On memory consumption and mesh disposal

Questions
,
1

I am trying to make a MMORPG. Being an MMORPG i have a big issue on quantity of avatars on screen. I already created a method of creating avatars when i am close and removing it when i am not looking.

I created a FBX file of an avatar that consists on 24 skinnedmeshes connected to a skeleton.
When i loaded the FBX file i had this situation on memory:
before avatar
memory-56525020 (from window.performance.memory.usedJSHeapSize)
textures-0
geometries-0
calls-0
triangles-0

After making a clone() of this loaded group and removing 11 pieces of clothes from the original file (with methods removeFromParent() and clear() on each cloth i wanted to remove) i had this situation:

after avatar
memory-58392564
textures-13
geometries-13
calls-13
triangles-12384

this is nice. I managed to get from the 24 meshes i had on my file only 13 on render.

Issue came when i tried to delete this 13 objects from render. Here is my code:
removeAvatar:function(){
if (this._threeObj){
this._threeObj.traverse(object => {
if (!object.isMesh) return

			console.log('dispose geometry!')
			object.geometry.dispose()
		
			if (object.material.isMaterial) {
				console.log('dispose material!')
				object.material.dispose()
			
				// dispose textures
				for (const key of Object.keys(object.material)) {
					const value = object.material[key]
					if (value && typeof value === 'object' && 'minFilter' in value) {
						console.log('dispose texture!')
						value.dispose()
					}
				}
			} else {
				// an array of materials
				for (const material of object.material) {
					console.log('dispose material!')
					object.material.dispose()
				
					// dispose textures
					for (const key of Object.keys(object.material)) {
						const value = object.material[key]
						if (value && typeof value === 'object' && 'minFilter' in value) {
							console.log('dispose texture!')
							value.dispose()
						}
					}
				}
			}
		})
		this._threeObj.clear()
		this._threeObj.removeFromParent () 

	}
},

Notice i dispose of every geometry and every material.

Still…after this procedure i get this result:

after avatar removal
memory-60624016
textures-13
geometries-13
calls-0
triangles-0

I have an increase of memory consumption and it didnt remove geometries or textures from render.
Notice: MY FBX dont have textures. I checked each material and it didnt have textures in it…only colors.

So whats wrong here?

2

Two adicional information on the issue…

1- I noticed that for each clone i make from the original FBX file object, I geometries dont change, but textures is increased. So if i have 2 clones i have 13 geometries, 26 textures. 100 clones is 13 geometries 130 textures.

2- I decided to make a delay after removal of the avatar of 60 seconds. Noticed the memory was reduced (probably cause i gave time for garbage collector to work) but the geometries and textures didnt change.

3

Skeletal animations are controlled using textures - the newly created texture for each clone represents bone transformations for the new instance.

4

So how do i remove the textures of the old bone transformations so that it dont keep increasing forever?

5

Be sure to dispose the skeleton if you aren’t doing that already (and make sure to dispose stuff only after the object is removed from the scene - this applies to all materials, textures, and skeleton bindings.)

2 Likes
6

thank you i will try that right away

7

Man it solved. Thank you a lot. The issue was solved after i removed the object from scene and disposed all skeletons.

1 Like
8

nice. TIL.