#Letter to Santa
11 messages in this thread
Gary-
Since everyone seems to be in the wishing mood, I thought I would let you
know the one major thing I would like for Christmas (or Easter, or whenever
you release R3). REALTIME previews. It doesn't have to be fancy, just
flatshaded, or even wireframe if you must, but the ability to make a move
and then view that change immediatly would sure make life easier for me.
I'm writing this as I'm rerendering a 30 sec open that didn't quite move
the way I thought it would. I know that we PC folks are somewhat limited
in processor power, but even if it took an accelerator board of some type,
I think it would be invaluable. In the production environment it is
becoming less and less practical to wait for previews while a client is
sitting next to you. Too many ad producers are used to working in real
time with the video post ADO's and the like. When we opened our shop 2
years ago everyone in town was using Cubi's. Now everyone but us has gone
to SGI systems. (2 Indigo's running Vertigo and 1 4D running SoftImage) I
feel confident that we can compete with them on all fronts except speed
(Not necessarily rendering speed, but production speed. We can always add
additional CPU's for rendering speed). Anyway, it may not even be possible
to accomplish this on our platform. (you'd know better than I), but if it
is, that's what I want for Christmas.
BTW, the big boys were all touting their preview and modeling speed at
SigGraph, but I never could get an answer to how long final rendering takes
on an SGI system. (Phong shaded with shadows and reflections) Do you know
how final rendering speed of our stuff compares with say an Indigo running
Vertigo?
Thanks
-Mark
Mark, you can already do real-time previews with 3DSr2 by using the Set
Speed Checking option in the keyframer. If you can't get 30fps off of your
hard disk, you can either:
1) run the preview at every 2nd frame and then play back at 15fps.
or
2) make a ramdisk big enough to hold the preview and run it at 30fps out of
that.
Have you tried either of these methods?
– G
PS: Rendering speed on the current Indigo (even with Elan upgrade) is
about equivalent to a 486 DX2/50. It's line-drawing in the UI that's so
much faster.
Gary,
I might also mention that I always have at least 2mb disk caching, 90% of
the time a wireframe will fit in that and it's already in the cache from
rendering.
James
That would work _very_ well for real-time previews. Good idea.
– G
Gary- I have tried and use the 15fps method of previews. However, because
of screen tearing it's hard for me to see some of the subtle problems I may
have in a scene. For general movements they are fine, but for example, I
ended up with a stray keyframe on a smooth curve and was unable to pick up
the change in speed looking in preview mode. Only until I rendered and
layed to tape did the sudden jerk stick out like a sore thumb. I'll give
the ramdisk a try, does that speed up the refresh speed of the screen? I'm
just looking for a way to catch these kinds of problems sooner. For the
time, I probably am going to look at laying previews to tape. Maybe my
problem is that my system is not fast enough to update fast enough to get
an accurate view. Anyways, it's just a pipedream. I understand that the
Dell/50 will give 100% accuracy when playing back a flic at 30fps, so maybe
that's what I will do. That's good to hear about the Indigo and Elan (at
least for me, not for my competition). How much of a difference in speed
do you see for the 4D?
-Mark
The ramdisk (or James' disk caching method) will definitely help, but your
VGA card will affect performance as well. What kind of VGA chipset are you
using? Of course, doing a flat-shaded test in low-res to videotape is
always important before you do a FINAL render.
The Dell would certainly solve this problem for you completely. It's a
pretty optimal solution. I can't say about the 4D's speed differential…
I haven't had one around for testing purposes lately! <g>
– G
Gary- The VGA card on my 486 uses the Tseng chipset. It's just a standard
clone card so naturally I don't have a lot of details on it. I know you
don't recommend hardware, but could you tell me what has been "known to
work well with 3DS"? What type of VGA setup do you have on the Dell/50
that you think so highly of?
-Mark
The Dell DGX has a Tseng-4K system embedded on the motherboard in-line with
the processor bus. That's why it's so fast… much faster even than "local
bus" video.
The T4K chipset is the best all-around VGA chipset I've seen. Most decent
VGA cards use it these days.
– G
Gary,
The Tseng 4000 chip has limits as to how fast it can do things, so theres
not alot of performance boost even in local bus systems. Maybe the 5000 if
there ever is one.
James
James:
Being able to get AutoCAD or 3DS to run 'out of the box' has a certain
performance boost over more exotic cards that can easily outweigh the 'time
savings' purportedly available from other types of chipsets. I have a
client who has an S3 board that can only run R12 in stock VGA with no fix
yet available and no time estimate of when he can get one… I'm a guy who
likes to stick with the basics, personally.
C#
What exactly IS a local bus? I guess I was under the assumption that THAT
was the setup that DELL was using.