2.91 Boolean Perfomance

Support Basics & Interface
#1

Hey guys, I’ve been just doing a tutorial that uses a lot of Booleans (Josh & Ryuu’s awesome Sci-Fi crates) and when I am working in 2.91 it all gets really, really slow. I have zero performance impact in Blender 2.83 but those Booleans in 2.91 seem to kill my viewport frame rate. I included the file for you. Try for example to rotate the top lid of the crate around the x-axis or make the cutters collection visible and try editing one in edit mode.

Now I have a pretty beefy machine (AMD 9 3950 X, 2080ti, 64 GBs RAM) and it all works super smooth and without a hassle in 2.83, but 2.91 it just kills my perfomance. Anyone else experiencing the same? Its is 2.91 or some incompatible add-on I am using?

scificrate1_02.blend (1.8 MB)

#2

With Blender 2.91 the Boolean Modifier got a new “Exact” mode. It is a lot better in many cases (e.g. it supports self intersections) BUT it is slower than the old mode. However, the previous way of doing things (now called ‘Fast’) is still available. If you switch to fast mode, everything should be… well… fast, again.

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#3

Ok, that’s really helpful information!! :monkey_face: :+1:t4:

Aside from that I completely purged Blender 2.91 and re-installed it and it actually fixed the perfomance issue. Seems like it was something else too.

#4

Oh, now I see what actually solved it. Opening it in Blender 2.83 set all the modifiers to fast. As soon as I started adding new Booleans in 2.91 that were exact, the perfomance pain started again.

Those exact Booleans are really not very suitable for a non-destructive workflow it seems… :orangutan: :tophat:

#5

Nice, I’m glad it works. :slight_smile:

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#6

Probably not. Of course, it depends on the model but I’ve been using it on relatively heavy sculpted meshes lately and especially activating the “self intersection” option can make things rather painful.

However, I’ve been thinking about some kind of pseudo-non-destructive workflow. If changing a modifier wouldn’t cause every other (earlier) modifier to recalculate, that could speed things up again. It wouldn’t be that flexible anymore but I can think of situations where this would still be helpful.

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#7

Well, yes, I guess a good mixture of fast and exact Booleans are the key. Especially on high quality models the most prominent Booleans could be precise for the details, just not the big shape cutters or so. Maybe some Booleans need to be more exact like cylinder shapes or as the new feature suggests, overlapping (aren’t they already?). I guess performance will be sorted out a few updates down the line, but right now it’s really bad (at least for me).

But alas I was happily booleaning my way in 2.91 without being aware that I was using exact bools everywhere. :orangutan: :tophat:

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