Rigid-Body Scene slows the entire computer down significntly.

Support Particles and Physics Simulations
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Thank you for this Support area and this website!

Mac OS X 10.10.5 - 2013 MacPro: 3.5 GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5; 32 GB RAM; over 2 TB free disk space - Blender 2.77

Rigid-Body Scene: “Tower-010c.blend” : Verts: 451,044; Faces 340,681; Tris: 681,362; Objects: 55,048; Memory: 1298.90M

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Basically, this scene has 55,000 “planks” stacked on a ground plane. It also has 1 camera, parented to a null, and targeted at a second null. There are no other objects, and no lamps in the scene.

When this scene is open, the entire computer begins to run VERY slowly. With cursor hovering over the Outline, the “spinning Pizza of Death” appears for 2 seconds, every four seconds. This cycle never stops. Attempting to scroll to the Outline’s bottom takes up to 30 minutes, and another 30 minutes to get back to the top.

I began the process of giving the ground and the first plank Rigid-Body attributes, which also is a slow, grinding experience. When attempting to “copy from active” to all the other planks, I waited over three hours, looking at the spinning pizza, and eventually force-quit Blender. After normal-quitting Blender with this scene open, the entire computer is frozen for several minutes. I originally did a hard-restart when this happened, but have learned to wait 3 to 5 minutes, after which Blender finally releases control of the entire computer.

Something is definitely not right with Blender 2.77 on this well-equipped computer. Or more probably, there is something wrong with this particular scene. Having had other troubles with rigid-body scenes, this and similar issues have becoming routine in various ways, where Blender does weird, unexpected things. This is yet another in a long line of such experiences with 2.76b and 2.77.

I’ve seen rigid-body animations on YouTube with many times the number of 6-sided planks as this scene has. Shouldn’t 32-GB RAM be sufficient to contain this scene which is 248.3 MB on disk (16.8 MB compressed), and uses only 1289.9 MB when open?

I saved the scene compressed, and uploaded it to PasteAll.org. The file name is Tower-010c.blend. There was NO specific URL given upon upload, sorry. I hope you can find it.

Thanks for any insight and guidance.

Best Regards.

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AFAIK there is no way to search for files on pasteall. You will have to give us a working link.

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“NO specific URL given upon upload” - It’s given right in the browser’s address field upon finished upload.

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Sorry for having missed it before. Noob mistake. The page itself does list the URL, but it is truncated, and copying it only gives PART of the URL. (The URL field is too short to be useful.) – Here it is from the browser’s address field:

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41205

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I tried a couple things that sped it up a little:

  • Disable the “Wire” view in the draw options (select all, deselect the “Wire” box, then in the 3D view space-bar search for “Copy Draw Options”)
  • Change your Outliner view to something else, like Properties or Graph Editor. The outliner window continues to cause slowdowns when you have lots and lots of objects in it.
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Does this scene slow your whole computer down? Did you open it on OS X? Little slowdown fixes are useful I guess, but why does this scene take over the entire computer and slow ALL applications down, to the point of the scene not being useful? Should it take multiple HOURS to copy rigid-body info to other objects, for instance?

I’ve had many more objects than this in the outliner window in 2.76b, and that didn’t slow the entire computer down. Something is either wrong with this scene, or maybe something is wrong with the Mac compile of 2.77.

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It didn’t slow it down using 2.76. I just tried it in 2.77 and it did slow the computer down (this test was on a late 2012 iMac, 3.4 Intel i7, 32GB memory, NVIDIA GTX 680MX 2048MB, OS X 10.8.3). I reopened it in 2.76, changed wireframe view, moved all the bricks to layer 2 (so they were hidden), and removed the outliner window. This opened in 2.77 without slowing down the system, though 2.77 remained significantly less responsive than 2.76. Though with either version it was pretty clunky.

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Doing what you suggested on this computer would take several hours of waiting. I think I need to go back to 2.76b.

Where can I download 2.76b again? (2.77 installed over my 2.76b). All the links on blender.org for 2.76 only link to 2.77 … :frowning:

… ahh, nevermind. I found one. :+)

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Thanks for getting the scene and testing it on your Mac. This is extremely helpful to me. :+)

Yes, this scene is a bit clunky in 2.76b, but NOTHING like 2.77, which is functionally unworkable. The same scene in 2.76b doesn’t take control of the entire computer, like 2.77 does.

I think this may be a bug, but the requirements for reporting bugs seem impossible to meet (such as listing steps for recreating the problem). I guess I could try reporting it, and just give the download link for this scene …

It would also be good to know if the same issues with this scene in 2.77 happen on other platforms … I have only Mac here for testing.

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There are only the beginnings of adding physics in my blend. I applied rigid-body to the ground plane and the first plank, but gave up waiting for “copy from active” after three hours. I’m currently trying this in 2.76b … will report the results later, if any.

I did also post in Technical Support, asking for testing on other platforms besides Mac … couldn’t find anything on “3D Viewport” …

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Please just don’t start duplicate threads (I’ve deleted the one you just made). 3D Viewport = Support / Basics & Interface ? If you need a thread moving just report it (icon in corner of each post) but this place is as good a place as any

Your solution you already know, just go back to using 2.76 which you say works fine.

I think this may be a bug, but the requirements for reporting bugs seem impossible to meet (such as listing steps for recreating the problem). I guess I could try reporting it, and just give the download link for this scene …

If you want a bug fixed then you need to supply the info necessary for it to be replicated by someone else, hence supply the required info. Just saying the viewport is slower is useless to enable any bug fix

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Sorry for the vague suggestion that probably led to the re-post. What you need to do is design the simplest possible example of the slowdown problem, then post it and explain you’re trying to figure out if it’s a bug or your computer. For instance, you might have just a few cubes on one layer, then multiple cubes on a second layer. Both 2.76 and 2.77 move smoothly in the 3D view when only showing layer one, but when you enable layer two as well, 2.76 keeps moving fine, but 2.77 slows down significantly. You post that .blend on blenderartists and then ask for verification on other platforms.

You could also just post it straight to the bug tracker, but it seems pretty helpful to the coders if there’s a little more research on the submitter’s end before submitting.