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V4.5 BETA (experimental)


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What I would love to see is the developers actually addressing performance. For the longest time paint strokes are incredibly slow even on smaller textures sizes (1k). This applies to using large radius brush strokes or even smaller ones. I sometimes get the impression that certain alphas have a negative effects on speed (that's mostly just an impression and should be investigated). I find using 3DCoat extremely painful to use lately due to performance issues and bugs that are in your face obvious which makes me wonder how the internal testing is performed if at all. Most every app has a "Send bug" feature which I don't see in 3DCoat. You can't expect for every user to sign up for Mantis or the come here to the forum to complain. Most won't.

 

I am a beta tester for two of the biggest software companies and I know that things can be a bit chaotic behind the scenes and the impression I get with 3DCoat is that it seems to be very chaotic and all over the place on "issues" and how they are addressed. 

 

I don't want to come off as ranting. I am fully aware that this is "Beta". 

Can you do a screen recording showing this slowdown in performance and mention you system specs + what build you are using? Because I'm using a 5yr old i7 970 w/32 GB of RAM and I'm pretty impressed with the performance, unless I have to paint on a 8k map, which I don't.

 

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To capture small details in the Normal map, I recently resorted to 8K and had no noticeable drop in performance when painting textures. I have an old dual xenon with 12 GB of RAM and was working in Beta 18. This painting involved two of the oldest alphas.

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Can you do a screen recording showing this slowdown in performance and mention you system specs + what build you are using? Because I'm using a 5yr old i7 970 w/32 GB of RAM and I'm pretty impressed with the performance, unless I have to paint on a 8k map, which I don't.

 

 

 

I've done private sessions with Thomas. He's got incredibly slow performance with brushes. Slower than I've ever seen on any of my machines.

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me too Im using a 4 years old build with ordinary specs (I7 3.6 ,16gb ram+GTX660) and on 1K maps performance on my side

is blazing fast,regardless of the alphas or Brush radius I use...would be  interesting to investigate what could be causing this......

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Beta18--- Non cuda--- Brush size testing.

 

Amd 8 core---8320@3.5ghz, 16 gig--1600 ram, Nivida 770, 4 gig Vram... I found a good deal on a used AMD computer while I still save up for the Intel system I want. An intel system should give you better results on a system close to mine as 3DC favors Intel over Amd.

 

My TestBed: Largest Default voxel sphere and a 432 quad mesh merged for normal map. Easy testbed to create yourself...

I tested in increments of 10 and used all 3 channels but no PBR default material.

4096 texture resolution.

Size 50... to slow for real world use.

Size 40... Can be used for brushing large areas slowly but it is still usable. 

Size 30 and under... Speed good for any production work...

2048 texture resolution

50 is good, a little slow but still very workable

40 and under, great for any kind of work.

 

Brush size speed also appears related to the scale of your object. If I double the scale of my voxel object and rebake then 100 is now what 50 was like speed wise on the smaller scale object. This works in the reverse as well.

 

Edit:

Testing PBR default materials cut my brush performance in half appox. A lot more going under the brush here... I could say that the PBR material brushing size could use some optimizing if possible.

Edited by digman
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Excellent report David. Thanks for taking the time to research that. I hope Andrew finds it useful. I'm thinking that with this knowledge, there should be some some of scale notification for the user to let them know that their object is either too small/large  and might give odd performance. Also a way to "normalize" the scale of the objects in the scene (auto-scaling) for optimal performance, and remember that scale for exporting it at the proper imported or original scale for later.

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Hey folks,

 

Well my machine is just a year old using the following...

 

GPU: GeForce GTX 780 SC

CPU: Intel i7-4770K CPU @3.50Ghz

Memory: 16GB RAM

Resolution: 1920x1080, 60Hz

Driver Version: 347.88

Operating System: Windows 8.1

 

I will try to make a video of the sluggish behavior later/tomorrow when I find time. 

 

 

Thomas

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It could sound random , but, could you try to disconnect your wacom and try it with mouse? I ve seen something like that at a coworker with max and 3d coat didn't work very well neither. Some config problem with wacom and windows 8. 

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Right now I am using 16b as every version after is far worse (and 16b isn't performing great). Using  CUDA DX64.

 

For what it's worth, I've found the CUDA GL version to run much smoother for me - I was using CUDA DX64 and experiencing slowdowns/issues in other areas of the program.

Granted my video card is older than yours and falls into the GL prefered group, but, it's really a simple thing to switch and check.

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Well my machine is just a year old using the following...

 

GPU: GeForce GTX 780 SC

CPU: Intel i7-4770K CPU @3.50Ghz

Memory: 16GB RAM

Resolution: 1920x1080, 60Hz

Driver Version: 347.88

Operating System: Windows 8.1

 

I will try to make a video of the sluggish behavior later/tomorrow when I find time. 

