How much memory does Terragen use?

[cyphyr]

Sorry if this is a daft question or if its already been answered elsewhere but I'm struggling to figure this out. Dose terragen have access to larger amounts of memory, 4GB, 8GB, even 16GB? I've been running Terragen on my new system for a month now and I don't think I've once seen the memory go over 30%. I know Vista can see and use my 8GB, so can Photoshop and my 64bit version of Lightwave but is terragen aware of the extra space its got to work in? I know Terragen is not 64 bit yet but is that the reason its not seeing all my ram (if that is indeed the case). If that is the case will a 64 bit version of Terragen have access to more ram and would this increase its performance?
Thanks
Richard

[rcallicotte]

It depends on what you have loaded - terrains, image maps, objects, complexity of displacements.

[jo]

Hi Richard,

Quick answer - lots :-).

I believe on Windows, with TP5, it goes something like this at the moment :

32 bit OS : 2 GB
32 bit OS /3GB switch : 3 GB
64 bit OS : 4 GB

A 64 bit version of TG2 will have access to more RAM. If your scene is not coming up against any memory limitations then you probably won't see much of a performance increase, but a 64 bit version will give access to far more RAM and that will allow TG2 to render larger images with more complex scenes. There may be a bit of a performance increase because on Windows using 64 bit means you have access to more fast registers on the CPU, but generally speaking 64 bit support shouldn't be looked on as a performance thing, rather it will let you do far more with TG2 in terms of scene complexity.

Regards,

Jo

[cyphyr]

Thanks for the quick reply

What you say makes sense, the Jet Car scene I've been working on is fairly heavy, even apart from the car which is very heavy on its own (about 80Mb I think which I know is well within TG5's normal abilities) the rest of the scene uses several layers of atmospheric shaders, about 6 different fake stone layers, multiple shader layers, populations etc. I never tried it on my old system in its current form, TG5 is the first version that has been able to handle the model so I cant really compare but it did seem odd that the memory never got used up, It would start at 20% and slowly creep up to 30% over a weekends rendering. It will be interesting to see if this changes once I start adding image maps to the model.

I'm looking forward to Terragen going gold I guess a 64 bit version may be available at some time in the Terragen 2.x cycle ?

Richard

[Oshyan]

I'm looking forward to Terragen going gold I guess a 64 bit version may be available at some time in the Terragen 2.x cycle ?

Richard

Yes, that's the plan.

- Oshyan