A:M on a Mac...

[Mark3D]

Hello All,

 

I was just attempting to complete the fighter plane tutorial and had a few questions about A:M performance issues. Basically, A:M has been running very smooth with every tutorial until the fighter one. I am having terrible performance issues making A:M completely unusable. Here are some of the issues and steps I've taken to resolve them:

 

- When loading the fighter project that I have been working on it takes over a minute to load.

 

- Once the project loads I am trying to put the back fin on and when I click a node there is a delay of over 30 seconds for it to select. (spinning colour wheel of doom entertains me while I wait)

 

- Once the node finally selects and I try to move it, I again get the spinning colour wheel of doom for over 30 seconds before the node or object will jerk to the position I want.

 

- I have looked at the activity monitor on my mac and it says I have 90% of my CPU unused and that I have 300mb of RAM unused. So I know I am not maxing out my system. Here are my specs:

 

Macbook 13.3" 2.0 ghz dualcore with 1 gb of ram running Snow Leopard

... I realize this computer isn't anything spectacular but this performance is absolutely ridiculous for such a simple model.

 

Now here are my questions:

 

- I have read on previous post that some users have issues with A:M on a mac... should I ditch the mac and run A:M on my older pc?

 

- Are there settings I can adjust within A:M or on my mac to boost my performance?

 

Sorry for the long post but this has been bugging me and is preventing me from continuing with A:M on this computer.

 

Thanks, Mark.

[steve392]

Are you in mirror mode ,that efects me sometimes ,you could try reset settings in the tools .I don't use a mac so just guesing

[Mark3D]

What's mirror mode? Also, where do I turn it on and off?

[robcat2075]

It's button at the top. looks like a face with a line thru it.

 

You can hover over any button and a text line will appear near it and a description will appear in the lower left corner of A:M

[Walter Baker]

Try this, it might help

 

Open your 'Disk Utilities'

highlight you HD.....

under First Aid.......run 'Repair Disk permissions'

do it 3 times then Restart the computer

 

Just a thought this early with only 1 cup of coffee!

[largento]

Could it be possible that you have an accidentally caused a very large number of patches?

 

(Right-click in the model window and select "Info..." to get the number.)

 

Your symptoms sound like what happens while working on a very complex (ie large patch count) model. It is possible to have multiple CPs in the exact same space caused by holding down the extrude button, for instance.

[jakerupert]

That would be my presumption as well.

 

When your file info indicates more then 15000 patches for one model, the handling is usually like you expierience it

at the moment.

Just drag one cp around and see , if you have involuntarily duplicated you model (maybe several times).

 

maybw post your mdl file here for further investigation....

[Mark3D]

Here is a screen shot... do I have something selected that I shouldn't? I checked and I'm not in mirror mode. I am at 208 for patches... so I assume that is normal?

 

Also, does anyone have a similar 13" macbook and doesn't have issues like this?

[robcat2075]

I'm going to guess it's one of those weird 10,000 empty folders in the PRJ things.

 

do Project>Embed All and then Save under a new name and post that here

[Mark3D]

Here is the project file; hopefully I saved it correctly.

fighterplaneupload.prj

[robcat2075]

Yup, first clue... a 3MB file!

 

The file had entries for two "markers" repeated about 50,000.

 

I can't guess what caused that. I deleted them in a text editor.

 

But of course, you never save over your previous version of a model. You always saved with new version number.

 

So, once the file started saving huge like that you could stop, and go back to a previous version before it got huge.

 

Well, if you werent' saving versions before, you will now.

 

This model would normally only take up about 25K

 

fighterplaneNoMarkers.prj

 

 

When you see a file size suddenly jump about 1000x that's a warning flag that something is not right. It happens.

[Mark3D]

I greatly appreciate your help; everything is running smoothly again. Does this issue happen often?

[higginsdj]

Good pickup. Theres a challange for someone - someone should write a file parser that will allow users to quickly see if there is anything odd in a file and allow them to select and remove oddities.

 

Cheers

[robcat2075]

I greatly appreciate your help; everything is running smoothly again. Does this issue happen often?

 

only often enough to recognize symptoms.

 

Not sure what does it. For all i know , your cat could have had his foot on the make marker button for five minutes while you were out making a sandwich.

 

Theres a challange for someone - someone should write a file parser that will allow users to quickly see if there is anything odd in a file and allow them to select and remove oddities.

 

 

If you retitle a A:M file to .xml you can drop it in Internet Explorer and it will expand it as if it were.

 

But opening it in a text editor made it obvious anyway. And you can edit in a text editor.

[NancyGormezano]

If you retitle a A:M file to .xml you can drop it in Internet Explorer and it will expand it as if it were.

 

OMG! OMG! OMG! That makes it so much easier to read the file and see what's going on !

 

(and yes then edit in a text editor)

 

Thanks for that tip.

 

Not sure what does it.

 

Me neither. It seems to be related to using rotoscopes when modeling, and saving some other type of file while having the model file open. For example saving an action,material, chor, prj, and then saving the model. Or having a chor with a rotoscope, as well as a model (in the chor) that also has a rotoscope.

 

I thought it was taken care of in some version of 15 (past ver e)? But maybe not?

[Mark3D]

Darn cat! Haha. What is the make marker button or shortcut... just so I don't accidentally do this again.

[robcat2075]

Darn cat! Haha. What is the make marker button or shortcut... just so I don't accidentally do this again.

 

Actually you make them by clicking in the ruler area.

 

It was probably an A:M bug but a crafty one that is still hiding.

[Mark3D]

Interesting.... I had actually made two intentional markers on my project at the very beginning and there were no problems. Somewhere during the project I had acquired three black vertical lines on my model window and had no idea what they were... maybe that had something to do with it.

 

Thanks again for your help today... I was almost going to give up on A:M again, haha.