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[flametiger74]

I've noticed that while rendering anything that normally takes a long time, anim8or will switch to Not responding, and only after the render is done will anim8or start responding again.
Now this may be b/c I'm using vista but I'm not sure.
I always make sure to save my work before rendering a medium or large sized scene, b/c if anim8or locks up. Either it won't work anymore or I'll have to wait for it to finish not even knowing what its up to b/c the preview render is frozen.
My graphics card is a Nvidia GetForce 8600 GT
I was told that it was a very good graphics card So I don't know mabye this is the problem
Edit: this has not been happening just in 0.97, but 0.95 also

Also while we're on the topic of rendering, if you set the render preview to off, will the render go faster.
Edit: I tried it and I didn't see a signifigant amount of difference in the timing of the render.

And another question, if you were to go to the process of anim8or in task manager, and set the priority to a higher priority than normal, will anim8or go faster.
I tried it, but I wasn't really sure if there was a change in render time or not. I'll try recording the times the next time I do it.


Quote from Steve.
"What graphics card do you have?  This is most certainly a driver problem, possible a badly designed driver.  That's exctly why I added the ability to turn off renders."

[Steve]

I think you misunderstand most of what is happening.  I will try to clarify:

Turning off render preview will not have much effect on the timing for well written graphics drivers.  That's why it's on by default.   However some drivers are VERY slow at copying raw pixel bits to the screen using OpenGL - particular some low end, integrated grahics drivers - so I added the ability to turn it off.  You SHOULDN'T see much difference on NVidia cards :-)

If your computer DOES speed up a lot when you disable render preview, then you have a BAD driver.

The reason that Anim8or seems to lock up during a render (it doesn't really - it's just fully busy doing the render.  It ignors all the thousands of Windows messages it gets per second because some drivers are TERRIBLE at this and slow down horribly even they aren't doing anything - thay just are inefficient - So I ignore almost all Windows messages when rendering.  You should still be able to ESC out of the render.  Anim8or is not frozen by any means -- it's just ignoring you

You should NOT see much of a speedup changing the priority.  Anim8or will normaly get 99% of the CPU time.  In fact I am thinking of lowering the priority so other Windows tasks won't get starved for CPU cysles.  Windows isn't a very good OS at switching between tasks.  MACs, for example, are much, much better at it.

Your graphics card is a very good one for Anim8or.  I have an 8600 on one of my computers at work and it runs Anim8or quite nicely.

Hope this helps clarify a few things (to you and others).

[flametiger74]

I tested it and your right.
But, in Vista there's a new way that it gets you to exit out of programs when they're not responding. the program gets a shade of white on it and if you try to click on it it will ask if you want to end the process or not. b/c windows thinks that anim8or is locked up. But really in a sense windows locks it up even though it's not locked up. So I'm not able to press Esc during a render if it's locked up.
Note that it only locks up if I switch windows during the render, and if it's a big render that should take more that 20 seconds
Just I wish it wouldn't do that b/c than I exit anim8or thinking its locked up.
Even just knowing what % its up to of being done. on that  frame (and if its a movie all the frames) it would be helpfull.
and if its locked up you won't see any % on b/c anim8or doesn't move.
Thanks for all you help by the way Steve.

[Steve]

Well, I guess I'll finally have to multithread Anim8or.  That will probably solve this problem.  Now I have to learn how to do that.  (Darn Vista! What a pain it is.)

[flametiger74]

Is Multi threading like a multi application application?
like two forms in one application

[thecolclough]

talking of multithreading, i'm curious about that... i recently upgraded from a decrepit pentium 4 win98se machine to a new quad-core xp pro one, which is supposed to have 10x the processing power of the older box, but although anim8or did get a bit better, it certainly hasn't had a 10x increase in rendering speeds.  i was wondering, is this because anim8or is unable to utilise the multi-core architecture at the moment?  i don't know much about how multi-threading and all that actually works, but if multi-threading is necessary to take advantage of a multi-core processor, then i guess that sort of answers my question, doesn't it...

also, how easy would it be to produce a 64-bit edition, and how much of an advantage would that confer?  my new pc has an x64 processor, and the x64 edition of windows xp.  just curious really, because my video editor sped up noticeably on the new computer, but my favourite 3-d animation software didn't much... 

- colclough

[Tanzim]

Nice one getting the Quad core computer
Although, Anim8or doesn't support multi-cores, only the one, though I'm not sure about the clock speed
I'm assuming you got a really high end graphics card with your new computer, a good graphics cards will be good for the OpenGL realtime preview!

[flametiger74]

I have an Intel Dual-Core processor. Does that mean that anim8or only runs on one part of the processor instead of both. I would think all windows actions would be performed on both processors. Thats what makes them faster

[Tanzim]

It actually depends on the program, if the program isn't programed to run both cores it'll only use the primary

[thecolclough]

yeah, i thought anim8or was probably only using one core.  i've found the working views are now much better (e.g. i can have a much more complex scene now, and it'll still play back at full speed, whereas the old machine would drop to just a few fps, and i can turn on the shader preview thingies), which i guess is down to the graphics card, but renders still seem to take a while, which is sort of what i meant in my last post about anim8or not having sped up much.  yes, i know my last post sort of seems to contradict my signature, but that's why - animation *is* more fun, but the renders still take time.

*well, got that explanation off my chest*

- colclough

[bucketman717]

I get the rendering "lock-up" too, on my vista system, which is definately annoying, especially since recently I've been rendering a big scene for an animation. Imagine waiting an hour hoping that anim8or didn't really lock up.
On the other note, my cpu is also dual core, but when only running anim8or, it shows both cores at around 50%. so anim8or is being run on both cores but its running like its only using 1 core.

[Tanzim]

Are you using an AMD CPU
I heard that Core2 (dual-core) CPU's use 2 dies unlike their AMD counterparts

Also, I (usually) get the lock-up too, depending on the complexity of the scene, though I get it less often when I'm using OpenGL