Jump to content

Hidden Line Rendering 20 min vs 3 Seconds


Recommended Posts

On 11/13/2017 at 12:13 PM, mjm said:

I am following this thread with avidity, as it consolidates so many of the VWX issues in one place, primarily VW's focus on 'shiny new', rather than 'simply better'. 

Another software vendor recently: 

What’s more, Lightroom Classic is getting a major speed boost. Adobe admitted earlier this year that Lightroom has performance issues, and now it’s launching a major update to fix that.

“While the palette of Lightroom features grew, our performance detracted from these gains,”Adobe says. “So we took stock of where you were feeling the most performance anxieties, and dedicated this launch primarily to addressing these issues.”

Lightroom Classic is being updated with improved speed in major areas, including launch time, preview generation, import selection, switching between Library and Develop, navigating between photos in Develop, responsive brushing, and more.

 

DO note this fresh focus has taken Adobe most of the past decade to get around to…

 

That is my most helpful criticism with VW.  I would love if more focus was placed on existing feature performance rather than coming up with new features.  Yes new features can be nice, but honestly I have very little need or use for marionette or some other new revolutionary things.  I would though love overall performance upgrades.  I love when companies can just be straightforward and honest with their customers as well.  I think that transparency is helpful and gives customers a bit more optimism about the products they are committing to.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Rick Berge said:

 

Think of it this way...we can do the fake mode directly in the VGM specifically for the cases we wanted (edit section), or we can spend a lot of time making an official new render mode that shows up in all menus everywhere, viewports, save/restore view, gets stored with the file, reverse translation to older files, on and on.  We talked about making it a new mode but simply didn't have the time for all the extra work.

 

Certainly gets my vote. 

Link to comment

 

Quote

 

That is my most helpful criticism with VW.  I would love if more focus was placed on existing feature performance rather than coming up with new features.  Yes new features can be nice, but honestly I have very little need or use for marionette or some other new revolutionary things.  I would though love overall performance upgrades.  I love when companies can just be straightforward and honest with their customers as well.  I think that transparency is helpful and gives customers a bit more optimism about the products they are committing to.


 

Please vote up this thread if you haven't already!

 

 

Edited by line-weight
Link to comment

Aside from the issue of "shiny new" taking away the focus from "simply better"...

 

A problem with having too many features, and in particular odd one-off features like this new render mode that only works in editable sections... it's just all too much for my brain to keep track of. There are so many oddities about VW, so many settings buried where you wouldn't expect them, so many slightly different versions of a seemingly similar function and so on, that I already have a fairly lengthy notes document that is there just to remind myself how to do various things in VW. I'll get my head around the subtleties of setting lighting up for a render, say, and where that palette is that turns lights on and off and why I can't remember how to access it. Or some thing about the callout tool where I can't get it to put an arrowhead on a secondary leader line. Or exactly how the fields in the title block work, which I had all worked out when I last made a new title block but that was two releases ago and now there's something different about them and something funny that happens when you convert old ones and something you can do to sort it out. All these things I'll work out how to do but then a couple of months will pass until I have to do that particular task again by which time I'll have forgotten.

 

Am I alone in sometimes coming on here to look up a thread I posted two years ago with a problem that I solved then but have since completely forgotten about? Or even doing a google search for a VW problem and find that there's a thread started by me about the same problem that I hadn't eve remembered writing.

 

And each time there's something new it feels like yet another thing to get a grip on. The multiple view panes is an example. Actually it's one of the more useful "new" features that there have been ... but it's another new thing with its own peculiarities that I might forget between sessions. Because there are so many things that don't seem to be designed to be intuitively obvious to someone already familiar with the programme. Too much of my cognitive effort using VW is going into understanding what VW is doing, instead of the actual design or drwang work I'm doing.

 

In this particular respect, VW and its UI is frankly a design disaster. I think there's recognition of this (and I partly understand the reasons why the programme has become like this) but it really needs some serious effort put in to sort it out. Before adding yet more new stuff on top!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
On 2/2/2018 at 7:10 PM, line-weight said:

Aside from the issue of "shiny new" taking away the focus from "simply better"...

 

A problem with having too many features, and in particular odd one-off features like this new render mode that only works in editable sections... it's just all too much for my brain to keep track of. There are so many oddities about VW, so many settings buried where you wouldn't expect them, so many slightly different versions of a seemingly similar function and so on, that I already have a fairly lengthy notes document that is there just to remind myself how to do various things in VW. I'll get my head around the subtleties of setting lighting up for a render, say, and where that palette is that turns lights on and off and why I can't remember how to access it. Or some thing about the callout tool where I can't get it to put an arrowhead on a secondary leader line. Or exactly how the fields in the title block work, which I had all worked out when I last made a new title block but that was two releases ago and now there's something different about them and something funny that happens when you convert old ones and something you can do to sort it out. All these things I'll work out how to do but then a couple of months will pass until I have to do that particular task again by which time I'll have forgotten.

 

Am I alone in sometimes coming on here to look up a thread I posted two years ago with a problem that I solved then but have since completely forgotten about? Or even doing a google search for a VW problem and find that there's a thread started by me about the same problem that I hadn't eve remembered writing.

 

And each time there's something new it feels like yet another thing to get a grip on. The multiple view panes is an example. Actually it's one of the more useful "new" features that there have been ... but it's another new thing with its own peculiarities that I might forget between sessions. Because there are so many things that don't seem to be designed to be intuitively obvious to someone already familiar with the programme. Too much of my cognitive effort using VW is going into understanding what VW is doing, instead of the actual design or drwang work I'm doing.

 

In this particular respect, VW and its UI is frankly a design disaster. I think there's recognition of this (and I partly understand the reasons why the programme has become like this) but it really needs some serious effort put in to sort it out. Before adding yet more new stuff on top!

