The Out-of-core feature enables OctaneRender® to use main system memory (RAM) of your computer when scene assets no longer fit in the available VRAM. The data for rendering the scene needs to be sent to the GPU while rendering so some trade off in the rendering speed is expected, and this can be significant. The RAM used by any Out of Core data used by Octane will be unavailable to other applications that may be running concurrently. Out-of-core data must be stored in non-swappable memory, which is limited. When the host memory is used up for out-of-core data, the system cannot make room for other processes. Since out-of-core memory is shared between GPUs, you cannot turn devices on or off while using the out-of-core feature. This holds true also for the render nodes if the OctaneRender Network Rendering feature is deployed.


When using the out-of-core feature on Render Nodes through network rendering, you'll need enough RAM for the Render Nodes. For net Render Nodes, you can specify the out-of-core memory options during the daemon installation. When specifying this for the Render Nodes, the out-of-core memory amount should be entered in bytes, not gigabytes. For example, if the Primary Node is rendering a large scene that has texture climbing up to 6 GB, the out-of-core memory amount to specify for the Render Nodes during the Render Node daemon installation would look like this:


octane_node.exe --net-master-address 192.168.xxx.xxx --net-master-port 21000 --out-of-core 6442450944


With the added support for out-of-core geometry in OctaneRender®, you can use a significant portion of the system memory for geometry data. You can utilize multiple GPUs in conjunction with the out-of-core feature.


live viewer — out of core tab


Enable Out of Core Textures/Geometry

Enable/disable the use of out of core for textures and geometry. 

RAM Usage Limit(GB)

This option allows you to set the amount of out of core RAM to be used in your system. Remember that the value you enter here will no longer be available to the system or other applications. 

GPU Headroom (MB)

Determines the amount of GPU memory to leave free on each graphics card when storing image textures or geometry data. VRAM is faster than RAM, therefore GPU Head Room tends to be set to a minimal level since it is practical to have the maximum amount of texture and geometry data fitted into VRAM. Default setting recommended.