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With the 4.04 update, Toolbag's backend switched from DX11 to DX12, and this had some performance and memory management implications. We also switched from Nvidia Optix to the DXR ray-tracing backend that is built in DX12. Generally, you should see improved ray tracing performance (render speed) but the memory use for the ray-traced acceleration structure can be higher than it was with Optix. In cases of very high memory use, you may see decreased performance or instability.

There is no way to configure Toolbag 4.04 to use the rendering backend or memory management systems from earlier versions.

The VRAM counter can be a little confusing. What it represents is the % of VRAM that Toolbag is able to allocate when it launches, not necessarily the % of the total VRAM available. Unfortunately, video card drivers make it difficult to report accurate VRAM information in absolute terms. What this means is that if you launch Toolbag when 6/8GB of VRAM is in use, the counter showing 100% would = 2GB of VRAM used by Toolbag. If Toolbag needs more than that, it will ask the operating system for additional resources, which may be granted. This is how values over 100% can sometimes be displayed. Values over 100% typically indicate very high memory use and potential instability.

Here are some general tips for reducing video memory usage:

• Close any other art applications before launching Toolbag. For instance, Maya, Zbrush, Substance Painter, etc, as these applications may be using the majority of your VRAM. Web browsers with many tabs open can sometimes eat a lot of VRAM as well.
• Remove any objects or materials that you do not currently need from your scene.
• Decimate high polygon meshes to reduce the triangle count.
• Lower the sub-division level to reduce the triangle count.
• Reduce the resolution of textures - 8K textures require 4 times the VRAM as 4K.
• Reduce the bit-depth of textures, if your textures are saved as 16-bit, downsampling to 8-bit may considerably lower your VRAM use.
• If you're baking and using texture projects to 3D paint/texture your asset in Toolbag, consider creating separate scenes so you do not need to store the high poly geometry in the scene that you're texturing in.
• If you're using a 4K monitor, make sure the viewport resolution is set to Standard rather than High-DPI, especially if you're using ray-tracing. This can be set by clicking the gear icon in the corner of each viewport.
• In the Render settings, make sure the Bounces and Transmission settings are not set too high. Generally, a bounce setting of 3 is adequate and you should only increase the transmission setting when dealing with complex objects with refractive surfaces (multiple overlapping refractive surfaces may require a higher setting).
• Make sure Rays Per Pixel is set to 1.
• If you continue to have problems interacting while ray-tracing is enabled, consider disabling it while interacting with the scene or changing the viewport quality mode from Full Quality to Draft.
• Try switching from the Accelerated / RTX to the Generic ray-tracing back end. You can do this in Edit -> Preferences -> GPU. This may result in slower raytracing performance but may use less VRAM resulting in better stability. Be sure to restart Toolbag after changing this setting.

If none of the above suggestions help, we may need to get a copy of your scene file to further debug the problem. In that case please email support@marmoset.co with a link to this thread and a brief description of the problem along. You can go to File -> Export -> Scene Bundle, and then zip up the .tbscene and /assets/ folder to package the scene.