Slow performance, pixellated images.

[Alan Lorence]

Do you have Motion Blur on? You should only use motion blur on emitters that have “(mb)” in the name. Otherwise, performance will suffer, and you will get the “banding” artifacts you’re seeing.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Tom Wood]

Motion Blur is not on.

It seems run okay for about thirty frames, then goes slower and slower with the pixellation getting worse and worse.

[Alan Lorence]

I have a feeling your graphics card (or drivers) are the problem. On my 2.4 GHz laptop, Even at frame 300 I’m getting 10 fps. I suggest checking your graphics card manufacturer’s website for updated video drivers — they can make a BIG difference.

The “pixelation” is actually how that emitter is designed — the particle shape images have a sharp edge. If you want to get rid of that edge, you’ll need to export the shape image, modify it in a paint app (blur it probably), then import it back in and assign it to that particle type.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Tom Wood]

I updated the driver, it’s a Quadro 500FX/600FX with 128 MB. No help at all. Performance in the stage window eventually slows to a crawl. The saved output doesn’t look anything at all like the sample movie, it’s very rough. It seems like there’s something fundamentally wrong here. Anything else I can try?

Thanks,

TW

[Alan Lorence]

Try “run with software rendering” in the Start – Programs – particleIllusion 3 menu. This will be slow, but see if visually it is any different.

Have you looked at the still images of the ethereal emitter? It’s on the Pro Emitters page. There are SD and HD versions. Compare to what you’re getting — it should not be different.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Tom Wood]

Well, slow is right. That pretty much makes using the emitters impossible, since you can’t see what they are doing. The render time is not acceptable either. I stopped after ten frames. Here’s what frame 404 looked like using the software render mode.

https://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b113/tomwood2/animation/rwsoftrend0404.png

Are you saying that a dual 2.4G hyperthreaded Xeon machine is already obsolete for these emitters?

TW

[Alan Lorence]

So are you saying that the image you’re rendering on your machine (with hardware or software) is different from the images that are posted on the Pro Emitters web page? You need to make that determination yourself.

I think it’s not the CPU speed that is the issue — it’s the video hardware speed. I’m not sure why you’re not getting better results with the Quadro — it really should fly. Are other OpenGL apps open?

Anybody else using a Quadro FX 500 (or Quadro 500 FX or whatever it’s called) with particleIllusion?

Actually, I just read back over all of the posts in this thread, and you said a few things that indicate it may be a CPU issue. Here are a few things to try:

1) In the Preview Window, select 25% zoom and see if it goes faster. Select 400% and see if it goes slower. If changing the preview zoom changes the speed significantly, then it’s probably not a video card issue (when using software rendering, changing preview zoom size changes speed dramatically)

2) Check the properties for that emitter and make sure that “keep particles in order” is not checked. Or, if it is not checked, try checking it.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Matt-wmfs]

Hi,

Just thought i’d also say i have experienced PI being slow my machine has Quadro 500FX/600FX Card also, i assumed that i was simply using too many emmiters in the project causing it to slow down and often crash.

I dont have a solution but thought i’d raise it to you guys that their could possibly be issues with the above device.

Matt

Matt

West Midlands Fire Service
Email = Matthew.Hamm@wmfs.net

[Alan Lorence]

A few years ago (back in 2001) I knew that the Quadro cards were slower than the GeForce cards with particleIllusion (I assume with games too), even though the Quadro was much more expensive, and more capable in many respects.

I thought that they “fixed” this, with the Quadro cards now having equal (or better) performance than the corresponding GeForce cards in games.

Do the Quadro drivers have a bunch of settings that allow you to tweak the performance? There may be some settings that result in better performance for gaming — anybody know about this? Do you play any games on this system?

Alan.
wondertouch

[Tom Wood]

How do you turn software rendering OFF? It now starts in that mode automatically when double-clicking the desktop icon, and I can’t find where to turn it off.

No games or other OpenGL apps are running on this machine when using PI.

I’ll run the tests you suggested when I can turn off software rendering.

TW