Answered: 3DO / DDO Video card memory issue & general workflow question?

Unleashed

I have a project which is 9 submeshes(a character so head, body, clothing etc are separate meshes), at 4k. I got a warning when setting up the project that it wasnt recommended, so first of all what is the recommended procedure here, to split it into smaller projects, or is there something else? 

Secondly I'm running into an issue where creating a paint layer, doing some painting and transferring(baking?) results back to ddo from 3do consistently crashing and progress being lost there. I tried setting up a project with just that mesh and it works, so I'm looking to confirm my suspicions that this is linked to the first question, as I'm seeing in GPU-z my video memory is maxed out(GTX 770 2GB) in the main project. 

Would more gpu memory alleviate this? Or should I not be attempting this? If more gpu memory does help things, how does gpu speed affect performance, ie is there a good reason to get something like a 1070/1080 over a an rx480 with 8gb? Or would it be acceptable to buy the slower card that has the same amount of memory?

Also how does cpu speed factor into this, I've got an older dual xeon setup where single threaded performance is a bit crap but for multithreaded programs it still cant be beat. While performance in 3do was sluggish in the 9 multimesh project, it was definitely not a problem when I tried with just one mesh. Should I also be considering upgrading my cpu or is this more a gpu issue?

Synaesthesia

Everything that's on a single UV set should be combined before exporting for texturing in DDO or NDO. Trying to work with nine 4k texture sets would kill your GPU as far as working with 3DO is concerned. That's 36 sets of textures, 4 per mesh group. It'll probably push your system limits too, not just the GPU itself.

My general rule of thumb:

2k projects: GTX 600 series or better, 8 GB of RAM, 3 GHz processor
4k projects: GTX 600 series or better, 16 GB of RAM, 3 GHz processor
8k projects: GTX 900 series or better, 32 GB of RAM, 3 GHz processor

Increase the requirements for both RAM and GPU if you're working with more than three mesh groups at a time.

Unleashed

Thanks for the info. How is DDO with ati cards, specifically the rx480's?

Synaesthesia

DDO should work fine with any video card. 3DO, however, can be a bit troublesome with ATI cards regarding texture baking. If you encounter issues, use another tool to bake your input maps before kicking them out to DDO.