Anim8or Community

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Ian Ross has just released a book on Anim8or. It's perect for a beginner and a good reference for experienced users. It contains detailed chapters on every aspect, with many examples. Get your own copy here: "Anim8or Tutorial Book"

Author Topic: Scene animation has always been choppy?  (Read 15073 times)

davdud101

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1067
  • Couldn't ever use Blender or Maya. Anim8or's good.
    • View Profile
Scene animation has always been choppy?
« on: May 29, 2020, 06:02:33 pm »

Idk if this is just me of if everyone experiences this...
Since my last several PCs (basicaly everything after Windows Vista) I can't remember ever having Scene view play in realtime to the frame or playback an animation any faster than probably about 6-10fps.

Is this an issue with my hardware? @Steve anything I can do to optimize playback for easier animation in Scene mode? Trying to animate a character but it's always been tough judging 'weight' and all those animation-principle things when not able to see everything happening as it will render  :'(
« Last Edit: May 29, 2020, 06:05:30 pm by davdud101 »
Logged
?

Steve

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2125
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #1 on: May 29, 2020, 07:17:17 pm »

How complex are your scenes? How large are your models, how many, do they use morph targets or are rigged with deforming figures? Also, what CPU do you have?
Logged

davdud101

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1067
  • Couldn't ever use Blender or Maya. Anim8or's good.
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2020, 09:47:38 pm »

How complex are your scenes? How large are your models, how many, do they use morph targets or are rigged with deforming figures? Also, what CPU do you have?

The character I'm working on is a subdivide, but only 556 points altogether. I get (of course) better framerates when displaying him with fewer divisions and particularly when the Track view is collapsed (which I never realized.... seems like the track fully re-renders of something every time the marker moves a frame?)

Also I guess with that I found out it IS playing in realtime, but dropping most of the frames to gie a total of those 6 - 10fps (with the track opened up and a high-ish poly model with low divisions)

He DOES have 10 morph targets for facial expressions and I like to try to zero them ALL out any time I'm changing multiple aspects of the expression, so plenty of key frames :S


My CPU is an AMD FX-8300. Does Anim8or lean toward Intel? Or possibly newer-gen CPU types?
Logged
?

davdud101

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1067
  • Couldn't ever use Blender or Maya. Anim8or's good.
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2020, 09:48:23 pm »

Oh meant to say, this is pretty simple - one instance (object?) made up of 5 smaller objects within the scene
Logged
?

johnar

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1025
  • Make it, Move it--Give it Life
    • View Profile
    • youtube vids
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #4 on: May 30, 2020, 07:46:31 am »

 I had the same issue some time ago, and a good nVidia graphics card did the trick.
 Have got a slightly better PC now, and first thing i did was put a decent graphics card in.
 Not playing in realtime, 24 - 30fps, but quick enough to watch.(simple scenes)
   Gotta do a quick render to watch at full speed

No specs on hand, but i have read that  intel are a better cpu

 I'm not really up on all that, but did enjoy updating my 'older' pc to a slightly better one.

 just a thought. 

 Another thought. Anim8or is easy portable, maybe you could copy your project to a usb stick and try on another pc with different specs


 
Logged
%

Kevin Gales

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #5 on: May 30, 2020, 08:37:41 am »

Idk if this is just me of if everyone experiences this...
Since my last several PCs (basicaly everything after Windows Vista) I can't remember ever having Scene view play in realtime to the frame or playback an animation any faster than probably about 6-10fps.

Is this an issue with my hardware? @Steve anything I can do to optimize playback for easier animation in Scene mode? Trying to animate a character but it's always been tough judging 'weight' and all those animation-principle things when not able to see everything happening as it will render  :'(

Well it's all about how complex the scene is
I have a dell precision m6700
i7 3840qm(~3.8ghz)
k5100m
32GB

And dell xps 13
i7-10510U (~4.9ghz)
Intel® UHD
16GB

I pretty much get low fps if the scene is complex...and subdivided
But if I remove subdivision I can get +-32fps on both machines
Logged

davdud101

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1067
  • Couldn't ever use Blender or Maya. Anim8or's good.
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #6 on: May 30, 2020, 11:24:32 am »

I had the same issue some time ago, and a good nVidia graphics card did the trick.
 Have got a slightly better PC now, and first thing i did was put a decent graphics card in.
 /*snippety snip*/
 Another thought. Anim8or is easy portable, maybe you could copy your project to a usb stick and try on another pc with different specs


Good thoughts johnar. I’ve actually got a pretty decent GPU in here so I doubt that’s the issue 🤔 I might try to do the actual animation from my laptop which has a good Intel processor but no on-board graphics.




Well it's all about how complex the scene is
I have a dell precision m6700
i7 3840qm(~3.8ghz)
k5100m
32GB

And dell xps 13
i7-10510U (~4.9ghz)
Intel® UHD
16GB

I pretty much get low fps if the scene is complex...and subdivided
But if I remove subdivision I can get +-32fps on both machines


How complex do your models/scenes get as far as number of points and number of objects in a scene?
I can get it to maybe 15-20fps if I set my subdivisions to 1, but of course going down to 0 makes the model too low-poly to really see what’s happening (I guess I mentioned that before).

When you do it do you usually have the timetrack showing? That seemed to be the second-biggest factor in determining the playback frame rate.

(What made you go with more RAM on the slower processor btw? Or is it a desktop and laptop for example)
Logged
?

Kevin Gales

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 133
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2020, 03:12:18 pm »

@davdud101  Both machines are laptops...I did not upgrade or change components of either so m6700 came with 32GB...xps with 16GB

points.jpg : shows total points unsubdivided
sub_points.jpg : shows total points subdivided
complex_sub.jpg : shows 2.14 f/s (5 of that guy it means atleast 1.2 million points)...any complex scene could contain as much points or less
complex_unsub.jpg : shows 22.2 f/s (the number changes everytime...from +-22 to 32 max *I don't know why)

I can't upload more pictures the other results only with one guy still goes from  +-2 to 7 (subdivided)
and 30+ unsubdivided
Logged

Steve

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2125
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #8 on: May 31, 2020, 05:11:37 pm »

That's a decent CPU for a laptop. I think that the main issue is that those are very high face counts. You really don't need nearly as many faces. And each level of subdivision increases the face count by a factor of 4. The subdivision is done in software after skinning, which is faster than the opposite order, but it still takes time.

Logged

davdud101

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1067
  • Couldn't ever use Blender or Maya. Anim8or's good.
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #9 on: May 31, 2020, 05:38:28 pm »

That's a decent CPU for a laptop. I think that the main issue is that those are very high face counts. You really don't need nearly as many faces. And each level of subdivision increases the face count by a factor of 4. The subdivision is done in software after skinning, which is faster than the opposite order, but it still takes time.


For my part I'm finding I just need to learn to downscale all my subdivided objects to more of a 'preview' quality and it gets me a lot closer to framerate. I can imagine it'd be the same situation for any graphics application. Seems weird saying this because I realize I have sooo little experience doing actual animation in Anim8or xD I use Scene mode a lot for making quick renders for mockups but it's been years since I actually tried animating a character, haha!
Logged
?

mrbeaver.07

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 150
    • View Profile
Re: Scene animation has always been choppy?
« Reply #10 on: June 06, 2021, 07:52:47 am »

Even big models with a lot of morph targets can be played at 20-30 fps, but only if model is very simple and low-poly
Logged