Carrara Pro Performance
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I spent six months with Poser. I found the program slow to load and easy to lock up from the beginning. Normal troubleshooting steps found nothing wrong. I came to think the software was poorly written.
Now I'm studying Carrara Pro. I'm learning quickly thanks to this forum. I've managed to import a naked cr2 file in one piece. Carrara's performance has been right snappy, up until yesterday, when I added a shirt and pair of pants, bringing the file size to almost 40M. Now, on file save, I get the white screen and the Program Not Responding message (groan). It hasn't locked, it's just responding slower than Windows wants it to. In time, Carrara completes the save and the white screen goes away. Again, troubleshooting found nothing. I can't believe I'm the only person who's seen this behavior.
My hardware setup is ample. For most other programs it is more than adequate. Everything I've read tells me it is appropriate for general 3D use, short of professional. I shudder to think what will happen when I add backgrounds, multiple characters, etc. I have a fast I7 ready to install, but I doubt it will make a day-and-night difference. Maybe I'm wrong.
What does it take to run these programs? Multiple Xeons? I'm not being rhetorical, I'm serious.
Thanks.
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Comments
You certainly do seem to have ample hardware there. But I can tell you that even on my 64 GB RAM / 24 cores box, Carrara can be sluggish with a big enough scene.
My biggest complaint is that it has lousy error messages that provide zero information content about the problem. This means that you have to diagnose everything yourself.
I'll post again shortly with some additional instructions (and I really should save the instructions this time so I stop re-writing them). :)
EDIT: In the mean time, please post a screen shot when you get the error message dialogue box. If possible, have Carrara showing stuff like scene statistics (i.e. object types and counts). Any useful data that you can think of.
The first screen shows Carrara prior to the Not Responding message. The second shows the white screen itself. Not much info there. Let me know anything else you want to see.
The Task Manager is open in the System Tray. It shows about 33% usage.
Thanks.
A completely white screen is strongly indicative of a problem inside Windows rather than Carrara. I would make certain that your video card driver is up-to-date.
Also, you could be running a lot of background processes that are not necessary. Your screenshot shows the Firefox browser running and two other apps that I don't recognize...plus a bunch of stuff in the System Tray including WinAmp.
After updating the video driver, turn off all unnecessary programs and processes that you can (this can be tricky to accomplish and is darn near impossible if you are infected with malware). Try to run only Carrara and see what happens.
After this...we break out the big guns...
Also, sometimes content is just buggy and can be slow depending on many factors and how the vender creates certain things. I have found out who these venders are over time and stay away from their products. Also, alot of the time when you get the not responding if you wait long enough it will come back, then again sometimes it doesnt.
Part of the good and bad with respect to Carrara is that you can use a ton of different content and can do stuff to it that you cant do in Poser or DAZ Studio. Carrara to me is the sweet spot when it comes to the whole Poser genre. Best of luck and if you need any advice let me know.
I installed a new video driver, this one only three weeks old. NVIDIA calls it the performance driver. :-) Then I rebooted and turned my extra stuff off, then reloaded the file, put Carrara in wireframe mode, and saved again. There was no change.
The file contains four objects now, I added hair. I watched the Carrara progress bar during the save. The first object saves fine. The second one brings the Not Responding screen, which goes away after a while. The remaining objects save fine.
I can't tell which object is saving when the error occurs, but over time I have become suspicious of some of the props. It is possible I have a wayward prop here. The Objects panel says object no.2 is the shirt.
......................
Later...
It was the shirt. I deleted the shirt and the file saved with no error. Damn. The same vendor made the shirt as made the pants.
Is there any way I can beat the cooties out of this shirt?
Try disabling the Compress File option when you save a scene for the first time. See if that helps.
You can make some adjustments concerning the parameters 3D of your video cart NVIDIA for the program Carrara, you can also go in the preferences of Carrara and activate (or deactivate) the display list open GL, but if the problem occurs during the recording of the project, it is that you have to much programs and services which turn unnecessarily in background, but especially think of your antivirus which controls the file during its creation.
