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Open GL Engine VW 2014


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Open GL Rendering in VW 2014 has become almost unusable for me.

I'm currently working on a Event seating layout.

VW 2013 Renders Open GL in approx. 1Min.

VW 214 doesn't.

Not even in Resolution set to low.

I always get the Out of memory error.

I have that issue with almost every File I'm creating.

Open Gl Redering is important for me to view the Current State of the design.

C4D and VW 2013 don't have that Problems.

I don't see the Advantage of a fast render Engine, if this

Works just with toy block geometry...

I had a chat here about complicated geometry that causes this effect

and so on.

And for some Files I could get over the Problem by editing Symbolgeometry

But its just not possible, to avoid complicated geometry.

Or research every Symbol for Geometry that is inconvenient for Divaworks.

(sorry ? please take it as a joke, sarkasm helps (me) to overcome Frustration :-)

My experience with renderings is, that it is of absolute importance to have a reasonable detailing in the model, otherwise the rendered result causes Problematic expectations when shown to the Client.

Is this Open GL problematic going to improve?

Will we get rid of this frightening out of memory error?

Or is that the way is is for now and the Future.

And it would be of huge interest for me, to know if I'm the only one fighting with that

The Files attached are Open GL's from VW 2013

The VW Filesize is approx. 70MB;

Chairs and Tables are Symbols.

.

Regards Horst.

Edited by Horst M.
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Horst

I've found exactly the opposite. 2014 is more stable and renders Open GL much faster than 2013.

I'm always suspicious of chairs?

I have found in some previous versions that the seating symbols were a problem. Especially when you have several thousands of them in a drawing.

I can't tell from the jpgs if you are using a stock VW symbol (or a localized symbol), but that may be an issue. A similar thing happened to one of my drawings after the switch to the Parasolids engine. A corruption in the symbol that was ok in an old version was no longer tolerated in the new version.

If you want to send me a file, I'd be happy to take a look at it.

mk

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Hallo Michael,

Thanks for the offer.

I will mail a dropbox Link. It s too big for the forum.

Its true what you write, if 2014 renders its fast.

My Problem is that it most of the time doesn't!

I did further tests, and VW is crashing in any Render Mode.

The File gets exported to C4D fine.

It renders easily in C4D.

The Stage elements are modeled by me,

The Chairs and Tables are 3DS imports. The Files are from the Rental Comp.

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Horst,

I am having similar problems. Though it manifests as a symptom through OpenGL rendering I think the actual issue is with how VW2014 brings forward file elements from earlier versions. There is no doubt in my mind that there is an import bug somewhere. Its more pronounced in SP1 and even worse in SP2.

I've had it appear even in files that are started clean in VW2014 but uses a symbol from the VW2013 libraries. If I could reproduce it I would file a bug but I haven't been able to so far.

It makes it very hard to see a long term future with VW. If I can't use my resources I've developed over time, VW as a tool almost has no value.

When I submitted a file they were surprised that it had elements from as far back as VW12.5. Theatre is so different from architecture when it comes to use of long term resources.

I hope it gets sorted out but I'm less and less convinced it will be.

Kevin

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It was the symbols.

They were each 10s of thousands of 3D polygons with textures.

In my experience, Vectorworks likes to model solids rather than mesh surfaces.

Changing the 3D symbol definition to be solids made the drawing very snappy.

______________________

Kevin,

I've found it necessary to keep an eye on symbols that crossed the Parasolids boundary. I forget what version that was?2009 or 2010? EAPs and sweeps from before before that time can sometimes go bonkers.

mk

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Dave

I haven't heard from Horst yet to see if it works on his machine, but since his looks newer than mine, I assume it works.

This is probably an item for a wish list: I'd love to see Vectorworks have the ability to either handle these crazy 3D poly and mesh objects or have a way of converting them to VW-friendly objects.

Sort of like a super stitch and trim command. Mesh objects created in other unknown applications never seem to be perfectly closed, so S&T fails. For a start, I'd like to see S&T be able to "interpolate" unconnected mesh surfaces. Maybe use texture as a guide to create separate objects?

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So.

Thank you sooo much Michael.

And excuse me, that I didn't respond earlier.

The Event happens next week, and I had to get the drawings out for the CIients to respond, and confirm the setup.

But finally (with VW 2013 renders) not too much sleep. :-) I got it done.

Michael,

I admire your modeling abilties! Just wow.

I like to use your modified Chair Symbols for the rest of the Work.

Did You model them From Scratch?

I always find it very hard, to remodel stuff, like the Chairs.

and It takes me a lot of time.

With all the Dimensions that I have to take from the Mesh-mess.

I would appreciate to here how you approached that.

For all:

WIth all the Modifications that Michael made, the Model renders in a snap.

Even If use rounded corners on the Geometry of the Tabletops.

The Original symbols are made from 3ds Files supplied by the Rental Comp. of the Furniture.

So about the Part of VW in that Game

There is truth in every Statement here.

All is fine, if we model everything from scratch, and don't do too much detailing, Like rounded Corners on table legs and so on

But, as Kevin says, If working in a Venue, its a must to migrate Symbols of

Stock equipment with the Versions of VW.

Thats one Point.

