Taros Posted June 6, 2010 Report Share Posted June 6, 2010 No comment, guys. Really frustrating. Andrew, this is really important, if 3d Coat have to grow to a pro application. Sorry to say that. But I believe, the time will come, when multicore support is implemented. The faster the better. See my attachment for frustration... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member splodge Posted June 6, 2010 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 6, 2010 Wow, that's a lot of cores! Which task is 3D Coat carrying out when you took the snapshot? Sometimes it's technically impossible to make every task multithreaded. Some situations don't benefit from multithreading because of system bottlenecks relating to the GPU. ZBrush can be quite good in multithreaded environments because it doesn't rely on the GPU. But not relying on the GPU can sometimes be a weakness too. GPUs are awesome at drawing big polygons, and so this is why we get great frame rates in 3D Coat's paint room. It also means we can have a full screen workspace. Whereas ZBrush can struggle if the user increases the workspace (document) size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taros Posted June 6, 2010 Author Report Share Posted June 6, 2010 We have done nothing special, just converted an object from retopo room to the paint room (microverts)... needed minutes on a dual xeon hp workstation with a geforce 470 gtx. But the gpu done nothing in this case, because 3D Coat Cuda is not working on this graphic card, till now. So what you see is just the regular version of 3dc, without cuda. Really slow in voxels, by the way... But what is more interesting: Cuda works perfect on this workstation, because we use the octane renderer on this maschine and the renderer works only with cuda. So, it is probably a problem at 3DC. Best wishes Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member splodge Posted June 6, 2010 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 6, 2010 Yeah, the GPU plays no part in converting to microverts. The bottleneck in your scenario is your main memory. Something that requires very specific multi threading programming to overcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 6, 2010 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 6, 2010 Yeah, CUDA in 3DC only helps with brush speed, not merge calculations. However, some things in 3DC are multi-threaded (I forget what they are, at the moment, but I do recall seeing all CPU's take off at full 100%for a few tasks). So, it is a specific problem only in specific cases, and not something widespread. You know, off topic a little bit....the guy (Dave Cardwell) who was the lead developer for Mudbox is no longer with Autodesk. I wonder if Andrew could contact him, and perhaps arrange some sort of consultation, for areas like this and perhaps improving the Sculpt Room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taros Posted June 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted June 7, 2010 Yeah, CUDA in 3DC only helps with brush speed, not merge calculations. However, some things in 3DC are multi-threaded (I forget what they are, at the moment, but I do recall seeing all CPU's take off at full 100%for a few tasks). So, it is a specific problem only in specific cases, and not something widespread. You know, off topic a little bit....the guy (Dave Cardwell) who was the lead developer for Mudbox is no longer with Autodesk. I wonder if Andrew could contact him, and perhaps arrange some sort of consultation, for areas like this and perhaps improving the Sculpt Room. Interesting. Do Andrew already know this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taros Posted June 7, 2010 Author Report Share Posted June 7, 2010 Yeah, the GPU plays no part in converting to microverts. The bottleneck in your scenario is your main memory. Something that requires very specific multi threading programming to overcome. The memory? Possibly. We used a professional HP workstation with 12 GBytes physical RAM, that resulted in 24 GBytes free ram in 3DCoat... This is the bottleneck? OK, possible. All other tools like Softimage or Houdini runs like butter on this mashine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 7, 2010 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 7, 2010 Interesting. Do Andrew already know this? Yes...in the manual, where it describes CUDA and what it does, it mentions that it is BRUSH speed related. Doesn't mention anything about CUDA being used to help calculate merge operations...if CUDA did, it certainly would make a world of difference...but it doesn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member ifxs Posted June 7, 2010 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 7, 2010 +1million I've voiced my thoughts on this subject. I have 8 cores, and guess how many 3D Coat uses for hourlong merges? Bingo, 1 core :-( Why I am back in ZBrush for the most part again and barely using 3D Coat, hopefully someday again. 3.3 is a great update, just still basically just allows for me to do glorified "ZSketches" in 3D Coat, due to the complete lack of multithreading making the vox room useable, for me anyway. THAT BEING SAID... I have seen the recent tweets by andrew regarding Multiresolution in the vox room, this feature AND MULTITHREADING might just allow for me to productively work in 3D Coat someday. I do want to emphasize that a new feature like multires in the vox room is VERY VERY WELCOMED(thanks andrew!), however for me, aside from the awesome retopo tool-set in 3D Coat, 3D Coat will just be a hobby tool that I can barely use for any of my pipeline work until its robustly multithreaded. CAn you imagine how fast and fluid the paint room would be with robust multithreading? or the vox room of course??!?!?! 3D Coat would be an industry contender IMO. I dont mean to offend anyone with my comments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 8, 2010 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 8, 2010 Personally, I think Andrew is already stretched pretty thin, as he is essentially the only developer working on this software. He has some help, I think with other OS's, but from what I've gathered, he is all there is. That being said, it's one reason why, despite my frustrations with the application from time to time, I still try to promote 3DC. The better it does in sales, the better chance we have at seeing additional manpower being brought into it's development. Dave Cardwell was one of the Original Co-Creators of Mudbox (which originated out of Weta's in-house toolset...used on Lord of the Rings and other productions), and he was the lead guy at Autodesk for the Mudbox community...but departed sometime last year. I don't know what the circumstances were, that led to his leaving, but I personally think him and Andrew, working together on this application would make it twice as strong as it is today. I think if Andrew could get someone like him onboard, that he could not only help on the development side, but also help with the promotional/community side in North America (and perhaps part of Europe and Australia). He knows how to run and set up booths at Siggraph and such, and has deep connections in the film industry...connections that could help get 3DC into major production pipelines. I know it's wishful thinking, but hey...a guy can dream, can't he? Even when Andrew introduces new features, there always seems to be new bugs that come with it and things that were once working correctly, no longer do...so it seems he's having to spend too much of his time chasing down bugs to take on major core changes, and that's why it's probably as frustrating for him as it is us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member ifxs Posted June 9, 2010 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2010 I think if Andrew could get someone like him onboard, that he could not only help on the development side, but also help with the promotional/community side in North America (and perhaps part of Europe and Australia). He knows how to run and set up booths at Siggraph and such, and has deep connections in the film industry...connections that could help get 3DC into major production pipelines. I know it's wishful thinking, but hey...a guy can dream, can't he? that is a VERY cool hypothetical IMO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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