Thomas, make sure your computer power settings are not in power save mode and they are in Balanced or High performance mode.

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Thomas, make sure your computer power settings are not in power save mode and they are in Balanced or High performance mode.

Wow, I had zero clue this even existed and could lead to a global slowdown, thanks!

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With regards to power settings, I think motherboards come with their own software for controlling power also. My Asus Mb has software on the disc that came with it. So mine is set to  some sort of boost mode when it is under load. So if I have a really heavy model you can certainly hear the fan crank itself up.

 

3dCoat is not too sluggish on my computer.....its about 7 years old. But maybe I dont push it to much.

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3dCoat is not too sluggish on my computer.....its about 7 years old. But maybe I dont push it to much.

the original poster is complaining about very sluggish performance painting on 1k maps....even with small brush radius...

I think i've never heard anybody experiencing this on the forum ....Something must really be off......

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Right now I am using 16b as every version after is far worse (and 16b isn't performing great). Using  CUDA DX64.

Even with 4k maps in this 2yr+ old demonstration, the performance is better than you've described. The performance has been bumped up twice since then, so I have to presume your issue is either a buggered up Options.XML file (in your MyDocs/3D Coat V4 directory), and should be deleted, or perhaps you didn't rename or remove your MyDocs/3D Coat V4 directory before you initially installed 4.5 beta builds. That can cause some problems.

 

If not either of those, then it does seem to be related to your Wacom drivers or something between the app and your system, not 3D Coat itself. Because, as I mentioned before, even on a 5yr old i7 970, the performance is very brisk and feels really nice.

 

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Regardless of system, the one thing I have noticed is that 3DC appears to lag on low polygon models  or in other word less polygons that are use to create the model's surface..... The lag is more noticeable on lower end systems and less on higher end ones. 

 

The test setup... Windows 64 bit non cuda... 4.5Beta18

 

Create a cube which is 6 faces, with one uv island using 4 faces and then the two other faces get one uv island apiece. Inlarge the 2 single uv islands so they get more texture space...

 

Import the cube into 3DC with no subdivision (Per Pixel mode) with a 4k map using the auto smoothing function at the bottom of the import dialog panel and set it to "0" 

Use a large brush size and all three channels.  Lag... but the amount is depended upon your system.

 

Repeat the process but subdivide the cube to 384 polygons, it still is using the same uv set but now the 6 faces are subdivided so more polygons are being used to create the surface of the model.

Use a large brush size... Much, much better in brushing and somewhat slower on the larger single uv islands because more pixels are being applied.

 

I believe Andrew has commented on this but could be wrong... Maybe some optimizing could be done to improve the brushing on low polygon models or in other word less polygons that are use to create the model's surface.

Edited by digman
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BUG: Freeze mask display appears to be busted in Beta 18. It shows up as a dark overlay like appearance and is not able to be shown/hidden using ctrl+f

Been reported to Mantis and Andrew is aware of it.

Hopefuly he can reproduce. :)

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Thank you Andrew and 3D Coat team for such amazing progress. The upcoming release is a must buy.

 

I'm particularly impressed with anti-bump smoothing and was wondering if it is practical to adapt the algorithm for use as a global smoothing tool. For example, it might be possible to iterate over a mesh's vertices and apply the anti-bump smoothing algorithm to all vertices within the current vertex's region of influence. A few design decisions come to mind:

  1. How is a vertex's region of influence defined? (e.g. distance, path lengths with edge weights of 1, path lengths with edges weighted by length, etc.)
  2. Should a falloff be applied relative to the current vertex?
  3. How should the final position of a vertex within overlapping regions of influence be determined? (similar problem to overlapping dabs of a brush stroke)
  4. What parameters should be exposed to the user? (e.g. smoothing iterations, region of influence size, falloff intensity, etc.)

I have no doubt, given your experience, that it is immediately obvious to you whether or not such an algorithm is feasible and how best to design it. Nonetheless, I wanted to share my thoughts for your consideration. It may prove to be a useful tool for quickly polishing sculpts.

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BUG: Freeze mask display appears to be busted in Beta 18. It shows up as a dark overlay like appearance and is not able to be shown/hidden using ctrl+f

In the FREEZE Menu, you have a few different ways to display freezing. You can toggle between the by hitting the Hotkey combination ALT + F.

 

143089110114.jpg

 

143089112650.jpg

Does that help any?

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Another bug in Beta 18. 'More on Flat' Mode works in the Preview window but not when you paint.

I can confirm this. Some if the other modes do not work as well. More on bump, for example.
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