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Extremely Slow Shaded Full to Export Image


Justin Montoya

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Hey there-

 

Anyone else getting a very slow exporting of the Shaded Full to Export Image (.png)?   Is it an OpenGL issue?   I got a warning message saying that some computers would not be able to do it at a specified size, but being as I have a GTX680 in my 12 core Mac Pro, I figured it would be a snap.   I thought FormZ was froze in a crash, but I didn't want to Force Quit without a more recent Save, so I let it sit for about 5 minutes, and it finally came back to life, and the image had been saved.  

 

Let me know if there's a setting I can change to speed this up, or what's the deal?

 

Thanks!

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Hi Justin,

 

The Shaded (OpenGL) display modes do not have any direct pixels.  The images are simply sent directly from the video card to the screen.  If the resolution of your screen is high enough, you can simply screen capture the image and you should get it instantly.  If you need to use the Export Image command, then we need to tell the video card to send us the pixel information in a way that can be recorded to an image file, and with the Shaded Full mode, this process is longer and more involved, and depending on your video card and the driver that is installed for this, it can take some time.

 
That being said, I would certainly expect it to be much faster than 5 minutes, especially with a decent video card like you have.  If you reboot your computer, does that come down to a more reasonable time?
 
If not, at what resolution are you trying to export?  ~20 seconds to export a 2048 x 2048 image would be "more reasonable" -- so if you are doing 4096 x 4096, that would be 4 times the pixels, so ~80 seconds could be expected, which is still much less than 5 minutes.  
 
If your file is taking longer than what we describe above,  can you send it (or a smaller file where you get similar slow results) to support@formz.com so we can investigate what can be done to make this faster?
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Hi Tech-

 

That makes perfect sense...  which leads me to a couple of feature requests or, should I say, turning lemons into lemonade!?  :)

 

1- Add a Screen Capture feature to the Export Image options that only selects the modeling window, but improves the speed to share this style as a 'working design'.  

 

2- Also add a Screen Capture for video feature that would allow much faster animations export using OpenGL and the new Shaded Full option.  This would be huge to making much faster fly throughs for sharing designs through the conceptual phases.  

 

 

I'll do a reboot and let you know if the normal export gets much faster.  I'm using the Nvidia Web driver, instead of the Mac OSX driver, so I can also try swapping that to see if it improves.  2550x1425 PNG image.  

 

Thanks!

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There is a screen capture (Command Shift 4 (Mac) or Print Screen (Win)) that is built into the OS to do screen captures.

 

There are also many video capture programs that allow you to capture whatever portion of the screen you want with whatever compression settings you want.

 

Why reinvent the wheel -- just use what is already available?

 

Then ADS can do other improvements, like enhance the Layout mode, and other modeling operations...

 

Just my 3 cents...

 

Rob

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Hi Justin,

 

Yes, as Rob notes this is already built into the system.  Would there be some advantage if we were to duplicate this functionality?

 

Rob,

 

Yes, an update will be released soon with improvements to Layout mode and other functionality.

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Justin and ZTech,

 

I have the same situation here, on my Macbook Pro Retina 10,1 (late 2012) with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M / Intel HD Graphics 4000, and OS X Yosemite 10.10.1.

 

I also believe that this issue has to do with the graphics card, but it only affects FZ 8 and not FZ 7.

 

In FZ 7 I can export images in 6000 x 4000 or 4500 pixels without any problem in Shaded Full mode, with full settings, and I do this usually in my laptop.

 

But, in FZ 8 if I export an image even in smaller size, like 2048 x 1536, the whole system OS X slows down extremely for several minutes, in my case more than 5 surely depending on the image size.

 

Recently, I discover that this issue is also related to the "2X Multi-Sampling" setting in Shaded Full Options, and disabling it the same image is exported in a few seconds, 2 to 8 maximum at 6000 x 4500. This is my workaround now.

 

Related to this, I'm surprised that Shadows and Ambient Occlusion options not produce the same effect. The uploaded image was generated al 6000 x 4500 in 6 seconds, and I have also attached the settings.

 

Best,

 

Marcelo

 

post-13-0-29244900-1420816729_thumb.jpg

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Thanks Tech and Marcelo!

 

Disabling the 2x Multi-Sampling allows the file to be saved nearly instantly.  It doesn't look quite as good, but I'm going to try a small animation now as a fly through and see how long it takes.  My hopes are that this new Shaded Full mode can reduce the number of RenderZone renderings needed in the conceptual phase of the projects.

 

Keep you posted!

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So it only took a couple of minutes to generate a great fly through animation of the Shaded Full view without the 2x Multi-Sampling turned on.   Hopefully you guys can figure out how to make it possible with it turned On, but this is pretty great for now, and I'll keep playing with the settings to get the best possible quality out of the Shaded Full display.

 

Great Job AutoDesSys!  

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