Two Questions

[markw]

Is there a reason why particle sprites don't show up in Render Lock Mode (shiftQ) but their shadows do?

And how much memory can A:M use in the Mac version? I have 8GB but A:M never seems to use more than 1 or maybe 2 at most. After what seems like only an hour or two trying to work with the Rear Window set things really start to bog down.

 

Edit:

OK ignore that last bit about the set. I'v deactivated and/or hidden as many of the set models as possible and things are running much better now.

I just have to remember to turn them all back on again when it comes time to finally render!

[robcat2075]

Is there a reason why particle sprites don't show up in Render Lock Mode (shiftQ) but their shadows do?

 

 

That sounds like a bug. An AMReport with a sample PRJ and a screen capture of both a Q render and a Shift-Q render would be a fine idea.

[markw]

Done, another bug reported.

I've been trying to precisely place some emitters but its a killer when the only way to see the effect is to wait for the entire screen to render.

I am still curious about the memory usage on Macs though if some knows.

[Fuchur]

Done, another bug reported.

I've been trying to precisely place some emitters but its a killer when the only way to see the effect is to wait for the entire screen to render.

I am still curious about the memory usage on Macs though if some knows.

 

You dont have to wait for the whole set to render.

The blue render-button next to the green one can be used by dragging a rectangle around a part of the scene to render only that (exactly as the green one does too), you can set the rendering-settings to multipass > 1 pass, which will be very fast too and if you need it even faster (showing the particles), you may want to have a look at the shaded-mode too...

 

See you

*Fuchur*

 

PS: RAM-usage is based on the scene... if your scene does not need more RAM than 1 GB it wont use more. CPU has to calculate the scene and that takes time. If there is not enough data that needs to be placed in the RAM it wont place more in there. In general you should be able to use all the RAM you have. (I think the newer Mac-OSs all are 64bit, so I am just guessing here. If they are, they can use at least 196 GB of RAM or even more if available. (I think 196 GB is the limit of Windows... I am not sure how much you really can use with a 64bit-system... but that is very easy to find out using wiki).

[robcat2075]

The only thing I've tried recently that seemed to even approach using 2 gigs were some scenes from TWO.

[markw]

Interesting...

I was wondering because A:M on Macs isn't 64bit and other graphics apps that I use which are 64bit just eat as much RAM as I can give them!

But whilst using the Rear Window set, my copy of AM seems to be often forgetting things in a random sort of way, similar to what can sometimes happen when there is not sufficient RAM and the system has to write/read to disk a lot and sometimes gets it wrong, so I thought maybe it was a RAM memory thing.

For example, some hidden bones and nulls in the Literig that should be rotated automatically by their controlling bones are not always and I have to go hunting for them to do it manually. The Lower Hip bone has now stopped working altogether!

The bias settings of CP's on joints slowly creep out of place. Thankfully I found the CP bias resets after closing A:M and opening it again.

I'v not embedded the main character, so its still being referenced from the original, and outside of the Rear Window set the same model behaves perfectly!

So anyway I was just wondering, thank you both for the info.

[robcat2075]

The bias settings of CP's on joints slowly creep out of place. Thankfully I found the CP bias resets after closing A:M and opening it again.

 

Some times I have noticed biases that seem to get "stuck" and are not smoothly passing the spline thru a CP. Saving and reloading fixes it but I haven't noticed that it was a "large" project issue it happened even with small things.