• I am running Bryce 5.0 on a 256 Mb Geforce 4 MX 440 supported machine. I used 3 Poser character figures + created a simple background + a total of 6000 extra polygons in addition to these, as a total of 260.000 polygons and my memory ran out ! Is there a way to prevent this ? I mean, is there a way to make Bryce use virtual memory or do i do something wrong ?
• For the second problem, does Geforce or other acceleration cards do extra acceleration to Bryce as in 3DS MAX ? Because there is no difference for Bryce's performance after and before installation of Geforce to my computer. (lately i was using Nvidia 32Mb TNT 2 card)

Video cards and bryce; they just help you push around polygons around your screen. The better the video card, the more polygons you can more easily move around. Their are different views you can select in Bryce; like OpenGL, Sree3D, Direct3D, I've tried these setting, and noticed no difference in pushing performance, and I don't use them anyway, I just like the wireframe view the best. No video card will make Bryce render faster, only a faster CPU will do that. I use a GeForce 4 64Mb MX440, My PC has 256mb of ram. My current project is a 75Mb scene file with 67.7 million polygons. I haven't ever got a Out Of Memory message. AgentSmith

You can assign virtual memory with your OS and a harddrive. It's VERY easy to do if you use Win 2000 or XP.

I had out of memory messages too. Upgraded from 192MByte to 512MByte RAM (and a new mainboard, CPU,...). Problems for my current projects are gone. Simply try installing more memory (if it's possible)

Well, it sounds like you're having SOME sort of problem, though. What you have listed as far as videocard & PC memory VS. your scene, should be no sweat. Let's see... Are you running ANYTHING while you are running Bryce? What's your Operating system? Are you restarting your PC, then immediately using Bryce? Have you set your video card with ULTRA high settings? Have you installed the latest video card drivers? If you have, have you installed Direct-X 9? (Tonight, not only was my Bryce crashing, but my whole PC, I re-installed my nvidia drivers, everythings fine now) AgentSmith

I use Bryce 5.0 on 256 mb SDRAM + Celeron 1.3 processor + 64 Mb Geforce 4MX + Win 98 Second Edition. I am using latest detonator drivers of Nvidia. I am using Direct X 8.1 and i always restart my machine before rendering an image or starting Bryce. I do not run any other application while running Bryce. Are 260000 polygons heavier than 256 mb can handle ? If i assign more virtual memory to Windows, will it solve the problem ? Thanx for your help buddies : )

1. No. 2) No. It will probably cause more problems. Virtual memory has to be 1.5 times RAM, though. So, if it's anything else but 384 MB, change it to 384. Or "Let Windows manage virtual memory". 3) I'd suggest that you return to the drivers that you received with your card, especially with win98SE on the machine. Installing the latest, bleeding-edge drivers may cause problems quite easily. 4) I'd also re-install DirectX 7, unless you need 8.1 for games. This might help: http://www.aumha.org/a/memmgmt.htm

Double-click the System icon in Control Panel. Click on the Performance tab and on the Virtual Memory button. Select Let me specify my own virtual memory settings. By default, the drive selected will be where you install Windows. Select the fastest drive or partition you got. If you have a faster but smaller partition, you may use that as well. Defrag the drive first. Now, set Both Maximum and Minimum values to 2 1/2 of your actual RAM available. If you have 128MB RAM, set both to 320. If you have 256MB RAM, set both to 640. You need to restart to take effect. Important note on this tweak, this warning is Because if you let your hard drive fall Below the amount put in the boxes your computer will not run; so if you do not have the space on your hard drive dont do this if you do and you have to use it undo this tweak.

Well now you all bring up a really good point here...Hmmm when everybody gets an out of memory problem do you have imported Objects in the scene and if you do are they mostly from Poser?How many props do you have applied to vicky like clothes and other stuff or is she just Naked?Are the Textures you trying to apply PSD,BMP,JPG or another format and what are the File sizes on the textures and when you are in Poser are you applying the Bump map in Poser then exporting?And since I have 512mb ddr with a Nvidia GF2 64mb I have only had that message on one occasion and that was just a couple of weeks ago and what I did was bring in the characters with little or no clothing then imported all of the objects then reapplied all of the textures seemed to work because I didnt get the message again....

Yes when exactly do you get the message? Is it when importing one of the poser figures? Saving the scene? Etc?

I just noticed you have 5.0, is that with the 5.01 patch or without?

