I am new to Blender and am trying it out as an alternative to (the very expensive…) Maya.
I’m getting around the interface all right thanks to the great tuts by Neal Hirsig but i’m having some problems when i work with big meshes.
Now i normally work with meshes that have over 2 million polys/faces that i model in zBrush. I figured out how to import low-poly versions (the high polys wouldn’t import) and then raise the rez with subd modifier but then Blender starts hanging and even freezing when navigating and moving the mesh.
I have version 2.56 installed and am working on a high-end workstation. I have 8 cores, 8 gb RAM and am running on Windows 7. My GPU is an Nvidia Quadro 4000. Now i’ve tried to find advice to increase performance but what i found was either outdated or irrelevant info. That’s why i’m hoping anyone here can help me…
Also i was very surprised to notice that when i render anything (with Blender Render) it uses only a fraction of cpu power (about 30% at best) wich i find very odd since even a small free program like Mandelbulb 3D can get 100% when rendering… is this a problem with multithread support?
If you are using a subdivision modifier, reduce the subd level for the 3d view and have the higher level for the render. You ca input the levels in the modifier settings.
Blender doesn´t really support Quadro drivers. That´s all.
As for the rendering, I blame your settings
Blender´s multithreading works just fine. You should check under the rendersettings if you set 8 or more renderthreads.
My GPU runs at 100% on all cores when rendering - it depends though at what state.
Occlusion preprocessing and stuff like that does not use all cores, the raytracing itself does.
Yeah i was already fearing that when i noticed that all the driver support info i found related to gaming cards…
But why? I can fully understand the aim to make Blender usable for people with home systems but i’m fairly sure that it is also an aim to have it be used by proffesional studios and such. And a lot of proffesionals use either Quadro or FirePro cards. Bit baffled by that frankly…
The rendering: i had it set to 8 threads but it was on “auto” - i changed it to “fixed” and the speed has shot up, so that’s good.
Maybe it is on the hidden agenda. 2.5 got a huge UI and viewport overhaul, maybe it is planned. IMO the first choise still is nvidia and quadro, and my guess is, it is too proprietary.
Implementing quadro, means you also need to implement firegl and to be honest I don´t know what the specifics are. It also possible that the support for that drivers is closed and you got to pay a license fee for the API documentation, at least knowing nvidia.
And last but not least, you need someone who knows his way around and is willing to implement it.
I guess it again comes down to fundraising. And to be honest, I think those of us that would need quadro support and actually got a quadro card, also have the few bucks left to raise funds for a dev to implement quadro support. Might be an idea.
Do you have 8 physical cores or is it possible you got a Core-i CPU with SMTP? could be the autodetection with SMTP gets grumpy.
Hey Arexma sorry 'bout the late reply but i forgot to keep my notifications alive so i thought you handn’t responded.
I’ve been trying to get Blender to run smoothly, i even tried out different builds i found at Graphicall but it still won’t play nice
I’ve looked at the nvidia pages and found they did have a specific qaudro driver for Blender (imagine my surprise) but it was for 32-bit windows. This may be because Blender 64-bit is still new/under developement? Maybe if we’re patient…
I do have 8 physical cores but with the current build i’m using the rendring totally fine even if i set to “auto”, perhaps a bug in the previous build i used?
If you are talking smoothly according to tumbling and editing large meshes, I have problems starting at around 300k polygons, which is strange. 750k very choppy, and I don’t have a slouch of a machine either. I’ve brought this up to the developers before and they have replied that this is not a bug since on their systems they get a drop in frame rate of about 5fps when switching from object mode to edit mode. I drop from 179fps in object mode to 19fps or less in edit mode on a 750k poly model, heck even with 350k polys. I don’t know what to tell you, other than I noticed this issue start in the middle builds of 2.54 and 2.55, but since they see no issue, I don’t see it getting fixed and my bug report was closed not even 1 hr after it was opened. Oh well.
Yep that’s exactly my problem too. I’ve only tried Blender 2.56, are you telling me it wasn’t an issue with older versions?
That might be good news even if they did ignore your bug report… though i’m not sure about that.
I’ve been in contact with one of the guys who worked on Sintel, i’ll try asking him about as i assume they worked with very high poly models so maybe he’ll be able to shed some light on this.
Similar issue here. Working with Windows 7x64, 24gb of RAM, 8 cores, Nvidia Quadro FX 3800.
Usually work in video editing but wanted to try my hand at a 3d program. Blender seems like a great program, but was a lot slower than I had hoped. Still plan on playing with it quite a bit. I’ve only scratched the surface but it’s still really amazing how fluid the interface and design is.
I have the same problem here at work. The solid view port is slower than octanes clay render! :eek:
Enabling VBOs makes it a lot better, but edit mode is still awfully slow. A way to get better performance in edit mode is to disable the overlays in the property bar (press n in view port and expand mesh display) especially the faces. But its still a pain to work with 500k+ tris.
VBOs show no difference here. I don’t know if it’s OpenGL related or not. I not only have problems with Blender, but another 3D app as well, and other users there have the same issue regardless of graphics card type and drivers. But in the other app I use, we have issues with the UI which seems to be Windows 7 related. I’m half tempted to think that the OS may be at fault as something changed in the drawing parameters for Win 7 from earlier versions, but it is so subtle developers are having a hard time tracking down what the change was even asking Microsoft for help.
I opened the model i am working on in blender 2.49 and it was even slower. General viewport speed is not that bad, but edit mode is. I had to brake the model down to parts to go on. The same mesh in houdini apprentice was no problem at all. Selecting faces sometimes took a second or so, but overall usage was very smooth even with viewport aa and ssao cranked up on a QuadroFX 4600 running on linux. The awful edit mode performance blender has renders it useless for some jobs and should be seen as a serious bug.
edit: got some glitches with this houdini eye candy. Nobody is perfect.
@affenmann: what operating system are you running. My guess is the Quadro drivers. There have been a few threads where people with Quadros were suffering worse performance than people with consumer-level nVidia cards.
