Hi, Let me point out from the outset that I know Blender is still not production ready and that it is still in Beta. I am only trying to figure out why I can’t get this file to render and why Blender is acting so slow.
My client who is a max user has hired me to do an animation job with Blender where a particle fluid will flow through a valve. I have imported an .obj file with a number of pieces into Blender. The client saved the file as an .obj and then I imported it into Blender. I then added a particle system. The Blender file size is 72.4 mb.
My client sat with me yesterday and we went through adding a particle system to a curve path and other things. I had to Boolean 8 pieces and then today I am adding a fluid particle system and need to show the particles flowing through the valve.
The problems I am having is that Blender seems to be crippled by this file.
• When I render Blender crashes
• When I undo something Blender takes 2 minutes to undo a command
• Sometimes I can’t select an object from the Outliner and sometimes I can
• Blender won’t go to different views when pressing numpad keys like 5, 1, 3. etc.
Using Blender 2.55 Beta
Using Mac OS 10.58
Mac Pro 8 Cores
12 GB Ram
Video Card: NVidia GeForce 8800
I have not had these problems before but I have also not worked on such a large Blender file. (72 mb)
This is my chance to prove to my client that this job can be done in Blender but with all of the above problems I need a solution fast!! My Client says everything he’s seen me do in Blender is so much easier in max, so I really want to get this working. I hope this is a video card issue and not a problem with Blender being able to open and use large files without crashing.
Is this a video card issue IYO or something to do with Blender handling large files?
3dsmax have good boolean.
What do you mean by " I had to Boolean 8 pieces and then today I am adding a fluid particle system and need to show the particles flowing through the valve " ?
Do you add 8 boolean modifier to one model ?
It is not a good idea to use a lot of modifier on one object.
Blender can do what Max does but it is not a good idea trying to reproduce things the Max way.
How many particles are you trying to render ? How many are displayed in viewport ? Do you use child particles ? Do you bake particle system ?
@Paint Guy
If you didn’t have problems when creating the booleans but only when using particles, then the solution may be to make a low poly proxy for the simulation. Also I’m assuming you have 8 cut-aways or reveals. I would suggest a particle system for each reveal.
Yes, 8 booleans. I need to boolean 8 separate mesh objects so I needed to use 8 Boolean modifiers. This is not an uncommon task for cutaways.
THe Max way? What’s that?
Only 4000 particles. 100 displayed in viewport, No Child Particles. No Baking required because I can play them in real time.
I only need 2 particle systems. What do you mean by “make a low poly proxy for the simulation”? I have to use the provided .obj model as it was designed by the engineers.
@Paint Guy
I mean make a cylinder place it inside the valve add an emitter and use the cylinder as if it were the inner skin of the valve so that blender is calculating for the low res cylinder rather than the high res obj.
P.S. It’s sometimes a good idea to remove doubles when importing wavefront objects and also after doing booleans, Also sometimes the startup.blend file can become corrupt so it may be worth while to remove it from the config folder start blender and append the parts of your file while checking for aberrant behavior.
The modifiers could be the reason why it’s so slow as Boolean modifiers are generally one of the most computationally expensive of all the modifiers, 8 Boolean modifiers would likely create a derivedmesh (the developer term for the mesh that’s created as a result of the modifiers) that is very expensive both processor and memory-wise to calculate and use, compound this with Blender’s poor boolean code and you have something you can’t really work with unless major coding work is done on Booleans.
I would think the expensive memory requirements would also cause a crash on rendering because it has to load the mesh for rendering, if the cutaways don’t need to be animated, you should create a backup copy of the mesh (in another layer in case you make a mistake), apply all the modifiers, and reduce/clean up geometry in areas where it is needed.
Otherwise, I’ve successfully rendered .blend files over 120 megabytes so Blender does not have a limit on filesize.
@Ace Dragon
Solid advice.
I tend to apply boolean modifiers as a matter off course, and didn’t imagine that the booleans would be a problem. ( you can tell by that, that I’ve never animated booleans ). But your right it’s probably the most likely reason for blender slowing down. @Paint Guy
You could try creating the particle system first using a cylinder. Then append the obj, apply the modifiers and render.
Thanks. Actually I did already do that. I used a low res cylinder object for the emitter object so Blender is calculating a low res cylinder and not any of the imported geometry so this leads me to believe it’s either my processor or the no. of booleans that is slowing things down and crashing blender. 2 Questions: 1) So do I need to reimport the .obj objects to remove doubles or can I do it when the objects are already booleaned? 2) If I remove the “startup.blend” file will it be recreated when I restart Blender, and will I still have all of my preferences?
Thanks. Good Advice. I do have a backup .blend file but maybe I will try to boolean a number of objects at once.
Normally I would remove doubles immediately after importing the object.
1a. I would only try removing doubles after applying the boolean modifiers, i.e. hitting the apply button so that I’m left with a base object.
However if the particle system isn’t calculating for the .obj extra vertices shouldn’t make a difference.
After removing the startup.blend Blender will start with default settings. Preferences will not be saved.
If the startup. blend is corrupt there’s no point to try to reuse it, rather open an earlier file one which you know is good and remove the contents so that you have a basic set up you can then save it as startup .blend with all your original preferences.
P.S. I’ve had several problems with the startup file and mainly when adding addons so I’ve made a clean backup and saved it elsewhere.