There is a known problem with P6 memory handling.

Unfortunately by the time we had discovered this on the pre-release it was too late to make any further changes. Curious Labs, however, have been notified of the problem and have told us that they will address it in a future update.

The general memory requirements for storing morph data in memory are somewhat larger (~33%) than in P5 and as with complex figures such as the DAZ Unimesh line the majority of data storage (pre-render) is actually the morph targets.

On top of this files (cr2 or pz3) that are loaded with external morph data stored in the new pmd files actually seem to consume double the amount of memory, or to put it another way you will only be managing to get about 40% of the figures in a P6 scene than you would in a P5 scene.

This additional memory footprint does disappear when the figures are deleted, so its not leaked memory and won't affect stability, but is currently a major limitation and one that we consider to be serious enough to count as a bug.

If you are stuck trying to get scenes to work in P6 it may be a good idea to configure the General Prefernces to store internal morph targets as per P5. This will increase loading time but should alleviate memory problems when they are loaded.

The good news is that, as the morph loading and storage processing has been changed in P6, it can now be considered to be "live" code and it should therefore be open to further improvements. They may well want to consider Studio's lead in resource handling.

The actual changes needed to substantial improve memory handling are extremely trivial. I spent about 4 hours today writing an improved loading routine for the pmd files, one that recognises identical morphs and stores them without duplication.

CL are due to get the code tomorrow along with our test results, whether they decide to run with it or do there own thing is their business but it is worth keeping some polite pressure on them to improve the situation as it is an area that promises great improvements at very low cost.

Bill

Message edited on: 03/22/2005 14:51