounding box mode. They still render normal.

 

32 or 24 Gigs out to be way more than enough but once you have enough to hold all the data, adding more won't help much. Beyond that you need a fast CPU.

 

Hair is slow. Set your hair's realtime % very low , 1 or 2 %, so your real time navigation is not dragged down by hair you don't need to see.

[Roger]

As someone who is running AM with 20 gig of RAM right now, I don't think there is any point at all in going past 32, and the sweet spot is probably between 8-16 gigabytes. Would AM use the extra RAM? Yes, but I think you'd be hard pressed to model a scene that would use that much data. If I recall correctly, the hash patches are much more frugal with resources than an equivalent model made of polygons would be. Rob, how large was the largest scene in TWO? As a feature length project, that might be a good yardstick for people wanting to "stress test" AM.

[TheToadStool]

ahh yes, thank you Robert ! Putting the hair % to 2% made a huge difference. This is very good advice. I made a new material and neglected to address that setting and I appreciate you serving as a second set of eyes.

 

"This strategy also lets you temporarily set any parts you don't need to observe to invisible or bounding box mode."

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Can you give an example?

 

thanks!

 

Adam