One other thing is, that Software like C4D is able to deal with the "Crazy 3D poly and mesh objects".

The C4D export of my original FIle doesn't cause any Problem in C4D

Michaels last Post could be a compromise.

I just don't understand why VW can't handle it that way.

The C4D render Engine is already in.

It would be of great help if Dave or someone from VWN could give some insights here.

For me its easier to accept If I know there is a reason ?.

Now I have to go back to the next niteshift:

Rigging and Lightplot. :-)

The Forum is just great!

Regards Horst

Edited by Horst M.
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

90% of the time when we get rendering issues, it is file-specific. A main part of that problem is that it can simply be one symbol, even something miniscule like a screw or nut used repeatedly as a symbol, that brings the entire application to a crawl.

This isnt that "Users are doing it wrong" but it IS a different issue every time. recently we isolated a problem where Sweep objects were defaulting to an insanely small seg value which caused even basic sweeps to create hundreds of thousands of vertices which would cause problems all over the place. That one was easy enough to address in service packs/releases but its just a tiny piece of the puzzle.

Im still tackling any files I get with rendering slowness, but there are a LOT of different things, compounded in files that are brought from versions pre-parasolids (anything from before or during the 2008-2009 era) that can cause the exact same symptoms of slowness and crashing.

Any time you come across files or a workflow that leads to slowness, get my attention and we will work through it. Engineering is working on MANY tasks that will all be a part of fixing this, but a lot of those tasks come directly from specific cases like these and every little bit helps.

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Jim

I've found that in almost 100% of my drawings that render slowly or have problems cutting section viewports, there is a symbol with bad geometry.

Usually sweeps or EAPs from old symbols that have a self intersecting issue. I've given up using multiple extrudes; they almost always cause problems. Filleted objects used to, but I haven't noticed it recently.

It would be great if VW would report after rendering in a design layer or SLVP what objects took the longest to render - so the hunt for the bad geometry wouldn't take as long.

It might be worth looking into why Horst's original drawing would render slowly in 2013 with the old Open GL engine, but not at all with 2014 and the new engine.

Horst

Glad it worked out for you.

The workflow went something like this:

After I saw how the furniture symbols were made, I was pretty sure that they were the culprits. I did all the work in 2014. Much easier with occluded objects.

1. I put your drawing into wireframe view in isometric. Just to make it easier to see the sea of 3D polygon edges.

2. I copied a symbol from your drawing and pasted it into a blank drawing. Just to make it run faster.

3. I edited the 3D part of each of the nested symbols. Usually in Open GL. Most of it was easy to model by drawing rectangles and circles with the plane set to automatic and using the mouse to extrude them, snapping to the existing object. In some cases I was able to extract a surface or edge from the existing geometry to create an EAP or loft surface - and then extract faces and shell them from there.

I set up an eyedropper tool setting to copy the line weight, color, fill, class and texture from the existing 3D ploys to the new solid.

Then I used the select similar tool with the preference set to object type to select all the 3D polys and deleted them.

4. After each symbol was edited, I imported it back into your original drawing.

After that, it's a rinse and repeat iteration until all the 3D poly edges were gone. Because you had so many nested symbols I think it only took four of the main symbols and their sub symbols until the whole thing cleared up.

Kevin

I know what you mean about old resources. I have lots of symbols and textures from over the years. Most work fine, but every once in a while one will bring VW to a crawl.

This doesn't answer the question about the balance between existing user content and new rendering and modeling engines, but I often find that when I insert a symbol I made 3 years ago, I'm too embarrassed about my former VW skills that I update it anyway? :)

mk

Edited by michaelk
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

These are some things I always try when getting a file that is too slow to render. Note that these are things that have worked to diagnose problems for many years, nothing new here:

1. Check the sheet layer DPI or viewport scale - 1:1 scale with a 40'x40' viewport is a sure loser.

2. Turn off layers and/or classes to see which ones slow the rendering down. You can either turn only one off at a time or turn off half then half again - (this is called a binary search). Most of the time there is a layer or class that when turned off will allow the model to render quickly again.

3. Similarly, select objects on half of the drawing (in plan view say) and delete them, then choose half and delete those, re-render and use undo to go back to the previous set of objects to help find the one(s) that are the culprit.

4. Go to different layers, deselect all objects and choose the Fit to Objects command/button. Sometimes with imported geometry/symbols you will see the rulers go to scientific notation because the geometry coordinates are wack. Delete or re-work the problem geometry.

5. In a design layer in wireframe render mode, look for solid masses of black lines. Zoom in on the masses of black to see if they are caused by "too much" geometry for the objects involved. This is common with imported geometry as you mention. I have also seen problematic geometry that was an extruded profile that should have been a polyline with less than a dozen vertices but at some point had been converted to a polygon with high conversion resolution, resulting in thousands of unnecessary vertices like the sweep increment angle case.

6. Turn off or delete textures if you think a texture is slowing the render down. This could be from a lot of refraction or reflections, anti-alasing, displacement mapping, etc.

7. Try different render modes to see if the problem is specific to hidden line or Renderworks for example. For viewports with Hidden Line foreground and say Renderworks background render modes try changing the viewport to only use one render mode to find which one is slow.

HTH!

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