Hey everyone. I just had a question. This may be a stupid question I'm not sure.

You know how when we look dev and fire the ‘render’ button in the render view of a scene how at the top right of the screen after it's done rendering it will show the memory size? Does that mean Houdini just rendered a frame that is that size in memory and taking up space on my system as a result of it? Because if so I'd like to delete most of them if I'm only developping the look.

Anyone have any idea if a rendered frame tested for look dev gets stored onto our system and takes up space?

PJM

No, that's report of memory used for the mantra process while rendering. It's not taking up space anywhere after the render is complete.

I'm assuming what jsmack is saying is for Houdini on a Linux based system.(better memory management)

Working on windows here, my experience is that memory ‘lock’ builds up with more numbers of render previews.

Monitering with Task Manager is necessary for me to prevent crashes.( I can anticipate how much memory the next render will take and save the current settings first ).

Even closing a render view window completely does not release all the memory from a render. I don't know how much is getting released and how much is kept locked;

But depending on how much detail and the number of renders done in the window, at some point I have to close the hip file altogether and re-open the hip file to release all the memory to continue rendering.

BabaJ
I'm assuming what jsmack is saying is for Houdini on a Linux based system.(better memory management)

I was referring to the number displayed in the renderview, the platform is irrelevant to this metric. The memory reported in the corner of the render view may give a good idea of the amount of memory to be used when rendering the image “for real,” but some factors may cause this number to be an inaccurate estimation.

BabaJ
Working on windows here, my experience is that memory ‘lock’ builds up with more numbers of render previews.

The snapshots of the renderview consume an iota of memory to be sure, but should hardly be noticeable except for extremely high resolution images or many many image layers.

BabaJ
Even closing a render view window completely does not release all the memory from a render. I don't know how much is getting released and how much is kept locked;

Closing the renderview has no effect other than sealing off access to your snapshots. Use the render manager to observe mantra background process, and use kill when necessary.

BabaJ
But depending on how much detail and the number of renders done in the window, at some point I have to close the hip file altogether and re-open the hip file to release all the memory to continue rendering.

If you are finding memory leaks, it would help to file them as bug reports.

I was referring to the number displayed in the renderview, the platform is irrelevant to this metric. The memory reported in the corner of the render view may give a good idea of the amount of memory to be used when rendering the image “for real,” but some factors may cause this number to be an inaccurate estimation.

Yes I knew you were talking about the displayed value, but regardless of how ‘accurate’ the metric is, it remains that it does take up space after the render is complete. What percentage, I do not know…but more than enough to mention it here.

The snapshots of the renderview consume an iota of memory to be sure, but should hardly be noticeable except for extremely high resolution images or many many image layers.

2560x1440 with default mantra node settings with exception of samples uped to 6x6:

Can max out - meaning, not enough memory being released after about 10 renders.

If you are finding memory leaks, it would help to file them as bug reports.

Not having a benchmark reference for a similar system to compare too, there is no way to gauge whether my experience is as what could be expected or not and in turn file a bug.

However, having read a number of posts over the last couple of years, it just seams like its a simple matter that windows doesn't manage memory that well - and with a program like Houdini that can easily eat up alot of memory, the shortcomings show.

Thanks for responding, guys! I've got Ubuntu 18.04. It's working great so I think I'll stay with this OS