Multiple .chproj files in After Effects divide up available RAM

Report · Mar 27, 2023

I have a project with currently 11 different Character Animator scenes dynamically linked in After Effects. I kept getting a "low memory" warning, and I realized that After Effects was dividing up the 26GB of RAM I have allocated for AE 12 ways (2GB for AE and 2GB for each of the 11 instances of Character Animator). Most of these scenes are less than 5 seconds long, so it seems really inefficient to permanently reserve 2GB of RAM for each of them. It's making AE impossible to use with only 2GB available to it.

Is there a way around this or do I just have to abandon using dynamic link and export these scenes some other way from CA? I have tried creating proxies in AE, but it still seems to partition the RAM in the same way.

Thanks!

Report · May 17, 2023

Each instance of Dynamic Link is going to spin up a process in the background that needs RAM. Can you conslidate each of the scenes into a single .chproj? Otherwise, yes, I would recommend exporting the scenes as videos or image sequences.

Report · May 17, 2023

Thanks for the response. Yeah, I found exporting PNG sequences was the solution I needed. I still wish dynamic link worked in a different, more efficient way, but abandoning it altogether worked out fine in this case.

Report · May 18, 2023

Each time you're launching DL you need a certain amount of RAM, it is running the Character Animator engine behind the scenes, after all. In this case, I think the efficiency lies on the user's end by combining the shots into a single .chproj. This is how I bring shots into AE and never run out of RAM. In the end, I still recommend exporting a ProRes 4444 with alpha after your animation is final since it will run much smoother in AE, but DL is a great way to line things up and time them while you're still animating your characters.