I'm having a frustrating time at the moment. If I work on a scene in Vue 5i for any length of time, the readout of the system resources that you get from File/Options keeps dropping. It starts out around 70% when I open the file, and just gets lower and lower the more I edit, even if I'm moving things around rather than adding things. Eventually I have to quit Vue, run it again, reload the scene and continue - otherwise I get a crash. Is this a memory leak in Vue? It seems to be very symptomatic of one. I've tried turning down the undo option to the minimum, but it makes no difference.

It sure is a memory leak/flood.

I've noticed this memory problem too. I always thought it was memory fragmentation. I don't know how efficient the OS is at defragmenting RAM. I do know there are programs out there that will do the defragging for you. Then again, I read somewhere that Windows is rather efficient at keeping memory from fragmenting. I don't really know which side to believe. Anybody try a RAM defragger with Vue?

It's not fragmentation & it's not the OS. Its VUE. Vue is not releasing unused memory efficiently.

One work-a-round to this is to save whatever you're working on, close Vue, wait a minute or two and then reopen Vue and reload your scene. As the other posters mentioned, Vue has a problem with memory management (somewhat improved with the latest beta release, but not fixed), even if you do absolutely nothing for several minutes, it will still be using 50-75% of your available RAM. If you open taskmanager/process while running Vue you'll notice that the "peak memory" usage and the current memory usage figures are virtually the same, even when you're not doing a thing in Vue, the memory is not released.

The problem seems to be worse with large scene files. I'm finding that I have to close and reopen Vue every few operations, which suggests it is holding multiple versions of the scene after every edit (even if it's only a camera move). This is serious.

Out of curiousity - whats your ram and how big are the .vue files?

Well, I recently added 512 MB to my system which is now 1.5 GB. Everything on my system is running faster. It's not enough for Vue though as last night while working on my latest scene, Vue crashed with an out-of-memory error during texture testing.

I have the same problem with Vue5i. Had it in Vue4Pro too. I almost always work with very large scenes, I usually keep on adding stuff until about 15% free resources - after multiple reloads. Before I render, I always save, close and reload. Use Task Manager to watch memory use, once it drops back to about 110 MB from its previous 1.6 GB, Vue has been cleared from memory and the reload can begin. A habit that came over from Poser, and seems to be pretty useful in Vue too. I wish e-on would do something about this issue. It's been reported by many users.

"I wish e-on would do something about this issue. It's been reported by many users." ...and for many years. Reference the memory fragmentation - IMHO it's not worth worrying about for even a second...memory storage in RAM is a fluid state of affairs (when compared to data storage on a hard drive) and all that these memory de-fragmentators do are use up RAM and you don't often see much improvement. For graphics work the best improvement in performance can be made by the user, ie; no running background tasks while using your graphics software. Don't run media players, system monitors etc, and while your not connected to the internet/network you can do away with anti-virus and software firewalls. Saying that, it still doesn't make up for bad memory management in software, that blame lays squarely with the programmers. Cheers

I have 2 Gb RAM (the maximum Windows will handle) and the largest .vue file is 70 Mb. It makes no difference what other programs I have running in the background. At first I was carefully closing down everything else, but this hardly delays the inevitable crash. The only thing is to watch the Options menu box to see what system resources Vue thinks it has, and close Vue when it drops to below 25%. Then reopen. This is not professional to release software with a serious memory leak. I don't know of any other app that I have to close down after every 20 operations and then start up again.

You might want to have a look here for a good discussion of Windows memory setup and use:
Good memory resource

I reference that in my little free PDF brief on Windows setup and maintenance for digital artists (i'm a PC consultant with over 15 years in the biz - though i do more web services and e-book authoring these days).

Get free PDF on Wndows XP PC setup & maintenance

_jc
Art Head Start.com
Art training e-book for digital artists and students. Free chapter on lighting.

Message edited on: 01/04/2006 11:58

I found this very interesting... I forgot how I had to do this all the time in vue 4, it was so automatic...now with 2 gigs of ram and high end video thought I would not have the problem, but I do... good to know it is not my machine...and indeed still vue... I love vue, and will always use it...but! My crashes come in infinite more after I add 2-3 poser figures.... and come to think of it, especially when I do not UNGROUP the figures - which keeps them connected to poser. (I do that when I know I might need to adjust poses).... I try to ungroup the poser files, and even save the objects as vue objects and use those instead... and STILL save periodically!

Yes, I think that I'm hit particularly badly as a heavy Poser user - the scene I'm working on at the moment has 5 Poser figures, three of them the latest Daz figures. I suspect that the problem may partly relate to bitmaps, and how Vue handles them. As a quick experiment I created a scene with two untextured Vickies, and one where the same figures were textured. In the textured case, making 20 camera moves (nothing else) lost 1% of system resources; in the untextured case the same moves had no discernable effect. In both cases, after moving the camera I deleted the figure group, and system resources DECREASED by 3%. You DELETE something and you use MORE resources! That's crazy.

The same problem here with Vue5 Esprit. I get a warning and then sometimes Vue crashes. Never had that problem with C4D or any other 'professional' software. E-on should definitely do something with the memory management. It's not a fault with the operating system.

Phantast - try reducing the number of Undo in your Preferences. Also, if your resources are tight for a particular scene, disable openGL. All the polygons and textures used by the openGL scene take additional space in memory.

I already reduced the number of undos to the minimum - thought of that. I'll try disabling OpenGL, but the chief issue here seems to be that no matter how much resources you create, if they leach away at every operation, the program will crash eventually.

Copy the textures that your poser objects are using to another folder, then reduce the size of those copied textures. Open your scene & make your poser objects use the new altered textures.

Yes, but that just delays the problem. It does seem to be to do with OpenGL. In wireframe mode the leak does not seem to happen.

I take that back - it does - it's just slower.

Your NOT going to be able to STOP the leaks. We're just trying to help you enough so that you will be able to complete your scene. It's just something VUE users have to learn to live with.

Well, if the leak had been entirely in the OpenGL code, then turning off OpenGL WOULD have stopped the leak. I have found that switching to wireframe, though horribly ugly, does slow the leak sufficiently that I can work reasonably efficiently. But in my book, memory leaks are a cardinal error in programming, and saying that users just have to learn to live with it abandons your rights as a consumer to have a proper functional product in exchange for your money.

I totally agree & so does everyone else who uses VUE. Your basically flogging a dead horse IMHO though. As your statement has been echoed by many & for quite some time. It is THE major "annoyance" with this software. Fact remains -what's your alternative...use it as is...or don't?