Substance Designer memory usage

[Jaycee]

Is it normal for Substance to suck all memory even for a super simple tree? I am new to substance and I am finding this pretty bad. 16GB eaten up like nothing. Is there something I am missing?

Even when I remove my substance and start on a new one, the memory does not get flushed?

[Celine Dameron]

Hi Jaycee,

Which version of Designer do you use ?
Are you working on Windows, Mac or Linux ?

If you use Iray, the memory usage will increase a bit but if you are only using OpenGL, this is not normal.
Can you send me one of your simple project ?
I would like to make tests on my side using your file and see if I get the same results.

Thanks ! 

[alessiobonci]

Hi, i've seen the same, usage mamory is huge in new substance, yesterday i've used 8,9gb of ram just in 512 relative to parent (first time i've see wiondows allert for RAM).
Windows 10 64bit, 12gb ram, gt435M, I7 740Q 1.73GHz, (dell xps 17 L701x).
With previous version just use less than half.
Today i've done this, same 512 size:

[Jaycee]

Hi Celine

Thx for your reply. I am only using opengl or direct x on win 10. I am on the newest version of Designer and as alessiobonci mention, I have not noticed this problem on the previous version, but I am new to substance, so was not sure how memory heavy it was or if its me using a bad process. It does seem like it might be a memory leak though, but it does not happen all the time I think. If I can reproduce I will send the file to you.

The problem with the memory not getting flushed, is pretty simple to reproduce, just delete a substance and see that its still in the 3d viewport and in memory even though you have closed it. I think you should flush the memory when you have closed a substance so that its not still taking up memory.

[Jaycee]

Ok so I know what some of the problem is. When you work in Substance designer, whatever you have done or used stays in memory, so after a while even after having deleted notes, changed output size etc the memory is still bloated as it keeps everything in memory, it does not clear unused memory. I had a small notetree that was like 8 gb memory after working around. If I close the software and open the notetree again, the file is much smaller -> 512mb in memory.(which is still alot)

So it seems to get around this problem until Allegorithmic fixes it is to restart the software frequently.

[Cyrille Damez]

Closing the graph does not free the textures from the 2D and 3D views. If you want to free the memory used by these textures as well, you need to select "reset" in the 3D view menu. For the 2D view, I don't think there is any other way than closing/reopening the 2D view window.

[alessiobonci]

Sorry, but "reset" doesn't refresh ram, in my case.
I just close the software and reopen it.
Honestly i haven't try to use a third party software to refresh ram, and i've never been good with those.

[guats]

Wow yeah restarting doesn't really reduce the ram usage for me.

I've optimised (changed the bits per channel down to on a bunch of nodes and am using 97% of my ram after a program restart. I have 16gb physical memory and a good portion of it is allocated to and being filled by SD.

[therealcjady]

I have this problem with substance designer. I was using 16 gigs of ram and using designer I was getting close to the top of my ram usage. No problem, I doubled my total ram to 32 gigs. Substance is still pushing my memory usage to 97% even on simple graphs.