Insane memory usage and file sizes

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with this issue. I'm creating animations with some characters purchased from rocketbox. They come in at 8mb file size and ~1gb memory usage. When a .bip animation is loaded onto the biped, or i animate it myself and the file is saved, it goes to 270mb for some animations, and 10gb memory usage. I've tried everything I know, including merging the model and biped into a clean scene, but that does absolutely nothing. I've tried some maxscript stuff like "gc()" to no avail. If I have a couple of these as xrefs into a simple scene I've modelled myself, memory usage will approach 30gb. That's insane! I've imported cad models of airplanes for some work and they barely reach half that memory usage, and they have 300 seats, cladding, technical details etc, usually in excess of 40 million polys!

The result is that the state-of-the-art workstation I have is nearly impossible to multi-task on. If i create an animatic with "create animated sequence" in a scene, I'll have to quit all max instances when it's done to reclaim the 60gb or so of memory the 2 or 3 scenes have taken up. 

In addition, even when all 3ds max instances have been closed, they'll remain in the active processes, taking up a lot of memory, so I'll have to manually end the process to free up that memory. 

Does anyone have any idea what's causing this?

[RobH2]

I don't have an answer for you but am trying to help you get a better answer.

You did not mention what OS you are using nor what version of Max. That will be critical info to anyone trying to help you diagnose.

If you could upload a sample file that is leaking memory so badly maybe one of us can open it and see if we get the same problem. If we don't get the problem, then it's likely something else on your machine is causing the problem. If so, then we can start looking at Max as the culprit.

[spacefrog_ · Accepted solution]

There were bugs in specific Max version, which caused Biped to duplicate Biped pose collections over and over again, leading to insane file sizes and finally slow and crashing scene. This was fixed later on ( can't  remember the Max version )

So as Rob mentioned, always post your hardware, OS and Max version you are using...

As a quick test, look into your bipeds Pose Rollout and delete all poses from there, save and reload

BTW: The file might already come in with this flaw, but deleting the poses should get rid of it...

If that was the original problem this should cure the issue.

To clean  other potential causes ( bugs like eg. growing note tracks, retimer tracks bug etc... ), you might use this small cleaning script

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/cleaner

[Anonymous]

RobH2- Thanks for the reply, I'm running windows 7 pro 64-bit, max 2014 sp5. I had just uploaded the file (it was 70mb compressed) but spacefrog's post was actually the exact issue.

I had a collection of facial expressions (about 20) and a colleciton of 3 hand positions, but it had duplicated these some 30 times or so. I have no idea why. I deleted all the collections, reloaded the original collection I made, and it's now a 4.5mb file! Though the file didn't come with this issue, as both collections of poses were created by myself and loaded, so it seems the issue still exists in max as i'm running the most recent version. 

Can't thank you enough spacefrog, that's really saved a lot of pain for me! I've got the cleaner script but nothing showed up on it. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

[RobH2]

Glad you are getting somewhere. I think you'll find that this is one of the best forums on the planet. I'm not kidding about that. There are so many extremely talented people who spend time here and they've helped me hundreds of times over the years. Good luck with your project and don't forget to use this amazing resource whenever you need it.

[Anonymous]

Definitely! It's much more knowledgeable than other forums as a lot of people here seem to be people who work with max as a profession, rather than a hobby. 

[spacefrog_]

Great !

Though i find it a bit worrying that this bug should have reappeared in Max 2014 SP5

If Max keeps on creating those duplicates in your scene, please file a bug report and keep us updated in this thread

This is/was a serious issue and i would hate to hear that my ( stable, speedy and beloved otherwise ) 3ds Max 2014 would show this bug again

Bug report form

http://download.autodesk.com/us/support/report_a_bug.html?SelProduct=3dsMax

If this issue indeed keeps reappearing,  would you mind to send a link for me to DL the scene for further investigation ?

[Anonymous]

Here's a link to the scene, the same one I'm sending autodesk with the bug form you linked to. I have never experienced this before, so I'm not sure why it's happening now with the scene.

I have the character scene as downloaded from rocketbox, that I have then changed the materials to vray materials and loaded my collections into and save this file. When I need to create a new animation, I load that file, animate and then save under a unique filename to identify the animation. It seems somewhere along the line, it just keeps reloading the collections, even though I've only loaded it a single time into that biped- before saving that original file.

I've now gone through all the animation scenes that had this issue (it seems to be a more recent issue and the issue increases exponentially with more recent scenes- see the screenshot to see file size increases over time), resaved the scenes and the folder is much, much smaller! Should make my cloud backups much quicker now too.