Thanks Peter,
some good advice in there. And I have kept my scene clean and simple. And I
here what you are saying about xsi having to do alot of work when changing
passes. But when I change to a given pass with only two passes in the scene
it's super quick. If I later go back to that same pass having added more
passes, xsi should only have to do the same amount of work, ( apply the same
overrides.) but it takes ages... Somethings not right.
One thing that would easy this process some what would be if you could see
all the overrides for all the passes as opposed to just the overrides of the
current pass. Also maybe for a future release softimage should consider the
approach of not loading the data in a pass unless a render is started,
(region or otherwise.) That way you could check all the settings of all your
overrides and such in a flash.
Anyway I love passes and they do save me time dispite this irritating bug.
m(at)
-----Original Message-----
From: peter boeykens [mailto:peter_b(at)skynet.be]
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 12:19 PM
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Changing passes slow
just to state the obvious:
each pass and each partition and each object in there is some amount of
data. the more you gather the more resources it takes.
being as clean and minimal as possible with your passes can go a long way in
keeping passes usable.
I've been doing scenes lately with easily a few thousand ojects, over a
hundred passes, and it didnt work out all that bad.
Switching passes can be baaad, up to the point that you cannot open a scene,
switch to a pass, put an object in a partition, and save without XSI
crashing. (the infamous 2% error) Or sometimes its simply faster exiting
your scene and switching through the scenetoc!
But even when it gets bad like this, it seems like some cleaning up in your
scene goes a long way in making things work better.
Remember that when you switch a pass XSI has to do a lot of work: changing
visibility on a lot of objects, perhaps changing subdivision levels,
applying overrides, applying override materials to the objects,...
some tips:
- make a pass with just the default partitions, and both hidden. allways
switch to this pass when saving.
- duplicate this pass to create new passes from
- only put things in a partition that need to be
- if two seperate partitions do the same thing (eg hide some objects)
combine them into one.
- create a pass where you make partitions based on how you want to split
your scene (eg. foreground characters, midground characters, background
characters, background, effects elements, ...) and use these partitions as
"selection lists". This is usefull when creating new passes, and you quickly
want to recreate certain partitions.
- dont go and duplicate a complex pass and modify it to create a new pass.
It is tempting, and you would hope to win time that way, but you quickly
gather a lot of unnecessary data, some that you cant clean up afterwards.
Create new passes from an empty pass, and recreate your partitions again,
using the "selection lists" above. it is much cleaner this way.
- passes and partitions are very closely related to materials. Scenes can
grow tenfold in size through bad material- and pass management! And not all
of it to blame on how the software works.
Clean up unused materials and clips as much as possible, several times in a
row, several times an hour. this is no joke.
Share materials. eg, if you create a holdout material, name it properly and
reuse it for each partition that has to be a holdout, by drag n drop from
the material library. You wouldnt believe how quickly you endup with lots of
identical materials with random names, each used one single time in the
scene. This becomes a lot of excess data for XSI to keep track of, and a
mess to clean up.
keep the modifications you make in partitions as minimal and simple as
possible.
some overrides are more expensive than others. eg if you override the
diffuse port in the phong on a partition that contains hundreds of objects,
each with their own material or several materials, XSI has to create
hundreds of new "override materials" in the library. Even if they dont get
saved with the scene, they end up taking resources and XSI has to think
about them.
If you can accomplish the same result by simply applying a material to the
partition you create only one new material.
-...
if you believe that complex scenes need good organisation, a clean workflow
and proper naming, this is every bit as true with passes and partitions.
> Wow that is pretty bad then, least my scene has an exscuse to slow down
> with hundreds of seperate objects. Ive got real slowdown now (and
> freeze/crashes) whenever I add an override. Its taking so long im thinking
> that if I set the passes up in an empty(ish) scene then merge this I can
> use the passes this way no? Its taking so long to add overrides but not so
> long to add hundreds of objects to seperate partitions...
>
> On Fri, August 18, 2006 2:17 pm, matt lowery wrote:
>> Well I only have 6 layers, and only five objects that are children of the
>> scene root. The rest of the objects in the scene are organized into
>> models. The weird thing is that it seems to be directly linked to the
>> number passes I have in a scene as when I only had two passes, changing
>> between was pretty quick.
>>
>> m(at)
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: bob(at)tekano.co.uk [mailto:bob(at)tekano.co.uk]
>> Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 11:20 AM
>> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
>> Subject: RE: Changing passes slow
>>
>>
>>
>> Heheh interesting hypothosis Dr. Seeley, hit slowdown too with 10+ passes
>> and 10+ layers. well my prognosis was the amount of individual objects
>> in the scene,had an improvement in Pass change speed when I put a load of
>> loose objects into seperate models so my scene root hierarchy was tidied
>> up a bit.
>>
>> On Fri, August 18, 2006 10:46 am, Adam Seeley wrote:
>>
>>> HI,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have noticed this. I also noticed that the more layers you have, the
>>> slower it is switching between passes (most noticable with big scenes &
>>> plenty of passes & layers).
>>>
>>> If you have layers you can do withouty it might help to delete the.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Other than than, it just became an increasingly slow process switching
>>> Passes.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Adam.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM on behalf of matt lowery
>>> Sent: Fri 18/08/2006 10:00
>>> To: 'xsi(at)softimage.com'
>>> Subject: Changing passes slow
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have a scene with 11 passes, the problem is that the more passes I
>>> create the longer xsi takes to switch between them. The passes are
>>> pretty standard, matte passes with a few partitions and over rides and
>>> such. The thing is when I only had two passes I could switch over in a
>>> few seconds, but now with 11 it takes about a minute to switch. Anyone
>>> know why that is? Or better yet know a workaround that would make
>>> changing passes less painfull?
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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