System requirements?

[PaulX]

Downloaded v15 to replace my old v8.5 and found I can't use it because it is slow on my machine. For example, if I click and drag the bounding box of a character in choreography mode the move happens a few seconds after I released the mouse button. So, just as a check and before inflicting unfair injury upon my computer's innocence gland, I reloaded v8.5 and did the following; I set up a scene involving a character standing in front of a photograph and did a quick render with both versions. Time to render with v8.5 is 31.44 and v15 is 51.0, or near twenty seconds longer all things been equal. It would appear then that v15 is near twice as resource greedy as v8.5. A search of the Hash website revealed that the system requirements for v14 recommend a 500 mhz cpu and I would assume v15 would not be dramatically different. While arguably far from impressive by today's standards, I do have 1000 mhz at my disposal and so would imagine the software could run in a usable manner. So before I go into a trance, wipe the HD and re-install everything or worse, such as buy a new machine I could hardly afford right now, is 1000 mhz enough to run v15 without having to wait seconds for the software to respond to the wire frame of a character being moved from point A to point B? Would it help if I bolted in more RAM? I have 500 megs.

 

And I did shut down everything I could think of and even went as far as removing the virus scan thingo from the computer to free up resources and, gave greater priority to AM but all that made little if any difference.

[KenH]

It's abit unfair to compare render times. Was every setting equal? Was the quality of the renders exactly the same? Hard to say. As for the realtime issue...I assume you don't have realtime quality at its highest setting. What graphics card are you using? Are the drivers up to date? Try switching between opengl and directx? Maybe v8.5 is optimized for your card and v15 not? So many variables.

Definitely more ram will help.

[higginsdj]

If you are using the library characters in v15 then you might want to turn Hair off first (Options/render - it's checked on by default at install time). As far as I can rememeber, v8.5 didn't have hair.....

 

Cheers

[PaulX]

If you are using the library characters in v15 then you might want to turn Hair off first (Options/render - it's checked on by default at install time). As far as I can rememeber, v8.5 didn't have hair.....

 

Cheers

 

Thanks, I used the clown from v8.5. I suppose I really need to know whether the cpu is fast enough and if it is then this looks like a job for number-one son next time he visits Dad - he is studying computer science (?) and just rolls his eyes at Dad's incompetence - believes I should stick to pencil, paint and paper lol

 

Video card, etc, well that's getting a little technical for an artist but I will try more memory

[higginsdj]

There are always possible compatability issues between models from old versions etc. Try using one of the v15 Library models and see if you have the same issue. The other thing to try (if you haven't already) is to using the Page Down key to have the graphics driver render 1 subdivision per patch where as the default is adaptive (a lot of subdivisions)

 

I've not had significant issues with v15 versions on my P4 laptop at 1.5ghz and 1gb ram (mobility Radeon card circa 2005). Its slow on complex scenes but not as slow as you describe.

 

Cheers

[PaulX]

There are always possible compatability issues between models from old versions etc. Try using one of the v15 Library models and see if you have the same issue. The other thing to try (if you haven't already) is to using the Page Down key to have the graphics driver render 1 subdivision per patch where as the default is adaptive (a lot of subdivisions)

 

I've not had significant issues with v15 versions on my P4 laptop at 1.5ghz and 1gb ram (mobility Radeon card circa 2005). Its slow on complex scenes but not as slow as you describe.

 

Cheers

 

Thanks. Same issues with the v15 library models. Not a problem, I'll try some extra memory and see what happens and if the same then I suppose it will have to be a faster computer.

BTW Higginsdj, nice telescope!

[frosteternal]

While 500 mhz is functional, I wouldn't recommend less than 1000. However, what you are describing sounds to me like you don't have a video card with 3d acceleration features. If that is the case, that must be changed. =)

Go to your program options, and choose the tab marked either "OpenGL" or "Direct3D" (which one is available depends on your settings.)

This tab should list the funtions available to your card. If it just says something like "Software- REF" then you know for certain you need a new video card. If there are only a feww features listed as supported, you still need a new card.

Really though, the money would be best invested in a new computer; you can get a passable one for under 300 nowadays.

[HomeSlice]

The only things I can think of is that you have "Hair" turned on (like Mr. Higgins said). Or maybe your realtime subdivision in v15 is set to "variable". Or the scene has Ambient Occlusion set on the camera in the chor - I've noticed that scenes with Ambient Occlusion slow down my real time performance.

 

If it's a new computer you are thinking about, you may not have to buy a completely new computer, I just got (as a gift) a new motherboard, processor and RAM from newegg.com for about $350 and I effectively have a very good new computer now, which is much better than any complete computer I could have bought for that price. It took me about 5-8 hours to back up my old C: drive, swap out my old components for the new components, and reinstall the operating system and all my programs.