Decals increase file size

[Peter Milner]

If I add a decal to an object, the size of the file sent to the renderfarm increases massively, sometimes to the point where it exceeds the 32Gb RAM the render nodes have.

However, it hardly has an impact on the size of the AutoCAD file.

Any ideas?

Here's an example.

Keyboard.zip

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

What happens when you render the thing on your workstation?  The sent file should be very similar to the memory usage of an interactive session.  Try seeing what Task Manager says about your process memory usage -- OR - for a better diagnostic use the Performance Monitor counter-- Process->acad.exe->Page File Bytes.

The model you sent is a 3d solid,  it may be sensitive to FACETRES with or without decals. (This may, indeed be a decal problem-- just trying to exclude other possibilities.)

[Peter Milner]

When I render it on my local machine, AutoCAD takes up 0.7Gb RAM and rendering takes up 0.4Gb RAM.

When I render on the farm, it takes up 5.5Gb RAM.

With the decals removed it takes up 0.01Gb RAM on my local machine and 0.71Gb on the renderfarm.

[Peter Milner]

I have been rendering with decals for years without any problems. However, I did install the latest update on 12th July. Maybe something got broken.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Does sound like it-- I'll take a look this weekend.

[Peter Milner]

Nope. Not that. I tried reverting to an older version of nXt, but it didn't make any difference. 

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Thanks for that-- that's really helpful.  I think there's something in this particular model that's causing the behavior-- for example, it may be generating multiple meshes which might cause the decal to be instantiated a whole bunch of times.  I'll have to look to see.

[Peter Milner]

No, it's not just that one. I get the same with other models such as this one:

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Yep-- they may be similar in structure and behavior.  What version of AutoCAD is this?  That may have changed as well.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

As suspected-- these models are generating many meshes and each time a mesh is generated an image is also written to the archive file when promoting to the farm.  Decals placed on simple geometry will not have this problem. 

The workaround that doesn't require any effort from my end is for you to make these things materials with planar mapped textures.

Otherwise, this too can be fixed but would require a fair amount of work.

[Peter Milner]

Yes, I've done some testing myself this morning and it only occurs when the object is anything other than smooth.

I'll use the workaround for now, but it would be good if you could fix it in the long term as this is the closest Accurender has to UV mapping.

Thanks for looking into it.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

It is fixed in the new stuff-- and support for UV mapped objects is better than in the current version as well-- although AutoCAD support for UV still isn't good the last time I checked.