SUMMARY
This article will help explain and distinguish between each of the different colours used in Mari’s layer caching system.
MORE INFORMATION
Pre-caching calculations
Throughout working on your projects in Mari, it is important to keep an eye on the colours you see visible at the side of your layerstack as displayed below:
The gradient from green to red measures the accumulated memory usage of the layerstack.
Red indicates that processing all the layers into the shader is starting to take up too much memory. Generally, layers that quickly bring the gradient closer to red will be those that often require more computational processes such as heavy procedural or tri-planar layers. These, in turn, put more strain onto Mari, which could negatively affect performance.
Recognising cached layers
In order to restore performance, it is a good idea to cache as many layers as you can while you work on a Project, as caching stores expensive layers to prevent performance suffering. Mari keeps cached layers easily identifiable when the layerstack starts to fill up by notating these layers in shades of blue.
To distinguish between the two, layers that have been cached using the Cache Layers Up To Here method are shown in a lighter blue. The top layer or layers that have been cached using the Cache Layers method instead, are displayed in a dark blue.
Uncommon 'Caching in progress' colours
Whilst caching different layers, you may find that the colour state of other layers varies or changes whilst Mari is completing the action. Here's an example:
Usually, these colours appear in the blue to purple spectrum, with bright pink being applied to identify heavily already-cached layers as Mari recalculates the caching process. By the time the caching process is complete, these should return to their original blue tones based on the method that was used to cache them.
FURTHER INFO
For more information on caching layers, please refer to the Caching and Uncaching Layers section of Mari's documentation.
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