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[Max] General Discussion / Re: CPU, RAM & HDD Relationship
« on: 2022-04-04, 09:09:17 »
The number of instances should not really matter for memory usage.
Think of instances like shortcuts in Windows:
- the heavy geometry itself is like a 100 GB file somewhere on your hard drive.
- the instances are then just shortcuts to this file that you have on your desktop.
- even if you have 30 shortcuts to this file on your desktop, the space actually used is still just the same 100 GB (+ few more KB for the shortcuts themselves).
Of course the number of instances still matters for the rendering performance itself and if the number of instances is extremely high (millions), then their memory usage impact stops being negligible.
Unproxying assets may actually hurt in your case. Normally there are two copies of any geometry in memory - 3ds Max stores its own copy and then Corona needs a copy of its own - this is needed for multiple reasons which are not really important now. However when you use proxy with any other display mode than "full mesh", in that case you can completely eliminate the 3ds Max copy of the geometry and therefore save some memory. So if you have any other heavy geometry in the scene which is not yet using proxies, then converting this to proxy may help (as well as making sure that the existing proxies are not using "full mesh" display mode).
Think of instances like shortcuts in Windows:
- the heavy geometry itself is like a 100 GB file somewhere on your hard drive.
- the instances are then just shortcuts to this file that you have on your desktop.
- even if you have 30 shortcuts to this file on your desktop, the space actually used is still just the same 100 GB (+ few more KB for the shortcuts themselves).
Of course the number of instances still matters for the rendering performance itself and if the number of instances is extremely high (millions), then their memory usage impact stops being negligible.
Unproxying assets may actually hurt in your case. Normally there are two copies of any geometry in memory - 3ds Max stores its own copy and then Corona needs a copy of its own - this is needed for multiple reasons which are not really important now. However when you use proxy with any other display mode than "full mesh", in that case you can completely eliminate the 3ds Max copy of the geometry and therefore save some memory. So if you have any other heavy geometry in the scene which is not yet using proxies, then converting this to proxy may help (as well as making sure that the existing proxies are not using "full mesh" display mode).