Texture count keeps increasing, but memory stays the same (after texture dispose)

Questions
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1

Hi,

I have a ShaderMaterial and I’m just changing a uniform (Texture) in it.
First I call .dispose() on the texture (material.uniforms.uPalette.value as THREE.Texture).dispose()), then assign a new one.

What I find weird, is that in the stats, renderer.info.memory.textures keeps increasing, but the memory usage stays relatively the same, even goes down a bit sometimes, so I’m assuming the texture is really being disposed…

Is my assumption wrong? If not, what can be the reason of the growing texture count in the stats?

2

That is strange since when you call dispose() on a texture, the memory count should go down if the texture’s source data are not used by other textures. Do you mind demonstrating the issue with a live example?

3

Thanks @Mugen87, I did some debugging and it looks like this was caused by some CubeTexture I was generating. I created a new WebGLCubeRenderTarget for every new cube texture and even though I called the dispose on the texture itself, it was not enough… Now I reuse the same render target every time, and so far it looks perfectly good (I still have that one extra texture lying around in the render target, but i can live with that for now :slightly_smiling_face:).

4

When using render targets, you should call dispose() on the render target, not on the render target’s texture. Maybe this created the confusion?

5

Yeah, I guess I was under the impression that calling .dispose() on the render target would destroy it as well, so I was just trying to get rid of the texture.

Now I do the following (render target is a static prop in the class):

  • create a new texture using the render target
  • assign texture to shader uniform
  • repeat…

So the last created texture is always “stuck”, but I’m fine with that for now.

I wonder if disposing the render target every time, after assigning the texture to the uniform would be a better/more performant way, but I don’t think so.

6

Definitely no. A lot of resources (frame/renderbuffers) are allocated in the background when render targets are created so it’s best to avoid dispose() whenever possible.

7

Makes sense :slight_smile:

While I have you here Master @Mugen87, do you maybe have some pointers on how should I approach the following issue (or if it’s possible at all):

Building on the previous, instead of using a loop to generate many normal/canvas/cube textures and blocking the main thread while doing it, I want to generate a texture sprite in a web worker, using OffScreenCanvas. It works really well for normal textures (gradients/text/etc), but now I somehow need to add these cube textures… I need to get them on the canvas, so I can use .transferToImageBitmap() and send everything as Transferable objects to the main thread.

Here is the code I use for generating these:

private cubeTextureScene = new THREE.Scene();
private cubeRenderTarget = new THREE.WebGLCubeRenderTarget(this.resolution, {
  format: THREE.RGBAFormat,
  generateMipmaps: true
});
private cubeCamera = new THREE.CubeCamera(0.01, 10, this.cubeRenderTarget);
private cubeMesh = new THREE.Mesh(new THREE.SphereGeometry(0.5, this.sphereSegments, this.sphereSegments));

public getCubeTexture(
  radius: number,
  uniforms: { [uniform: string]: THREE.IUniform },
  vertexShader: string,
  fragmentShader: string,
  side = THREE.DoubleSide
): THREE.CubeTexture {
  this.cubeMesh.scale.set(radius, radius, radius);
  this.cubeMesh.updateMatrix();

  this.cubeMesh.material = new THREE.ShaderMaterial({ side, uniforms, vertexShader, fragmentShader });

  this.cubeCamera.update(App.renderer, this.cubeTextureScene);

  this.cubeMesh.material.dispose();

  const texture = this.cubeRenderTarget.texture;
  texture.colorSpace = THREE.SRGBColorSpace;

  return texture;
}

Is there any way to get the actual images out of this (I couldn’t really find anything helpful so far…)? If yes, and I put them on the sprite canvas, then in the main thread I get the parts from the sprite, what would be the best way to re-create the cube texture? Or even better, just use the sprite as is and somehow pinpoint the actual part as cube texture(s)?