Personally, I said to my antivirus not to take account of the files Carrara (.car).
I have a i7 Intel Quad with hyperthreading (8 cores). I'd like to upgrade my computer to increase performance and rendering speed. Could you be more specific about your setup? Is it a new Intel CPU with 24 cores? Or AMD? And what is the price range of this CPU? Thanks.
I think it may be some problematic content like akulla3d suggested. I've done a scene with 3 fully clothed M4's, 3 V4's, and a complex scene on a dual core machine with only 4gb of ram. Save did take quite a while, maybe 3-4 min. I never got a blank white screen during the save like you are getting. I've worked on this scene in 8.5 and had no problems.
For reference, a render from the scene I'm talking about is here ( warning - nudity): http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2260952&user_id=180561
Right now, I leave all the NVIDIA settings at the default. I'm in enough trouble already. :cheese:
I have a i7 Intel Quad with hyperthreading (8 cores). I'd like to upgrade my computer to increase performance and rendering speed. Could you be more specific about your setup? Is it a new Intel CPU with 24 cores? Or AMD? And what is the price range of this CPU? Thanks.
The machine is server-grade since I use it for work as well as my 3D stuff. It is a ASUS motherboard with 2 sockets. Two AMD 12-core CPUs. I also built another machine that was half of this one. Don't recall the total cost around $5000 for everything I think. Of course it is build-it-yourself too.
So, I opened an earlier version that still had the suspect shirt. I saved, disabling compression. Save was fast and easy, like it should be.
Now I have a slightly different idea what the problem was. There was contention between Carrara compression and the shirt. The shirt is still on my S list, but now I may not need to replace it.
Personally, I always turn off compression when I save a scene. I've read too many issues on these forums with that.
Right now, I leave all the NVIDIA settings at the default. I'm in enough trouble already. :cheese:
Carrara has an Interactive Renderer that you can adjust settings in that shouldn't screw anything up. The icon for it is a circle with a little up arrow in the middle. It will be on the top right border of your Assembly room window. Click it and a window will open. This is for your display only! Changes made to it will have no effect on your render settings!
The first thing I do in the Interactive Renderer to improve performance is to reduce the displayed texture map size from 2048 to something a bit more reasonable, such as 512 (or less depending on the amount of textures in the scene). There are also quality vs. performance sliders, options for displaying transparency and reflections, etc. Adjusting the slider more towards performance or un-checking the transparency or reflection options can help with performance.
Just to reiterate! The changes made to the Interactive Renderer are display changes only! They have no effect at all in the render room!
A neat trick to help with lighting is to choose to use the scene lights instead of the default light map in the Interactive Renderer. It's a great help when setting up your lights, although the specialty lights, like shape lights or Anything Glows may not work with it. The standard distance, bulb and spotlights work quite well.
The Interactive Renderer is scene specific, so any changes made to it will only be for that scene.
The other thing to to do to increase performance in a scene is when you initially save it, along with un-checking the compression option, is to save locally (which I think is the default). When saving locally, Carrara is referencing any image maps in the scene in their home locations. If you move them, then Carrara will ask you to find them.
A lot of people save internally, so all the image maps are saved in the scene file. If you have a lot of image maps, then this can more time to save and more time to load. Additionally, it can hurt performance because they're loaded into memory when the scene is opened.
There are other technical issues with image maps saved internally. For example, I have read some information that Carrara saves the images internally as uncompressed 32 bit image files (possibly .tiffs). This means that if you use a low-res jpg, Carrara upconverts it to a 32 bit image if saved internally, negating the lower file size.
Even a scene saved locally can take a long time to load if there are a lot of objects in the scene, as Carrara stores all the geometry internally no matter what. This is why it's important to go through and delete unused objects and unused shaders from time to time, especially when building your scene or prior to saving the scene. You may have a model you thought you wanted to use, and then decided against using it, so you deleted it, but it's still in memory and will be saved with the scene unless you flush it by deleting unused objects.
