Cineversity

This is a relatively simple project that morphed into a major headache - and I suspect due to poor object management.

Each element was built as a stand-alone model, tested and timed for effects until it was ready to drop into the final scene. I took care to ensure the animation did not tax the processor overly much. However, when I assembled all the parts together into the final scene, the preview was almost frozen. Here’s the project:

https://adobe.ly/31c4WH0

Individually, things worked well and did not seem taxing. But when grouped together, the door slammed shut. For example, before adding the APCs, the preview worked well enough. But once I added those elements, it bogged down to almost a standstill. I was able to trace the major block as being the Collision deformer, followed quickly by the Displacer. Disabling these allowed the preview to progress, but not as quickly as before. It seemed that just the presence of these effectors took a bite out the processors.

My machine is nothing beefy - just a standard iMac with some minor bells and whistles, so it’s not a speedster on its best day. But its been able to handle things well enough that I could work. However, this brought it to its knees. And I don’t think I was asking too much (I have asked more in the past and it has performed well).

Anyway, it was bad enough that we almost had mission failure. And that’s uncomfortable as you can imagine. I ended up having to count frames for timing and hope that when the render was done I wasn’t too far off. Fortunately the animation was pretty simple and the timing did not have to be frame-accurate.

So my question: Is there a way to anticipate the kinds of things (displacers and collsions) that will take a toll on the processor when grouped together, and is there a way to set up the animation interface to isolate those taxing elements so that the other parts of the scene can be manipulated without being dragged down? If I just knew the name of what I was looking to do, I could probably find the training needed.

Here’s another one involving lights. Again, the individual elements worked fine in isolation, but when grouped - wham!

https://adobe.ly/2KjRF9i

And you will notice that my dope sheet is a mares nest of keyframes that almost sank me several times. There’s GOT to be a better way.
Thanks!

Hi mford610, thanks for the file.

There are 1360 Objects in your scene. Most of them are cloned, which means generated for each frame newly.

Please note that I do not have this plugin:
Several plugins used in this project are missing.
Saving may cause loss of plugin data!
Plugin ‘Trypogen’ (ID 1040417)

To have four editor views open is certainly not helping.

When I open the file as it is, I get an fps of 1.2, while everything is switching to boxes.

If I go to the Editor View> Options> Level Of detail, I get for medium 14 fps and for low 26 fps. (Always the lowest average values are given.)

While in Quick Shading, this goes over 30 fps

The Subdivision is set to SDS-Editor 2 that is certainly something I would set to zero or at least to 1. There are 16 of them, you can select them at once (Eye Icon in the upper right corner), This might be less effective with the Level Of detail settings: Low.

There was nothing baked in the scene. Which means everything must be calculated for each frame newly. To get predictable results, baking is mandatory while using Dynamics.

So, I placed a MoGraph cache to all Cloners. I set the SDS for the Editor to zero. I got 6fps on Hight detail, 30 in medium, and over 40 FPS in low.

All tests are done with an iMac late 2010, 4GB graphic card and 32 GB Ram while running a 5K monitor. So, I guess that matches somehow your set up, I think yours may even better. Hardware is crucial, but I have seen often here in the forum, that one might think the machine is the fastest on planet earth everyone can slow down anything with setups that are not needed to be that way.

Typically, render a Hardware preview to see the workings.

(After working way over ten years with computers, I got finally an 80Mhz Power Mac AV, (1994) one core. 16 MB Ram, (264 MB were just too expensive). Similar to what they used on Star Wars a few years before that. I’m so used to think frugal (efficiency) based on that. Every decision can break the smooth flow. Anyway, I did a lot of production with this one.)

I hope some of the tips help.

Cheers

P.S.: I can’t really see a use in your scene for the following, but I would feel bad to not mention it.
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/new_in_cinema_4d_r19_level_of_detail

Excellent! These are the sorts of fundamentals you miss when you learn Cinema via task-based tutorials. Thank you!

You’re very welcome, mford610.

There is undoubtedly more, but I certainly know that most people jump very early in the phase called “on a need to know basis”. As long as we can discuss things, that is certainly a fun way to push forward.

For this scene, I think I gave all the information possible.

I hope the results will have success!

I would also suggest to explore the ‘Bake as Alembic’ route.

Cheers.