3DS MAX 2016 on Windows 10 - Memory leak

[netki5]

Hi,

I'm suffering from severe memory leak while rendering with 3DS MAX 2016.

The problem occurs about a minute ot two after I start rendering, it crashes with an out-of-memory error.

Looking at the task manager, I can see that the memroy is filling fast.

Googling that problem, I have found a few posts from about a year ago with a similar problem, stating that the issue was caused by SP1, and the offered solution was to update the SP - I'm using the latest SP4.

Any help would be highly appreciated 🙂

SW:

3DS Max 2016 with SP4 installed

V-Ray 3.20.03 as renderer.

OS:

Windows 10 x64 - Version 10.0.14393.

PC:

Dell XPS 15Z -  i7-2620M, 2.70GHz, 16GB RAM

GPU: nVIDIA GeForce GT 525M

[Alfred.DeFlaminis · Accepted solution]

Hello @netki5 and welcome to the community!

Unfortunately 2016 isn't officially supported on Windows 10, so if there does exist a memory leak specifically for W10 it likely won't be fixed.  2017 is supported on W10, so my advice would be to upgrade or to check your plugins as many of those leaks can be traced back to plugins or specific modifiers/map types.  I see you are using a pretty old version of Vray, might be worth upgrading to 3.4 as a lot of bugs have been fixed in it.  Additionally the graphics card you have is technically not supported, so it may even be a problem with your graphics card.  EDIT:  I did some tests on W10 with 2016 and the Vray demo but I wasn't able to repro this issue.  

All that being said, you might try changing your display driver in 3ds Max to see if that helps here.  Additionally, if this is only happening while you are rendering it's likely not a leak but simply your RAM filling up too fast.  You can go to the F10->Settings->System rollout and set it to "expert" in Vray to adjust your memory management.  You should make sure that your dyn mem limit is not more than 3-4GB less than you system RAM.  (So if you have 8 GB, use 4000-5000 as your limit, for 16 GB use 11000-12000, etc).  You also may have better luck with setting your default geometry mode from Auto to static, but it'll render slower.

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @netki5,

I just wanted to follow up here, any progress on your issue?  Did setting the RAM in the Vray Settings help with your memory issues?  

Best Regards,

[netki5]

Dear Alfred,

Thank you for your kind assistance.

Unfortunately neither changing display driver nor RAM settings helped with my issue.

Therefore I had to format my laptop and install Windows 8.

With Windows 8, 3DS MAX 2016+Ray 3.20.03 also had the same problem.

Finally, 3DS MAX 2015+Ray 3.20.03 works well.

It's not ideal, as MAX 2016 had some useful features for my wife (Which is the owner and user of this PC and software).

Taking into account my laptop specs, will 3DS MAX+V-Ray 3.4 work well? 

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @netki5,

The problem seems to be related to Vray, so I think Chaosgroup is a better position to answer that question.  However, you are on a pretty old version, might be worth upgrading to 3.4.  Lots of bug fixes in Vray and no charge to upgrade from 3.2 to 3.4.  

It's pretty normal for renderers to use all your RAM, but the scene shouldn't be crashing during the render.  There may be a problem with a model or script in the scene.  If you'd like I can create a private folder for you and test it on Vray 3.4 and Max 2016.  

Best Regards,