Holding onto ram, evenin in new scene

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Me and quite a few colleagues have been noticing the same issue.
When Maya starts to use more ram, it seems to hold onto it.

For example, opening a large scene file will start eating up the Ram, but if you open a new scene, its still taking up that Ram.

Can be an issue in a studio environment where you might be building rigs/checking several large model files.
Ideally without needing to close Maya and re-open.
Is there a way to maybe flush/reset any ram allocated that Maya is not using anymore

Using Maya2017 p5 on linux, but have seen this same issue in all version of Maya

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

There's the clearCache MEL command that may help with this.

You could also try changing your viewport renderer to Legacy Default. You could also go into your display tab in your settings and change the rendering engine to either Directx 11/Open GL/OpenGL - Core Profile/Legacy depending on which one you have now and that may show a performance increase.

Let me know if anything changes!

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

I'm just checking in again to see if you need more help with this. Did the suggestion I provided yesterday work for you?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

[Anonymous]

Hi,
Unfortunately those seem to have no affect.
They will speed up the view port but Maya is still hogging the ram

For example:
Opening 2 instances of maya, both take up around 738mb or ram
Setting to old viewport + openGL

Opening some models, building rigs/importing skin
Instance 1 takes up 7gb, instance two takes up 4.6gb

Open a new scene and run the clear cache command in both instances,
They are still using the same amount of ram 7gb and 4.6gb

Seems there is no possible way to free up the memory apart from closing and re-opening a new instance.

Seems Maya has been like this for a while as me and several other colleagues have always had the same issue. Just posting here if there is a solution we are unaware of.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Another option is to go to File->Optimize Scene size. 

History on objects is another reason Maya may slow down so you may want to check your objects and see if they have a large amount on them.

Finally, there's the flushUndo command you can run in the script editor that may give a boost as well.

Please let me know if any of this helps!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[Anonymous]

Hi,

In the example above though,  a fresh new blank scene was opened, so there is no history in the scene or anything to optimize as its a fresh new scene. But Maya is still holding onto the ram

Maybe there might not be a solution

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Maya has to hold on to some by default just to be open so if that's what you are trying to clear that won't happen.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Not trying to clear the ram maya is using to stay open, just the ram it needed to use with the previous file, but should no longer need in a new scene.

For example:

Run new maya session: Ram = around 700mb
Do some stuff, open files: Ram = 7.5gb
Open fresh new empty scene (file>new scene): Ram still = 7.5gb

So maya is still hogging the ram it previously used but should no longer need in the new empty scene.

[sean.heasley · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous

Ah ok.

I just did a quick test and got Maya to take up about 2GB of RAM then opened a new scene and while it dropped down to 1.3GB of RAM it did stay there like you said.

However I then opened a random scene with not a lot going on and the RAM went back down to about 850mb which is normal for my machine.

Not sure if there is a real "fix" for this at the moment but I'm going to pass this along to our dev team and see if it's a known issue or not.

[Anonymous]

Cheers