I am trying to export a mesh as an obj, its around 2 million polys, and I get a memory error and Z brush locks up.
my machine is
dual Intel Xeon 3.4 processors
2gigs Ram
and I monitor my ram usage when the error occurs and I never go over 1.3 gigs of ram usage, and since I have 2 gig I dont see why it says there is insufficient ram, here are the errors I get.
I may be the only one with PIII processor of 600 MHz.
I found out that the proggy Optimize Memory (mine is v.3.6) can enhance free memory and improve the active part of memory. I use it with Zbrush 2.
Then all works swell.
Try it, those, who have memory problems.
Anatoly.
I searched for proggy optimize memory, didnt find anything ,what is that ??
FastDefrag works well too…a google will turn it up quickly. I used it on my old tank to free up memory often with zbrush and never had any problems with it.
You’ve told us how much RAM you have, but how much space is available on the hard drive where ZBrush is installed? Also, is there anything in particular that you do before the error?
my hard drive has 136 Gig free so that aint it 
umm as far as what Im doing,
here are my mem settings that I use, pretty standard, and all I do is load the tool, go to the highest res which is around 2 miillion polys at level 7 and export the tool as an obj file, it gets about 3/4 the way through the export before it crashes.
let me know if you need any other info, I would really like to solve this, and Ill use the deFrag tool recomeded and see if that helps any, but I Kinda doubt it
Thanks for you help!
I used the defrag tool but with no luck same thing happened, here is what it was monitoring at the time of the crash, it refreshes only once a second so I dont know how accurate a reading this is based on when it happened, but though it might help-
I have a dual Dell Xeon system with XP & service pack 2, 7 gigs free space and 3.5 gigs of ram. The model I’m working with has 6,242 polys and I cannot subdivide any further than 5 divisions, at which the model becomes ~1.5 million polys in ZBrush. Beyond that, hiding part of the model takes too long.
Could serivce pack 2 for XP be part of the problem?
Not being able to use ZBrush with all this ram and hardware is pretty frustrating. Pixolator where are you?
have you set your memory prefs to allow for higher poly counts, Im not sure if you actaully have to or If Zbrush will not let you subDivide to higher levels if the memory options arnt set. If you look up a couple posts you can see the memory prefs that I have set in the screenGrab, mainly the max polys per mesh is the one you need to make sure is set to 10, maybe that will help if you dont already have that set?
also if anyone who knows is reading this, why is 10 max number under the max polys in the prefs menu, seem odd to have a locked down number that cannot be exceded, and what is it doing, is it a somekind of multiplier for the number of polys in your base mesh, like whats the difference between say, 9 or 10, how many more polys can a mesh have if its set to 10 and why??
hmm the post before this one somehow got grey as the letter color so if you highlight the bottom of it you will see thier is more text, I have no idea how that happened?? haha it was definatley not meant to be a secret message but you could totally do tht if you wanted ! 
Yes I have the max poly set to 10, and it makes no difference. Even though I have plenty of disk space and ram(3+ gigs) it wiill not subdivide to a level over 5. And even at I level of 5 I can only do one or two opperations on the model before ZBrush chokes and locks up. Is there another forum that we can post in that ZBrush staff read more frequently?
my guess would be if you tried to subd a 10million poly object…it would be 40 million polys and probably way beyond at least windows 4g mem limit capabilites to handle…don’t know about macs tho.
you could always cut up your model so you can subd the parts you need more polys on. skycastle has posted his work arounds for such things.
ktaylor…i see from the fast defrag you have less than 1 gig free memory…on my old computer with that available I could never get passed about 1.5 mill polys before running out of mem like this screen shot. You could try hitting clean to free some more memory and make sure you have a ton of free disk space…less that 3 megs free probably wont cut it.
i forget but at how many polys are you in that snapshot? before you try to subd with only 972mb left?
thanks aminuts, my problem isnt subdiving the mesh, all that is fine the mesh in the pic is aroung 2 million polys which is plenty for this particular mesh, My problem is I am actually trying to EXPORT the mesh as an obj at this res and that is what I cant do, I can export it at a lower level around 200,000 but I want to export the 2 million poly version as an obj, It seems like I should be able to do that with 2 gigs of Ram and 134 gigs of free hard disk space. like I was saying earlier when I try to export the mesh my memory only peaks at about 1.3 gigs, so why is it crashing and not using the other 700 megs of memory??
Not sure if you are refering to to my post or Ktaylor’s but I’m working with a ~1.5 million poly object at a division level of 5. At no point was I ever trying to subdivide a 10 million poly object, and neither was Ktaylor. I would like to subdivide the ~1.5 million poly object to ~6 million polys, but to do that I would need to raise the poly per mesh limit to >6, as I understand it. Maybe I understand it wrong?
ktaylor…am moving my stuff to this computer…as soon as element 5 gives me my new access i will try to export a 2mg file and see if i get the same problem…will also watch various ram progs at same time and see what happens. while zbrush is processing the save.
g3d…is that a zsphere model turned polymesh? I ask because somewhere along the way, I remember reading that you need to set the density to the highest level you plan on subdiving to. I don’t know if that meant…if i set my density to level 6 and created the skin if I cannot subd higher since I haven’t tried that…but maybe thats the problem?
The model in question was modeled in Lightwave so no ZSpheres are involved.
Here are more details about my situation:
The model is 6,242 polys; all quads. This is what the OBJ file’s poly count is upon initial import as a “tool”.
I divided to 5, at which point the model(the tool) contains approx. 1.5 million polys.
When I divide one more time to 6, the model(tool) should be about 6 million polys. I wrote should be because this is not what happens; instead I get the same “insufficient memory” message that Ktaylor got. With the ram and disk space I have, ZB should be able to handle a 6 million poly count without fail.
What I meant was that a division of 5 is not enough for the kind of detail I need to put into the model/tool. When I use a brush to paint on details at that mesh density, the strokes are too blocky to be useable. This makes me think that a higher density is needed. Would that not be correct?
Another problem is that even at a division level of 5 the 1.5 million poly too is still too much for ZB to handle. Hiding parts of the model is awkward at best and painting a stoke is too sluggish and more than one or two strokes makes ZB lock up with same “insufficient memory” error.
I have 7 gigs of space on my C drive and 3.5 gigs of ram on my system.
G3D
hmm that is odd seems like your system should be able to handle that,
it is recomended to work in Projection mode at higher res levels, ususally I work in level 1-4 for just getting all the forms/muscle stucture down and the mesh is only maybe 200,000 polys at that point which is easy to manage and work with, usually when you get to millions subdivision you are pretty much doing detial stuff anyways which is also way easier with projection master since you have all the brushes and tools available, hope this helps some.
Adding a bit more info… ZBrush 2.03 (currently available for Mac systems) has new memory and virtual memory managers capable of managing higher number of polygons in the same amount of system memory, and the export routines are able to export higher resolution meshes faster and with less strain on memory resources.
These will be included with the next free-update for Windows systems
when that might be? Both Ktaylor and I are PC users, although I do have a couple Macs. But I think that if this model is giving a well equipped PC trouble, it would choke even a Mac with the same amount of ram.
In the meantime, is what KTaylor wrote correct … shouldn’t the PC I’m using with over 3 gigs of ram and even more disk space be able to work with a model that is 6 million polys? Shouldn’t I also be able to paint details one it at the lower polycount of 1.5 million?