Is it possible to get smooth animation playback in viewport?
tapanojum
Posts: 73
Hi, this is an issue I've been having for some time and I kept throwing money at the problem hoping to solve it. I now have a 2080TI, 32gb ram, and Ryzen 1700 cpu. No matter what settings I try, I always have animation playback skip frames in viewport and look overall really choppy.
My Daz settings are set to be optimized for speed as suggested by the many comments on these boards. I've even resorted to loading just the two figures involved in animation, deleting clothes/hair, turning on wireframe or smooth shader view, running scene optimizer and setting it to the most reduced low quality state possible. Still get choppy playback.
Has anyone managed to get a smooth animation playback, if so, what are the steps you've taken? Is there an alternative more productive solution to animating Daz figures?
I now just do quick low quality renders in low resolution to see how fluid the animation is. Although it would be much easier and more productive to be able to see a preview all within Daz playback.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
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Comments
Which engine are you using for viewport?
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it OpenGL the default for the viewport unless Nvidia Iray view is used? I've tried Wire Shaded, Smooth Shaded, Texture Shaded.
Hi Although you can get fairly close
in "bounding box" display mode, you are not going to get true realtime playback in the Daz studio viewport because even the basic openGL, in DS, is not an optimized realtime engine like the one in Motionbuilder, Iclone or game engines.
Quick low resolution OpenGL renders the only way you are going to be able to preview it, most other softwares suffer the same issues unless game engine based
Ok thanks, was just making sure I'm not insane. Low quality renders it is.
Turning off the smoothing modifyer for all clothing and hairs can also help, but I agree with the others, I mostly do texture shaded motion tests, if I can't get the viewport to cooperate;) There is also the "play every frame" option, which will not play in realtime, but is most useful when prewieving fast action, just to make sure you don't have any unwanted stuff intersecting some other stuff etc.
Where is this magical "Play every frame option" if I may ask? Cannot find it in 4.12 and I am suffering major viewport performance problems when animating.
Funny. I was just about to ask the same question.
Set the viewport subD to 0 for each figure, each sub division is x4 the number of faces, so 17k faces v's 68k faces. If you want textures displaying as well, use lower res textures ie 1024, reduce the size of your viewport, you can undock it and have it 2x2 pixels if you wanted to.
OpenGL uses draw calls for everything, so having textures and wireframe use more draw calls, wireframe uses more draw calls than hidden line. Turn off anti aliasing in the draw settings, and anything else you don't need such as subD wires.
I'm running daz on a 4th gen 13 with built in gfx chip and getting smooth playback, so you should have no issues with that setup.
68k faces is a pathetically tiny number in 2020. The subdiv gets suspended during viewport playback in any case. It's unbelievably slow, especially compared to a game engine. I don't know what's going on under the hood but it's probably not pretty.
SubD is only suspended when subdivision updates is set to delayed in the draw options, not if it's set to continuous (delayed is the default?) . Game engines use lower level languages that allow better access to the hardware than OpenGL, OpenGl is more of a cross platform display api, which is why it's used, but it isn't built for speed.
The magic 'play all frames' checkbox in in the settings of the timeline (top right icon with 3 lines)
This just isn't true these days. OpenGL (from 3 onwards) is now at version 4.6 and it can do pretty much everything D3D 11 can do (Unreal Engine's default) at the same performance level.
My menu doesn't have a "play all frames" checkbox (4.12).
Really? Another reason not to upgrade from 4.9 then;)
Check you daz 4.12 version: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/345281/4-12-daz-has-a-new-timeline
Tks, but...nope;)
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log#4_12_1_92
We don't yet have this version as a Public Build or a release version.
It was fixed in 4.14.0.8, but I've just started trying 4.15.0.14 Public Beta and it's gone again. IE The option to play all frames seems to have disappeared (or moved to where I haven't been able to spot it).
Do I have to submit another request form to the Technical Support department?
Thanks
It's in the Public Build for me, afte running Window>Workspace>Update and Merge Menus (note that the public and release builds have separate interface files, so you have to update and merge in each).
Thanks Richard, that fixed it for me. And apologies for not trying that first. You had suggested it when I had the problem in 4.12 (4.12 Daz has a new timeline? - Daz 3D Forums) and it didn't work then so I didn't think it would work this time!
Is running Window>Workspace>Update and Merge Menus something we should do after installing every update? And is there a (simple?) explanation as to what it does? I've only been using DS for about 5 years, so most of it is still a mystery to me! :-)
There will usually be a note if running Update and Merge Menus is required. It makes sure that any new menu commands are added to the current layout (the update part) without losing any existing customisations (the merge part - at least as long as they are not too old, but that should rarely be a problem these days as the feature has been present for a long time).
SubD level 0 is not the same as "no subd" as it still does smoothing. You have to set the resolution to base.