Sometimes, too, it's not always just what we 'see' in the scene, but can be something else.
It took me a while at first to realize this when I first tried Carrara - and I, too, found Poser to be annoyingly slow - especially going from one runtime to the next - or any runtime at all when first starting the software. Anyways, never forget to check this simple thing when ever Carrara seems to be performing less great that it seems that it should be, because it can make the world of difference:
Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Remove Unused Objects
then
Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders
Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Remove Unused Shaders
I used to try out many things before finally saving. Then I'd open that same file, try some more, then save again - and the extra unneeded and unwanted stuff just keeps building up. And unless we're entering those tabs down to the right, and working within them all the time (a newer habit I've added to my workflow) this stuff can easily go unnoticed! True. And when Carrara feels that it has too much stuff, it decides to take a rest, and rest often. But if it has a lot, but it all needs to be there, it will still push through, eventually.
If this is the case, for those larger scene files, then an easy solution for getting your speed back is to keep everything in easy to manage groups - so you can select groups you don't need to work on anymore, and deselect "Show in 3D View". I do this a lot if I am making a scene with lots and lots of background objects. Trees comes to mind ;) I'll select a whole group of trees and hide them from working view in this manner, but then, when I render, they're still there. If I don't even want them to render until I tell them to, then instead of using that one, I'll deselect "Visible" instead.
I was satisfied with it till I developed an interest in 3D.
It has VT-x and VT-d virtualization tech, but I'm not sure what that does for me.
Probably nothing.
Typically, "virtualization" refers to running virtual machines using Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware software. This means you are faking out Windows (or Linux, etc.) at a very low level into thinking it is running alone on the hardware. Actually, you are running several machines at the same time.
Companies do this to save money. Instead of running 10 servers, they run 2 stupid-powerful servers and create 10 "virtual machines" on them. I run several SQL Server and SharePoint Server machines for my day job. New CPUs have special instructions to help run VMs efficiently.
Well, when you render, do four colored boxes start running across your scene, eight, six?
i5s that are quads but each is a virtual dual core have been reported to be outstanding for certain multi-core functions. My AMD has eight physical cores, and they each render faster than each of the cores from my dual core, but there's eight of them, making me quite pleased in the render department. However, all rendering activities take time. I have convinced myself that I would keep my low-end render settings, even though I'm now running eight cores, and simply enjoy the new speed benefits. And we can hold true to those beliefs for some time. Then we try something new... something new that changes all of that. Now you're back to wishing you had 537 bazillion cores in a refrigerated room next to the office! :smirk:
I have four. But now I have visited the render room for the first time. The few seconds when I had no questions have passed. Now I'm having another "Huh..." moment. I'll be back.
Some I5's don't have more than four. I think that there are some, even that are only two. But then there are some that have four physical, each having a virtual second core, which shows in Carrara (and Task Manager Performance) as eight.
In Carrara, it is this number that equates to faster render times. While Games require faster video cards, the only time that Carrara takes advantage of that is while you're working and not rendering. So it's nice to have, but not the big part of the show. Carrara doesn't use your graphics card to render with, but your cpu cores - so the more the merrier, and the faster they are, the better. Mine has eight 3.1 GHz cores where DAZ_Spooky opted for the faster version. We've both been very happy with the AMD Zambezi 8
Intel's I series are some top-dog chips, though. And a Quad might not be the fastest, but it's an excellent place to start compared to the dual core I had before, which was much better than my previous single core! LOL But even single core machines can still make great renders - just not as fast.
I would spend my Carrara time building scenes and when I save them, I add them to the Batch Render Queue in the Render Room. Then when I'm all done with Carrara for the day, I'd launch the Queue.
If it's still rendering when I need Carrara again, I look in the Render Room's Batch Queue to see what has been completed. If I decide to stop rendering so I can go back to work in Carrara, I Hit refresh on the queue (to refresh the one that didn't finish) and then remove those that did finish.
