Zbrush Configuration

Spark

I just wanted to see if anyone knows how to properly configure Zbrush to get the most out of your system. I have 12 gigs at home, with a core 7 2.6mghz processor, but it seems to be only utilizing 3 gigs of my power. I went into preferences and changed the multithread to 8 ( after checking to see if my system would benifit..it showed a 60% increase in productivity ) And in memory i changed default from 256 to 2000, and maxpolymesh from 12 to 20 along with doc size from 4 to 20 on both. But I have not seen an improvement, and alot of times I am sitting and waiting on the mesh, which is around 46 mil polys. Would appreciate any suggestions, and thanks in advance for the help.

Spark

AnimeAngel

Which OS are you using?

JohnnyRaptor

you on 64bit OS ?

Taylor Hood

I don't get what you people are on about...seriously.. 46 MILLION POLYGONS? I have a nvidia 9600gt, 2gb ram, 2.98 ghz cpu and I struggle with 1 million. Are you kidding me? Do you have a super computer? I've never even heared of 5 million...what the hell..

AnimeAngel

It not uncommon to get meshes of that density. He does have a pretty badass rig from the sounds of it to. 12g is alot of ram. I only have 3 and am running xp but even with that low of ram I still do 1-5million poly models frequently and usually don't have much trouble with them. Of course thats in zbrush, max can't handle meshes like that unless its broken up into layers.

kary

ZBrush3 is still a 32 bit app, so it's not going to use more than 4gb of memory. More than 4gb will let you go all the way to 4gb, but that's the most you can get to. Still have to break things into pieces, and your system should be able to handle a lot of sub-tools .

Spark

Sorry forgot to state the OS :X my bad, I am on a 64bit XP and thought that Zbrush was able to utilize more than the 4 gigs as it was a 64 bit app. I do have it broken up into alot of sub meshes, but was hoping that I was just not setting the app up correctly. Preciate the comments guys, and if anyone has any further info I would appreciate it.

Spark

JohnnyRaptor

I cant remember how we did it at my last studio, but i think you can request a 64bit version of Zbrush that will utilize more memory. Check with ur IT dudes at work or if ur home, contact Pixologic about it.

robioto

Here are some things aurick mentioned on the Zbrush forums, some information might be a bit out of context but you can get the gist of the points he's making regarding performance.

On a 64-bit machine with 4 GB of RAM, you can set the Compact Mem value at 4096. Actually, if you have 4 GB of RAM you should go about 512 lower than that so there's enough RAM left over for your OS and any other apps. ZBrush can't use more than 4GB of RAM, even under a 64-bit OS. But under a 64-bit OS it's not limited by the 2 GB rule that 32-bit OS's are stuck with.

With a 64-bit operating system and 4 GB of RAM you can set Compact Mem to about 3500.

Do you have any other programs running in the background when you try to do this? Have you made sure to defrag the drive that ZBrush is installed on? Does that drive have a LOT of free space?

Check the amount of free space that's on the drive where ZBrush is installed. You might consider freeing up some more room. You should also defragment the drive regularly, as a fragmented drive can have lots of free space but all of it's in chunks that are too small for ZBrush to use.

Lee3dee

hey Brett, can you post your system breakdown, I'm interested what you put in this beast