4

 

You are not alone. Every time a half-baked new feature gets released it erodes confidence in the software.  I use to be a VW hype man - but for years now - features I would be excited about would turn out to be shipped broken.  The last straw was when I spent 100 bucks on a new C4D texture library because I was told VW could use C4D textures - still broken to this day.

 

Even good ideas get implemented inconsistently across the program. For example, if you look at how Styles work - good concept - but there must be at least 3 "versions" of how a style works.  Even the best versions of Styles do not seem particularly well thought through.  The title block, rebuild, for example, is a well-intentioned disaster.  They have taken all the fields from the OIP and buried them in that tri-pane dialog.  Lag times improved in SP2 - but still - a step backward in every quantifiable way. 

 

There is clear lack of overall vision and control - development seems to be farmed out to small isolated teams that create new tools - each with their own inconsistencies.  How many times have we heard that a bug, not a bug - because technically - the tool met the developmental specifications?  This points to a fundamental organizational issue with VW.  The industry experts, software designers, and the software developers do not seem to be on the same team - and this is a problem that we can all feel everytime we open the software. 

 

What VW needs to do is hire an in-house dev team - put them all in the same room with the industry experts and software designers.  Hell, make them share computers if you have to.  Tie their legs together and make them walk three-legged all day - whatever you have to do to get everybody working together. 

 

Lastly - move away from yearly releases.  Go full subscription - there will be grumbling - people will get over it.  Do a canary, beta, and stable variant.  Push new versions, patches, tools and workflows out as they are ready.  Let Canary and beta report usability and concept issues with new tools and workflows - and nothing gets pushed to stable until it is tip-top.  

 

To end on a better note - I am holding out hope that they get their legs under them.  The very fact that this forum exists is encouraging - and I do believe that our complaints are heard.  I just hope that the fixes are made before we are forced to jump ship.

Link to comment
On 2/1/2018 at 12:40 PM, Rick Berge said:

 

Think of it this way...we can do the fake mode directly in the VGM specifically for the cases we wanted (edit section), or we can spend a lot of time making an official new render mode that shows up in all menus everywhere, viewports, save/restore view, gets stored with the file, reverse translation to older files, on and on.  We talked about making it a new mode but simply didn't have the time for all the extra work.

 

 

I guess to the layman - it is hard to understand.  It seems you went to all this trouble to develop this a new render mode that everybody loves - but then felt like it was too much work to make it globally available. I am sure there are technical hurdles - but if I can double-click on a section - and envoke that rendering mode - really how can it possibly be all that much more work to make it available from the drop-down menu?

If you are asking me which I would have preferred - definitely the version where you spent the time - did the extra work - and made the mode available from everywhere.  I would have been fine with an open GL version of the section edit tool for this release - and would have been doubly happy with a cool new useable and globally available render mode for next release. Especially if it meant you could use the time spent on releasing this nice but inaccessible render mode that is only available for editing toward polishing some of the other rough spots.  Really it is the never-ending inconsistencies that are driving me mad.

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Tom Klaber said:

Lastly - move away from yearly releases.  Go full subscription - there will be grumbling - people will get over it.  Do a canary, beta, and stable variant.  Push new versions, patches, tools and workflows out as they are ready.  Let Canary and beta report usability and concept issues with new tools and workflows - and nothing gets pushed to stable until it is tip-top.

Going full subscription really is not the solution. Adobe did it and there have been lots of complaints about bugs and broken things not getting fixed, new features not being ready etc. and it took years for major improvements in some of their software. Autodesk ditto.


Bricsys on the other hand did not have subscription but was continuously developing their cad software program and release frequent updates and even introduce new big features along the way during mid-cycle release instead of waiting for the yearly release.

 

I wouldn't mind if VW would implement a partly functional feature such as the fake mode in the VGM as long as they would introduce improvements during the year in the SP's instead of waiting until the next big release.

 

It is a matter of mindset about how to proceed and develop the software, totally not having anything to do with going full subscription to solve this or being on a yearly full release cycle or not.

Link to comment

When it comes to my next VSS renewal I don't think I'm going to do it. It's not really based on me thinking "will the new things in 2019 be worth the money" but "can I be confident that 2019 won't bring a whole load of new problems that make me less productive than I am with 2018".

 

I feel like for now - based on the experience of the last few versions - the sensible approach for anyone who relies on the software should be not to upgrade until close to the release of the next version. In other words, if upgrading to 2019, do it when 2019 SP4 or SP5 comes out. And/or switch back to upgrading every 2 or 3 releases to minimise the pain.

 

 

Link to comment
14 hours ago, Tom Klaber said:

 

I guess to the layman - it is hard to understand.  It seems you went to all this trouble to develop this a new render mode that everybody loves - but then felt like it was too much work to make it globally available. I am sure there are technical hurdles - but if I can double-click on a section - and envoke that rendering mode - really how can it possibly be all that much more work to make it available from the drop-down menu?

If you are asking me which I would have preferred - definitely the version where you spent the time - did the extra work - and made the mode available from everywhere.  I would have been fine with an open GL version of the section edit tool for this release - and would have been doubly happy with a cool new useable and globally available render mode for next release. Especially if it meant you could use the time spent on releasing this nice but inaccessible render mode that is only available for editing toward polishing some of the other rough spots.  Really it is the never-ending inconsistencies that are driving me mad.

Completely agree. I'd rather wait a year or two for something properly and consistently implemented, than have something earlier that half-works and causes confusion.

 

Much more productivity is lost through learning and then fighting with ropey features, and trying to keep track of confusion inconsistencies, than is lost through waiting a bit longer for something that, if it works well, can speed up workflows.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...