The thought has crossed my mind... :coolsmirk:
Honestly, I would like to use Carrara and Lightwave across both of my servers to get 36 wonderful cores of rendering awesome-sauce. I'd like to get a much better video card with GPU-enhanced rendering powers...
Rottenham: do you still get those "white screens?"
I laugh to see this discussion in connection with the performances of the computers, the majority of the members on this forum make only still images...
As for the others, which make animation like me, they are only impassioned and not like the professionals who aim at profitability, if the computer work a few hours moreover, it's not a problem and the final render will be same quality!
I don't think that is a fair characterization at all. Most people like greater performance out of their tools no matter what they are doing. Do you want a powered screwdriver that takes 3 hours to put a screw in place or 3 seconds?
If you are a hobbyist animator then you may not mind the extra time waiting. But if you are sharing a render-farm with a team, they might not appreciate you taking up more time than necessary.
Absolutely, DUDU. I was happy with my single core - and even more thrilled with my dual core machines I've had. It's what I had - and Carrara still outperformed anything else I've tried. But like my above statement that Garstor quoted, and his response, it's really fun to think along the lines of the pro networks and movie houses. Dream. Next thing you know, I was asking around about render farms. Some truly professional animators that use Carrara came on and guided me that a single machine with as many cores as it can handle would be far less of a headache than stringing nodes together. Render farms do work, but they can be a real PITA. I thought about what he told me and mixed that information with the knowledge that I really don't need a room full of cores. My dual core was actually keeping me happy thanks to having Carrara with it's efficient render engine and its batch queue.
Then I knew I was going to be getting some money that I wanted to use to better my computer. This happens for me every few years. Building my own machine saves me loads and loads of money and has an even better affect of having all of the hardware I want - not what I had to settle for. Plus there's nothing quite as rewarding as taking your time, researching the parts and configurations, setting up the wishlist at Newegg, and finally, when the time is ripe, place that order. The first time I did it, I roped off the living room so that nobody could enter until I was done building! LOL Like a kid with a new model, some glue and paints, I took to building that machine! It's still in excellent shape and runs Win XP well. My brother told me not to stick money into the case. I almost never ignore my brother when it comes to computers, but this time I did. I bought a Thermaltake case with filters on every intake fan. Never will I ever build another machine without this excellent feature. The quickest way to a burnt up, slowed down machine is to allow those components to get yucky. Even that first build that I made, years ago, still looks new inside. Now I have my own office. Building is a great way to get what you want - and it gives us a much better realization of what it takes to make a computer work, what Carrara truly needs - and what it doesn't. Anyways, it's fun, and affordable. It's the only way for me, from now on - unless something incredibly drastic changes how we can get the parts. :)
Dude, I would consider buying you your next set of parts just to watch the mayhem around the house if you do that.
In completely unrelated information...here is what it is like inside a secure data center: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/get-an-inside-look-at-a-secure-data-center (Yes, my company uses facilities pretty darn close to this sort of level)
EDIT: Removed the URL tags from the link which seem to screwup the website address.
Hmmm... can't get that link to work, Gars-Man :blank:
What I wanted to say it is that one should not discourage those which do not have the means of changing computer every six months to follow the evolution.
I began with a Athlon 1800xp and I was happy to see what one could at that time draw from Carrara.
I assembled myself a quad core and selected all the components according to my applications multi-media three years ago.
I am always very satisfied with the output of my computer today but I learned that an old computer well regulated and cleaned functions better than a badly arranged computer moreover high efficiencies.
One should not especially let accept the amateurs who it is necessary to be fortunate to make of the 3D…
Yeah, I see that the URL is changed somehow...weird...here is the full text of the link:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/get-an-inside-look-at-a-secure-data-center/
Oh yes! I completely agree with you. I don't think that is the point of the original poster though or the initial replies.