In the scene I have a total of 260.000 polygons. In my previous works, I've had more than 260.000 polygons and it didn't run out of memory. I had 3 high-end poser figures (michael, victoria and ziza) with some clothing on them making a total of 170.000 polygons. When exporting them to .obj files, i also didn't export the body parts which are unseen (chest, abdomen etc.)because of being under clothes. This attempt was for saving memory space from unnecessary parts. But it didn't help me out. My virtual memory settings were set to "Let Windows specify my virtual memory". I am gonna change it to 2,5 times of my RAM, 640 mb. I've used large texture maps (3000 x 3000) for the figures, i will reduce them. But what i am curious about is this problem was not there when i was using more polygons before... This message appears many times when importing figures, saving the whole file. But it continues to load the file when importing. Then in the end everything seems ok except a huge decrease in performance. Figures hardly move in the scene. I have enough space in my hard drive, it's 80 GB. This problem really pissed me off...

DhurakhapalaM, I would upgrade your RAM to at least 512Mb. I'm not saying it will definitely end your problems, but it couldn't hurt. As a general rule of thumb, never do what the "minimum requirements" state for any app, because they are very rarely right, and are trying to appeal to the largest possible audience. My Machine came with 512 and I just added another 512 for safety sake, and because I am now running Maya which is a systems hog. The more RAM the better, especially with 3D apps. And with it being so cheap now (around $50 for a 512 chip, and even less for 256), it doesn't make sense not to have at least 512 on your machine, IMO. Just make sure if you do add RAM, you get a quality name chip, because I've heard some horror stories about people using no name chips and having there system act really funky after installing it. Good luck.

260,000 poly is not high, my latest image had 31,500,000. (W98SE 512Mb RDRAM using G4Ti4200 128 MbDDR) I had a ram module crap out once and it took out Windows (cascading corruption in a virus like manner) completely! Had to replace both. It was a brand name module too. Crap can happen to anyone but good names tend to have less. My $.03 Cdn

I've heard somewhere that if using a poser figure, to turn of auto-key??? I have no idea why this would help but have definitely heard it before.

The auto-key will only affect your scene file size. Evidently, it reserves some data space in the scene file weather or not you are using/making an animation. If you're not, turn it off, your scene file size will decrease in Kb a little bit. Direct-X cannot be un-installed. So, going from 8.1 to 7 is imposssible. Unless you want to re-install your whole system, I believe Win98SE shipped with Direct-X 7... I only suggested using Direct-X 9 because the latest Nvidia drivers were built with it in mind and since they are still new, there may be bugs if you DON'T have Direct-X 9. This is just a guess/hunch. Like I said, my Bryce/PC was crashing, I re-installed the same (newest) drivers again, and it seemed to fix everything, go figure. 260,000 polygons should not make your PC break a sweat. Like I said, right now mine has 67,750,466 polygons. Thats 260 times bigger than what you are working with. I know I kinda asked this question before, but just to make sure...any anti-virus, firewall, or memory manager programs running in the background? Anything that starts up with your PC that would suck a lot of your memory from the start? Start-Ups; to a real close look at what starts up with your PC...go to "Start>Run>Type in "msconfig">click OK". Go to the last tab to see the programs that start up with your PC. This will work with Win95 through WinME. I'm warning you right now, if you don't know PRECISELY what you are looking at, DO NOT unclick any boxes. Hope any of this helps. AgentSmith

Aye, by this time msconfig should be second-nature for Win 98 users. Without it, we'd all be screwed! I'm thinking just a bit more RAM or DDR Ram, anyways, might help you out. My cabin scene hits about 127MB, most of it from imported grasses and hi-res textures. On my AMD 1.2/ 256MB DDR machine it never says "Out of Memory", but I have to change the name of the project every time I save it, or it will crash. So we jammed another DDR stick in there, changed the Virtual Memory settings to 640/640, and the scene worked just fine! Give it a whirl!

I have a Win98SE 900Mhz 384 MB RAM system and haven't encountered this problem except maybe once when trying to import a very complicated Poser figure. Do any of the figures have a complicated hair object attached? I've heard of people having problems with them as well. Also are any of the texture names over 32 characters long? If so rename them.

Allright buddies, i really thank all of you for your helps i have changed my virtual memory settings to 640/640 and installed Bryce 5.01 update. Nothing seemed to change... I still have 260.000 polygons = 100 Mb .pz3 file, and when i load it, while loading objects, when it comes to %96 there appears the message "an unexpected error occured (out of memory)" I guess the problem is the texture files. I use high resolution textures for figures (3000x3000)x3. I am gonna lower them down.

Just as a rule of thumb, save the high res textures for images requiring a close-up of the figure, for medium to distant, make a resampled-down copy.

Ya know, I did forget about the fact that when you use load a .jpg texture into Bryce, it will use that image uncompressed (basically). Which is something that I always hated about Bryce. Anyways, three 3000x3000 textures, uncompressed, would be around 77Mb...