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Performance issues

Steven-VSteven-V Posts: 727
edited December 1969 in New Users

Hey folks.

I have been using DAZ for a few months now and on the whole, I love it. However, as I have started building some slightly more complex scenes, I have noticed massive performance hits when just adding a few items. Now, for some of these, I think the items are just so insanely multi-faceted (tons of polygons) and high-res that they are causing issues. So I can certainly understand if a few of the props I've used have not, for lack of a better term, been optimized.

On the other hand, I also notice severe performance hits even using what seem to be basic things. It seems if I get maybe 3 genesis figures with clothes and hair, and a handful of props, all of a sudden I am in lag city. Attempts to grab and rotate items proceed in what I can only describe equivalent to 1 or 2 fps. Attempts to do poses are frustrating because dragging is so laggy that I end up over-compensating and having to keep undoing it and retrying it.

Now, again, I understand that as you add more items performance will slowly drop, but it seems like there is no way to create a nice shot with a detailed environment and have an experience that is anything short of wildly frustrating. Again, I'm not talking about renders -- I don't mind renders taking a long time, because I can just walk away and do something else. But when I can't even pose the characters because of severe, choppy performance, it makes me want to throw up my hands and give up.

I know hardware can help with this, and I probably could use some more RAM, but my system (which has 8 GB of RAM and a high end 1.5 GB nvidia card) was built a couple of years ago from scratch and was designed to handle high-end 3D games, most of which run at 30-60 fps with no problem. Surely it should be able to hand a few genesis characters and, say, an apartment scene with some chairs and coffee tables without dropping down to single digit FPS when I try to rotate the view.

Is there some way I can improve performance in the preview window, other than moving the slider all the way over to performance? I've tried tricks like turning off items in the scene list that I don't absolutely need, but this doesn't reduce the lag 100% (although it helps quite a bit), and also, it's not always possible, especially if I am trying to arrange characters and props in space relative to one another.

Any advice would be helpful.

Comments

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Many times this is due to smoothing applied to clothing.

    You can disable it, under the item's parameters and once everything is in place re-enable it.

  • Steven-VSteven-V Posts: 727
    edited December 1969

    I'm sure that's true in some cases. However, clearly it is not the case when I have a naked figure loaded and a bunch of props and I get lag. The props don't do smoothing like clothing does... so is there any other way to deal with it? Or is it just something I am going to have to live with?

  • TotteTotte Posts: 13,983
    edited December 1969

    First, under Prefences->Interface you can set Video Optimization and other settings for speed, then, the limit can be your Videocard or RAM, or both.

    Are you using 32 or 64 bit DS?

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    steven.viscido said:
    I'm sure that's true in some cases. However, clearly it is not the case when I have a naked figure loaded and a bunch of props and I get lag. The props don't do smoothing like clothing does... so is there any other way to deal with it? Or is it just something I am going to have to live with?

    Collisions and smoothing go hand in hand...and yes, even props can do both...and really, all it takes is 1 item with high iterations of one or both, to bring a scene to a crawl, especially when there is a lot of other geometry in the scene.

    Same thing with subdivision....even a simple cube, with level 3 subdivision and a few iterations of both smoothing and collisions can do it to a 'full' scene. And there are some props that do use 3 levels of subdivision, not counting anything with HD morphs (for characters, that's usually 3, too).

    First, under Prefences->Interface you can set Video Optimization and other settings for speed, then, the limit can be your Videocard or RAM, or both.

    Are you using 32 or 64 bit DS?

    And that, too..especially combined with what I was mentioning can really bring it to a crawl.

  • Steven-VSteven-V Posts: 727
    edited December 1969

    OK, I will investigate what the prop settings are like. It's a shame there isn't a single button we can press that just says "for now, ignore all smoothing and collision options" and then we can tell DAZ, "OK, start smoothing and colliding again," to make things easy. If you have 12 or 15 props and clothing items, remembering to turn them all off and on sounds like quite a hassle.

    Also, I am using 64 bit. I have 64 bit Win 7 on my PC.

  • Steven-VSteven-V Posts: 727
    edited December 1969

    Totte said:
    First, under Prefences->Interface you can set Video Optimization and other settings for speed, then, the limit can be your Videocard or RAM, or both.

    I don't see a Video Optimization option under preferences. I see "Display Optimization" which has settings of None/Better/Best. I'm not sure that's the same thing, nor do I know what exactly they are optimizing, so it's hard to know where to set that (right now it is on "none" which, I believe, is the default).

    There is also something called "Pixel Buffer" which right now is set to "off" and a slider under it that is in the middle. I don't know what those settings do either.

  • JaderailJaderail Posts: 0
    edited March 2014

    Those are all settings that depend on your GPU, Try BEST and see if it helps any. If your GPU supports a Pixel Buffer you can turn that on as well.

    Check in HELP>Trouble Shooting for details on your GPU.

    Post edited by Jaderail on
  • TotteTotte Posts: 13,983
    edited December 1969

    steven.viscido said:
    Totte said:
    First, under Prefences->Interface you can set Video Optimization and other settings for speed, then, the limit can be your Videocard or RAM, or both.

    I don't see a Video Optimization option under preferences. I see "Display Optimization" which has settings of None/Better/Best. I'm not sure that's the same thing, nor do I know what exactly they are optimizing, so it's hard to know where to set that (right now it is on "none" which, I believe, is the default).

    There is also something called "Pixel Buffer" which right now is set to "off" and a slider under it that is in the middle. I don't know what those settings do either.

    None = Damn slow with no video/display optimization
    Try best, if you crash, step down to better.

  • Steven-VSteven-V Posts: 727
    edited December 1969

    Thanks. I will try the optimization and see what happens. I've turned Pixel buffer on too, although the scene I was working on yesterday was a lot smaller so I couldn't tell whether it helped or not (things were faster, but that could easily have been which resources I was using). I will go back into the uber scene and test it and see what happens.

  • Steven-VSteven-V Posts: 727
    edited December 1969

    Just to update... turning the Optimization to Best dramatically improved the performance, just as suggested. It's not completely without lag, but I've gone from a 1 fps type situation to probably 15 or so fps, which is entirely workable.

    Thanks for all the advice.

  • AristocAristoc Posts: 254
    edited December 1969

    great tip. trying this out too. thanks for bringing it "up"

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