I CANT EXPORT A HIGH RES MODEL FROM Z_BRUSH I AM USING THIS SETTINGS…
WHY??
HElp
Being a newbie to ZBrush (approx 4 days) I’m not to sure. However, do you have 4Gb of physical memory in your machine. If not lower the compact memory to below the level you have in your machine, that might help. Has something to do with writing to the hard disk, etc.
Hope that helps
Thox
Very observant, Thoxx!
Yes, the CompactMem setting MUST be lower than the amount of RAM that you have in your system. If it’s higher, then ZBrush will never be able to reach the compact threshold, and so won’t be able to make use of your hard drive for necessary data storage.
I have the same problem. I have 1.5gb of RAM, I set the auto compact memory setting to 750mb’s, and zbrush gives me that same error when I try to export a 2.8 million poly model. I get that error over and over again, till I hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, and kill the program. Are there any work arounds for this?
How much space is available on the drive where you’re exporting the model to? Also, how much space is available on the drive where ZBrush is installed?
For me, there’s 21gb’s left in zbrush install drive, and 90.5gb’s in the drive where I’m exporting the file. Also, when I hit ctrl+alt+del, it tells me that 980mb’s of RAM is being used total (not just in zbrush), and I have 1.5gb’s total physical RAM in my machine. It exported the 700,000 poly version just fine.
I’m trying to give you all the information about my computer that might help you help me. If there’s anything else that you might need to know, ask me and I’ll post it as soon as I can. Thanks.
I have this problem as well. Is there no way to force Zbrush to let go of memory? I have 4gigs of RAM in my dual proc P4 machine with 15gigs free space
on disk. Two days ago Zbrush took 9 GIGs of system memory before crashing
in a ball of fire. I cant get stability right now with large meshes inside Zbrush.
Anything over 3.5 million polys is very unstable now (I am hopeful this will change ). I currently am working on a tool with 5.8million polys
( I need more ) and my scene crashes often with tasks like hiding and exporting.
You are not alone…
Yes, I have a simliar problem. I have 120Gb free on my drive, 1.5Gb of RAM and am working with a 1.9million poly object. I seem to constantly get out of memory messages. Would love to hear what’s going on…
I’m glad I’m not the only one experiencing this. It means it’s not just my machine, which I can’t afford to upgrade anymore. I tried again to export my model, but this time I raised the zbrush mem usage to 1200mb’s. I got the same error at the same place I got it before. I’m sure the pixologic folks are working on this problem right now.
I have another question for the people who have responded to this. Is it RAM that helps you put more poly’s in your model, and still keep the program running, or is it something else? So far, I’ve been limited to around 1.25 mil poly’s in my models max, cause my machine can’t handle much more. Would more RAM help the most, or would some other hardware help more? Thanks.
Its RAM and hard disk space. Zbrush needs both. You can run Zbrush without
much of either of these. If you want to do any real work ( over 2million polys ) I would not have anything less than 2gigs ram and 15gigs free hard disk space. Thats because if your swaping tools or hiding parts of a mesh or exporting large meshes you need as much memory as possible. RAM is cheap now days anyway.
Check out these threads I posted a while ago. I never quite solved the problem myself, but there might be some pointers and workarounds in there that help.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=21295
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=21547
Thanks, skycastle, I’ve been wondering about that for a long time. Since I use 3ds max and zbrush, I need both programs to handle the load nearly equally. I know that’s not exactly possible, Max has never that hot at handling huge poly’s, but I still need it for inorganic modeling, or smaller prop-type pieces that I can’t do in zbrush. Unfortunately, even though RAM is pretty cheap right now, I only have 3 DIMM slots, and all 3 of them are filled with 512mb sticks. That means if I want anymore, I’m going to have to buy 1gb sticks, and those are way out of my price range right now and for the foreseeable future. 
Oh, well. I guess I’ll have to wait…
Langsuyar, Thanks for the links, but neither one of those workarounds worked for me. Zbrush just isn’t using all the available resources on my machine when it tries to export file, but I get the insufficient memory error anyway. Very odd.