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3DS Max 2013 Eats Up All My Memory

acitone
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acitone
Hi guys I'm using Max 2013 for the first time and the problem is that I see it using up memory like crazy. I open Task manager and notice that the RAM usage just keeps rising, eventually I get an "out of memory" error. Do you know about this and have an idea how to fix it?
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  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    Hardware? OS? Drivers?
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  • acitone
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    acitone
    I'm using

    Windows 7 x64
    2 GTX 260's - Driver 301.42
    8GB RAM


    edit - it seems to happens whether I use Nitrous or regular DX driver
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  • Mark Dygert
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    Mark Dygert mod
    How well does your system stack up against the system requirements?

    http://usa.autodesk.com/3ds-max/system-requirements/
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  • monster
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    monster polycounter
    Have you installed the latest product update? Update 5 is the latest.

    http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=20396774&linkID=9241178
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  • acitone
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    acitone
    Yea, my system is up to par with the minimum req's. I haven't tried that update yet though. I will now, see if it helps.

    My RAM gets eaten up by Max once I hit the Play button for an animation, and it goes and goes til all of my 8 GB RAM is gone. I don't think more RAM would help, it would likely just eat all that up too. This must be something besides hardware.
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  • SPYFF
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    SPYFF polycounter lvl 10
    This error happen with blank, empty scene, or you load something?
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  • acitone
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    acitone
    On the Requirments for 2013 I noticed something called "Swap Space" can anyone tell me what that is?

    Intel® 64 or AMD64 processor with SSE2 technology3
    4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended)
    4 GB swap space (8 GB recommended)
    3 GB free hard drive space
    Direct3D 10 technology, Direct3D 9, or OpenGL-capable graphics card5
    512 MB or higher video card memory (1 GB or higher recommended)
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  • Mark Dygert
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    Mark Dygert mod
    Swap space is Hard Drive space that gets used a bit like RAM. Typically it is temporary space that gets used by the program while it's open then dumped when you close it. It could be writing some kind of file or cache when animations play?

    If you're low on HD space that might be a reason why you get a out of memory error. Free up at least 8gb on the drive that has your OS installed on it and see if that helps.
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  • SPYFF
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    SPYFF polycounter lvl 10
    If the problem stay, maybe try Windows 8. In my machine the max use less RAM in Win8.
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  • acitone
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    acitone
    So swap space is Max talk for paging file. I had the idea that disabling the swap space/paging file was better cause some tuneup software I use says that it's better to disable it for PC's with more than 256 MB of RAM (which is pretty much any PC nowadays).

    I dunno how accurate that is but if you recommend enabling the Paging file and increasing its size I can do that. Right now it looks like it's only set to 400 Megs. Maybe too low?
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  • Psyk0
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    Psyk0 polycounter lvl 18
    Swap space / swap file / paging file has been around since MS-DOS and mostly obsolete nowadays, altho some games force you to enable it. The recommended size is equivalent to 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your system, you could also set it to system managed size.
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  • acitone
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    acitone
    I was able to figure it out - it's the animation and skinning. When you bring over animation and skinning info from Max 2011 to 2013 this happens (for me anyway). I re-applied the skin modifier and re-animated my rig in 2013 and no more RAM hunger! This is great, thanks.

    I'm wondering if I should stick to keeping the Swap File active. Since Psyk0 says it's obsolete, it makes me want to disable it again. There does seem to be an increase in performance with it disabled.
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  • Mark Dygert
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    Mark Dygert mod
    As computers transition to SSD hard drives people are giving the use of swap files another look. What made them obsolete was the bandwidth bottle neck of hard drive read/write speeds. Now that hard drives are basically made out of memory, they have sped back up and dumping things to the HD and retrieving it doesn't take quite as long. Of course if you're on an old platter drive its going to be painfully slow as more and more apps start to eyeball swap files in a new light.

    Apps like max have never done away with the swap file and it seems like they have started to lean on the graphics card and a swap file for performance increases.
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