Wish Enscape was more dependable

    I am running Enscape 3.5 on a machine with a 3080ti GPU and 64 GB of memory and a Ryzen 9 5950X 16 core processor. I have updated to the latest drivers for my GPU. More often than not, Enscape takes a long time to load and then I get the error dialog box. When I look at the GPU stats in the taste manager, it is showing that I am only using 5.8GB of the 12 that the card has. Just yesterday, this project opened and was running fine. I close, restart, open a fresh SketchUp session, but still get the error. This is not just this project. It's many, if not most. The file isn't terribly large either, 230MB. All proxies using the file are from the Enscape library as I have given up on trying to use hi-poly files from Globe Plants. I have even tried turning off Ray-Traced Sun Shadows, not ideally what I want to do, but that still doesn't help. I need to be able to depend on Enscape to work when I start it up. What can I do? Do I need to go to a beefier GPU?

    I'm running an i9 9900K(old), 64Gb ram, RTX2070, Windows 11, and other than an occasional glitch (I skipped 3.4 entirely) I haven't suffered anything like what you're describing.

    What else do you have running?, have a look in the Windows StartUp apps, you'll be surprised what can be running without your knowledge.

    It happened again. Earlier today I was able to get the file to run and export the renderings I need to post-process. Then I noticed something I wanted to fix, run Enscape - Enscape crash dialog - click option to close Enscape and send a report to Enscape - SketchUp now hung up for over 5 minutes. This is a super common occurrence. Is it the AMD processor? I have plenty of RAM available, and plenty of GPU memory available.

    Yea but you also have Windows which can very easily become unstable.


    What version of Windows do you have?

    When was it last reinstalled from scratch?

    What's in your Windows Startup folder?

    Do you do any regular maintenance in Windows?

    Do you keep up to date with Windows updates?

    Theres a couple there I dont know, what I'd suggest is finding a bit of time and try turning off some of them, rebooting, doing some render testing.

    If it fails then turn them back on and turn off some others etc etc.


    Work through a process of elimination.


    I see Dropbox in the list, are you using it directly with SU/Enscape? ie do you have assets there (models/ textures etc) that are used in the model(s) or do you try to save files directly to it?


    Dropbox and Onedrive are doing their best to prevent local file storage which is all well and good if all you do is write letters but really really causes havoc for the likes of us.

    This is crazy and interesting. So, I went into task manager and killed almost everything that seemed unnecessary and so far, I have not had any issues with starting Enscape. This is crazy. All of this time the issue is some garbage running in the background! I have been dealing with instability for years and just assumed I needed a better GPU or I was pushing Enscape too hard.


    As a side note, I am not using Dropbox or Onedrive for anything related to Enscape or my SketchUp files.

    Periodic maintenance of your computer is essential, Windows WILL slowly gum itself up overtime.

    About 6 months ago I was experiencing problems and having tried various little tricks I bit the bullet and rebuilt everything from the ground up starting with a fresh install of Windows 11. It took 2 days but the difference was night and day. It a scary thing to do and I wouldn’t attempt it without a good knowledge with what you’re doing and at leat 2 backups but it worked.

    So the battle continues with Enscape actually working when I need it to. I contacted support and I was told that one of my issues was that my textures are on a network drive and it is recommended that my textures reside on my C drive!?!?! You guys are kidding, right? Is this a solution??? What professional office would ever work this way?


    I am starting to think that Enscape, in an effort to keep up with competing real-time engines, might have some real issues on its hands. If we can't depend on this software to work as expected any longer, why would we continue using it with so much competition out there.

    Quote from VStudio

    I contacted support and I was told that one of my issues was that my textures are on a network drive and it is recommended that my textures reside on my C drive!?!?! You guys are kidding, right? Is this a solution??? What professional office would ever work this way?

    I was told this some time ago as well but disregarded it, because it's commonplace for workplaces to be connected to a local or even remote VPN (work from home) share drive at this point. Sure, you're limited by the connection speed and need to keep that in mind, particularly via a remote VPN connection or something. But locally on a LAN connection, I've never really noticed any issues regarding speed on a network share drive. AutoDesk says network drives aren't supported either, but then again they also still only officially recommend Nvidia Quadro, when GeForce has worked fine (sometimes better) for as long as I can remember.


    One of the problems I used to run into frequently is how SketchUp and Enscape are handling file locations for materials. Sometimes it's down to my own laziness in previous projects where I imported materials from 3rd party sources quickly and didn't organize them properly. I typically do this when quickly and/or creatively am designing a space. SketchUp will create a file copy in the %appdata% folder and Enscape will map it in the folder you select within the Enscape Material Editor. Changing it after the fact seems to be problematic and might be the cause for issues. I had one project recently where I actually removed ALL materials and just started over, because Enscape was throwing a fit (error) and wouldn't load the render window because of an orphaned material file location...somewhere...that Enscape support could see in the log file I provided. TLDR: It's really difficult to hunt down and find the "problem" material that's causing the issues.

    The advice I was given and have been testing is to turn off ray-traced sun shadows. I have to say that so far this seems to have solved my hang-up crashing issues but what's the point of even having ray-traced sun shadows if it's unreliable? I have 3080Ti 64GB of memory and a Ryzen 16 core processor and that is not enough to handle ray-traced sun shadows on medium complexity projects is shocking to me.


    Does everyone work with this feature on or off?