Slow C4D viewport tips?

[tvchris 0]

I'm running C4D on a latest-gen Mac Pro with a Quadro 4000 card, 32GB of ram, etc... The viewport in C4D (r13) is woefully slow, even in what I consider to be a moderate scene in mograph.

 

For instance, linked below is a simple element I created for a sports package that uses a low-res sphere cloned onto a simple arrow, then the arrow is cloned across a spline, and the arrows are offset... rather simple, but it's slow as molasses.

 

I know that the C4D viewport is notoriously slow in comparison to other apps like Softimage, which is blazing... but is there any tips I can use to lighten the scenes so that I can at least play back at a decent speed? Anyone else having this issue?

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3687810/Arrows.c4d

[carlislecreative 0]

You might already know about this, but it evaded me for the longest time. Go into your viewport menu, and go to Options, then Level of Detail. You can select, high, medium, or low. This helped me immensely once I found it, I seriously look back at old projects and wonder how I ever completed them without knowing this. Also, utilizing layers is a great way to manage system resources. They're a little confusing to grasp at first... but it's worth your time to invest into understanding it and using it to your advantage.

[throb36 0]

You can also change the type of Shading. Quick Shading or Lines helps.

 

And if my scene is really hairy, I'll move some elements (objects without a shitload of geometry, or the camera) to a new document, and animate them there.

[scott frizzle 0]

One tip that made me want to smash my head against a wall when I discovered it is turning off the "all frames" playback option (click on the filmstrip icon in the lower right of the viewport to get to this.) I used Cinema FOREVER without knowing about this one and always wondered why in every tutorial I watched, people were getting much better playback performance than I ever did. I probably wasted at least a year dealing with glacial playback before figuring this one out.

 

Aside from that, just being organized and taking advantage of the layers palette to hide things you don't need to see is very helpful. Regarding the level of detail options: Beware that turning the level of detail down will often reduce the number of displayed clones in your scene if you're using mograph.

[jaypeeare 0]

Aside from that, just being organized and taking advantage of the layers palette to hide things you don't need to see is very helpful. Regarding the level of detail options: Beware that turning the level of detail down will often reduce the number of displayed clones in your scene if you're using mograph.

 

I severely hate the fact that level of detail reduces the number displayed clones. I kind of think of it as a cheap way to optimize the scene cause you won't be getting everything that is there in the scene & pretty much end up rendering the a frame & forgetting that you turned down the level of detail & seeing all these random extra objects that you don't see in the viewport. I dream day to day about ways to optimize scenes in the smartest most practical way to make it the easy for person to dig in the project with out much compromise in the viewport. Proxies, boolen switches, awesome organization tools, python, XRefs, Xpresso, color coding, sliders, proper hierarchies, augh so much to think about all the time when it comes to that sh*%t. I just gush over the idea that ILM made an animation point cloud system for there lighting artist for the Star Wars Clone Wars. That right there is a freaking huge time saver & even more a money saver. I've gone too far with this... guess I'm kind of obsessed or just OCD about organisation & optimization.

[C.Smith 0]

It takes a bit of extra work, but if I have a big scene and know I will be having to animate a lot of stuff, I'll rebuild a lot of the major features as Spline shapes or extremely simple geometry. Then use an Xpresso check box to flip between the proxy and final. It's not as slick as LOD, and other solutions, But when you flip to your proxy , it's all easily realtime to get some work done.

[ChrisC 2]

Setting all cloners to 'Render Instance' can really help viewport speed, assuming your scene allows it.

[tcastudios 0]

Small tip: Set all Phongs to 0, can give 5 to 15fps typically.

Real tip for real real time checking (short of render), PLA/File series/Alembic to single objects as much as possible.

 

 

Cheers

Lennart

[jaypeeare 0]

Small tip: Set all Phongs to 0, can give 5 to 15fps typically.

Real tip for real real time checking (short of render), PLA/File series/Alembic to single objects as much as possible.

 

 

Cheers

Lennart

 

I used PLA on a recent project. Worked wonders beyond my hopes. So great for just handing off files to other artist. And now with Alembic released from ILM & Imageworks I think it's almost safe to say that workflow pipelines will be much more at ease when things have to be sent between different applications.

[eliss 0]

If you're looking for a faster viewport you should switch to a computer with an i7 chip because the GPU is part of the processor. It's going to run faster then having an external (Quadro). Maya and 3D Studio Max are the software's that work best with the Quadro line especially if it's a PC.

Edited October 4, 2012 by eliss

[eliss 0]

http://www.nvidia.com/page/partner_certified_drivers.html

 

Click on Maxon as a partner

 

You'll see that the 4000 card is not supported for version 13 and 14.

[dan_hin 0]

@eliss Absolute gold, thanks for that.

[sketchbook 0]

if your scene gets pretty heavy the best thing to do is place specific groups of objects onto layers. If you then solo a layer it removes all other objects in the entire file from memory. Hiding objects with the stoplights doesn't speed things up much. Best to use layers.