32bit Creation Kit - RAM Limit Increase?

[bytorredoubt]

Considering I'm currently using 3,339.4 mb of ram on creation kit... I'm starting to suspect that the culprit behind a lot of my CK freezes lately are due to hitting the 4gb cap (or maybe the 3/1 split for 32 bit processes?). Right now I can add furniture and such, but adding additional NPC/Followers "almost" always results in CK locking up or freezing. There seems to be no consistency in what causes it to work or not beyond it being a custom follower I'm adding. Any custom follower seems to result in the same thing, even followers who I was able to add previously

 

IE:

I added Follower A with no issues before, and then removed them at a later point, but now re-adding them causes CK to freeze. 

I added Follower B successfully, didn't save, tried to add follower C, CK crashed, restarted CK/Reload mod, now adding Follower B results in the crash.

Adding additional furniture does not result in the crash (I'm thinking there's less data associated with the furniture, less complicated Nifs, lower resolution textures etc)

Does not seem to be specific to a particular follower. I've tested this with multiple followers, from multiple mods, from multiple authors with the same results.

 

At lock-up RAM usage increases to 3359.1 MB and stays constant, CPU usage fluctuates a bit around 18-19%. I have plenty of RAM physically available, 32gb and I'm only at 33% usage, but I'm wondering if the ability of creation kit to access it is locked and so I'm running up against an imaginary wall that's killing it. Is there any way to increase the amount of RAM creation kit can access? I understand that there was a 64-bit SSE creation kit, though I don't see it on steam... and I'm not sure if mods made with it would be LE compatible.

 

[Andy14]

By adding do you mean creating as an actor or placing in the 3D window?

Hopefully ENB is disabled for CK.

[Heroine HoneyCrotch]

You got 4k texture active on NPC while in CK? Vanilla armors? I use MO, usually when I'm in CK not much is active,it's vanilla af. Only time I have had your problem occur was when I had NPC's wearing non vanilla outfits(outfits from mods), usually it's fine but I have seen it. 

 

How Vanilla are npcs your wrkng with?

 

 

[Fotogen]

32-bit app can use at max 4GB (2^32 = 4GB). But Windows OS reserves 0.5GB for its own use. So 3.5GB left for 32-bit app.

Most(if not all) 32-bit apps become kinda so-so once they get past 3GB memory usage. YMMV.

 

Workaround is called "64-bit app".

 

SE version of CK is available at Bethesda.net. It is for Skyrim SE.

 

SE mods work in LE? In general, no. Mesh, anims are different. You said you add NPC? So that means FaceGeomData/NIF. Not a good idea.

 

[bytorredoubt]

By adding I mean placing in the window yes.

 

ENB disabled for CK... maybe? I really don't know. I'm using ENB in skyrim, I don't recall doing anything special to enable it for CK... is there an easy way to check this?

 

NPCs are most definitely NOT vanilla. 4k textures, KS hair, etc.

 

RE 32 bit app... That was kinda why I'm leaning towards that being my problem. I was just hoping there was some way to cheat the system.

 

So I guess that leaves me looking for ways to cut down on my ram usage inside creation kit. Any suggestions? With some of the mods out there that are using 4k textures for everything under the sun I'd think that there's got to be someone who's run into this before and found a way around it...

[Andy14]

21 minutes ago, bytorredoubt said:

By adding I mean placing in the window yes.

 

ENB disabled for CK... maybe? I really don't know. I'm using ENB in skyrim, I don't recall doing anything special to enable it for CK... is there an easy way to check this?

 

NPCs are most definitely NOT vanilla. 4k textures, KS hair, etc.

 

RE 32 bit app... That was kinda why I'm leaning towards that being my problem. I was just hoping there was some way to cheat the system.

 

So I guess that leaves me looking for ways to cut down on my ram usage inside creation kit. Any suggestions? With some of the mods out there that are using 4k textures for everything under the sun I'd think that there's got to be someone who's run into this before and found a way around it...

 

In enblocal.ini [Global] this Line: IgnoreCreationKit=true

Deactivate everything that is possible in the CK Menu-> View.
If no scripts need to be compiled: temporarily rename the source folder in the scripts folder before starting CK.

[bytorredoubt]

Operation RAM USAGE REDUCTION phase 1: So after a little reading it sounds like ENB is automatically "on" in creation kit if its enabled in skyrim. So, I need some way of disabling it when starting creation kit from Mod Organizer... I found some threads discussing creating a BAT file to rename something before and after CK starts.

 

specifically:

 

"Create a file *.bat or *.cmd ( * whatever name you desire) in your game DIR where CreationKit.exe is located.

And add these lines:

Ren d3d9.dll d3d9ck.dll
Start CreationKit.exe
Timeout 1
Ren d3d9ck.dll d3d9.dll

With this script it will rename d3d9.dll, open creation kit, wait 1 sec and rename d3d9.dll back. So you can run Skyrim in the same time without using any other cmd."

 

that's a nice automatic script... but i wasn't sure how to implement it with mod organizer, so I just made 2 bat files, one to disable ENB and one to enable it, that I have to remember to run prior to running CK/skse.

 

Sadly, this only resulted in approximately 20mb of RAM savings. So I'm still looking for other ideas to cut down on creation kit ram usage.

[bytorredoubt]

Andy, I like your ENB solution better... implementing that instead now. I wrote up the previous post and lingered too long waiting for results before posting it and didn't see your post until after I'd posted.

 

Also looking into CK Menu -> view options now and will report back.

[bytorredoubt]

Seems most everything in the view menu is currently turned off. Turning off "bright lights" didn't make any changes, "leaves" wont disable for whatever reason... not that I have any trees anyways at the moment. I tried enabling wireframe thinking that there might be less ram usage with no textures showing but that didn't seem to make any difference either.

 

I also went and hid some of the existing NPCs by selecting them and pressing "1", but if anything that seems to have increased ram usage. 

[bytorredoubt]

Also, ENB was already off via your method... apparently my ENB author was already on that and the few mb difference I was seeing was from something else. Is there maybe a way to set the NPCs spawn location without dropping them into the render window? seems like if I could keep them out of there I might be able to keep the memory usage down as it really only starts adding up once I start dropping them in.

[bytorredoubt]

Alternately... maybe I don't need to have all this stuff loaded in?

For example, if I'm not actually editing the way an NPC looks only where it's located and what it's doing, do I need to load the KS hairs / Apachii hairs, etc? I know it will likely throw an error, but I don't want to go and accidentally corrupt my whole mod because I didn't load something once. The hair files are requirements for a bunch of the NPCs but the files are pretty beefy so if I could get away with not loading them that's probably a good chunk of memory right there. 

 

Sorry for all the questions, but I really do appreciate the help!

[Andy14]

5 hours ago, bytorredoubt said:

Alternately... maybe I don't need to have all this stuff loaded in?

For example, if I'm not actually editing the way an NPC looks only where it's located and what it's doing, do I need to load the KS hairs / Apachii hairs, etc? I know it will likely throw an error, but I don't want to go and accidentally corrupt my whole mod because I didn't load something once. The hair files are requirements for a bunch of the NPCs but the files are pretty beefy so if I could get away with not loading them that's probably a good chunk of memory right there. 

 

Sorry for all the questions, but I really do appreciate the help!

Instead of loading a huge mod like KS Hairdos, it would have been enough to only use the nifs from KS Hairdos that you really need. All you have to do is create the hair and hairline in head parts.

 

But another question.

Can you use the previews and animations in Actors?

In Actors right click on the Follower-> Preview and then the animations with Run Havok.
If not, I would point to a problem with nif, texture, or too many animations.