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Limit To Emitter Size
Is there a limit, in file size (mb), to an emitter? Mine is 340mb. I’m trying to create an emitter that uses 500 to 1000 frames of a image sequence from a show my company has created randomly. The end result I would like to work in both print and video, so the larger the better. The problem I am having is PI is constantly crashing while trying to create this. Is it the emitter library size or the size of the emitter elements? Or does it matter?
Thank you.
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2 Replies
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My feeling is that 340 MB for an emitter or an emitter library is way too big, and the fact that you keep crashing backs that up.
The problem is that OpenGL is going to have a big problem trying to create and manage 340 MB (or more) of texture memory. I don’t know what the limit is, but I would use your graphics card memory as a guideline. If your card has 256 MB of RAM, then definitely don’t go over 200 MB or so.
I have not done any work on what the maximum size is, as it’s different for every system.
As for using it for video and print, I’d suggest making 2 different versions. Do a simple test with a single particle shape of 512 x 512 or larger, then make the particles fairly small — you’ll see some problems, such as “sparkling” of pixels. OpenGL can scale up and down to some extent pretty well, but when you go too large or too small, you’ll see visual problems.
In your case, I’d suggest managing this huge project this way:
– Break it up into multiple shots, and limit the number of frames that you’ll use for the emitter of each shot. For instance, instead of using 500 frames for a 30 second clip, make it a 10-second clip and use 150 frames. Do this in 3 separate project files. (Don’t add all 3 emitters to the same library, as the project and library share texture RAM)
Alan.
wondertouch -
I trimmed the library down to well over half the size by eliminating other sequences, test sequences, and images that were in there that were not part of the emitter I was using. This, so far, has sped things up conciderably. Will keep you posted if problems persist. Thanks for the help.
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