Animation is slow

[P Retondo]

I have a few complaints about how slowly the animation module works, and I wonder if there is anything that can be done with the current system to speed things up:

1) On my dual core machine Task Manager tells me that the animation task, with nothing else running, is only using 25% of the CPU. Shouldn't it at least use something like 50%???

2) Whenever I activate the animation tool, the screen re-renders, even if it just spent tens of seconds rendering. Seems like a completely useless step and a waste of time.

3) Dedicating processor time to animation is well and good, but it seems that screen updates could be given a small fraction of a second every now and then so that I'm not looking at incomplete dialog boxes. I can't even see the "cancel" button, not that it works (it doesn't).

4) Since we can't see the non-functioning cancel button, why can we use the escape key to terminate animation? I see no reason why there can't be an interrupt for the escape key that would register user input every second or so.

Am I doing something that creates all this inefficiency? Are there valid technical reasons why this function can't work better?

[CipesDesign]

Hi Pete, I agree that it would nice if animations could be done a bit more efficiently and "behind-the-scenes" (so that we could continue to do other tasks). The re-rendering is probably a bug (I'll try to find time to report it...). As far as cancelling, here is a trick I stumbled upon: hold down command (or ALT on PC) + period. If you just hit it once there is no response, but if you continue to hold it down you should find that the animation is cancelled one frame at a time, fairly quickly. The result is that you will still end up with a QT movie, but the cancelled frames will be blank.

Edited December 20, 2006 by CipesDesign

[islandmon]

Animation requires significant processor cycling in order to set-up and render each scene. This requires memory paging in & out and writes to virtual & directory disk.

Always, save the first... prior to initiating an animation sequence. Then if necessary you can terminate the processes via the OS. Canceling the process without first having saved to disk risks corrupting the file over all structure.

Note also that the OS is using numerous cycle sensitive I/O processes during the animation procedure.

[P Retondo]

Pete and Islandmon, thanks for your input. Islandmon, are you saying that you save the file just before you click on the "Save Movie" button, or just before you select the "Animation" tool?

I'm not sure how exotic the process of generating images and saving them to a file could be. It seems to me not so different from any other calculation and I'm curious as to why the processor is so underused. Do others experience the same thing on their machines, I wonder? By the way, I also find that the processor never gets above 28% when using the walkthrough tool (granted that I'm not experiencing any slowdown or jerkiness with the models I've been playing with). In no instance noted above am I using even half the available RAM.

Machine specs: dual Xeon 3.2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, hyperthreading enabled.

[islandmon]

Don't worry about the processor percentages or RAM usages ... they modulate as required. Also, third-party utilities exist which will force the processor to max out for a declared App..

A proven rule is to always first >Save > the file prior to initiating ( selecting ) any Rendering or animation procedures.

[P Retondo]

Update: after talking to Dell tech support, it turns out that my machine is not really a "dual core" - it's a "core duo," which means that it's a single processor partitioned into two. To top it off, there is some kind of emulation that makes it operate like 4 separate processors. I can see this in my Task Manager performance tab.

When I generate a Renderworks rendering, I can see all 4 emulated processors working together on the task, for a maximum total of 99% of the processor's power. However, when I generate an Artistic Renderworks rendering, I see only one of the 4 processors at work, for a total of around 25 to 28% processor activity. Since my animations are based on Artistic Renderworks, I gather that is why I'm not getting full use of the machine's power - and this is costing me lots of hours of computing time.

My understanding is that VectorWorks controls whether or not the OS can engage simultaneous parallel processing, and while it appears that ordinary Renderworks is doing the job, Artistic Renderworks is not. Same problem with OpenGL. Hopefully, these can be improved in the next release.

I've been advised that disabling hyperthreading might help a little bit with the un-optimised tasks, and I'll try that, but it will also slow me down with other tasks.

PS: some advice when purchasing a computer: ask some tough questions about the processor, how it is configured, what the total calculation speed is, and under what circumstances that can be achieved. With the new multiple-processor architecture, it seems that marketing is playing a bit fast and loose with terminology. Fortunately I did ask a couple of questions and did understand correctly that my "core duo 3.2 GHz" processor is capable of the equivalent of a 6.4 GHz processor if the software can utilize parallel processing fully.