Painfully slow timeline scrolling with latest nightly even every single preview turned off

[Paul Oblomov]

Even when viewport turned off...
maya 2018.3

[georgi.zhekov]

Could it be that the caches are really big? Phoenix still needs to read the files for the frame.

[Paul Oblomov]

No about 250mb. Tho it is network path. But, I think, when everything is turned off - why phx need to be called at all ? (i usually turn off viewport at export time, so export to vrscene is fast as possible). I think phx doing smth unneded, querying grid size, imho.

[georgi.zhekov]

Indeed looks like there is something fishy, will let you know when we know more.

Thanks,

[Paul Oblomov]

Anything ? What a pain to work like that. Volume grid works as expected...

[georgi.zhekov]

I've logged it as a bug, but I can't say more for now.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ping, this should work better in tomorrow's nightlies.

[Paul Oblomov]

OMG. I wish boiling were killed tomorrow too. Deadlines are tight - 1st march in cinemas.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

I too wish that all issues and features would magically get resolved in a day, but there is more to it than this. Will keep you posted.

[Paul Oblomov]

I'll be first
So, phx continue to eat RAM, even cache file is the same. The more copies of phx grid you have - the more it eats. Sent scene eats 9gb for 3grids, with all the stuff turned off, except show box.

Just copy-paste one cache and rename the copy. I'm using ten copies and you can imagine how many RAM is eaten. Unusable at all.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Your Play Speed is 2.5.

This means that when you go to a timeline frame, the data you see in the viewport and render will be blended between the content of two cache files.

Yes, Phoenix does share the data if of all cache files you load from the hard disk, if you load them more than once.

However, Phoenix does NOT share the cache data from blended frames or from frames that you have applied Channel Smoothing to, since they are no longer the same as the cache files.

This is not trivial to implement, so you can work around it by either using an integer Play Speed (2.0, 3.0, etc.), or simulating in the right time scale.

Cheers!

[Paul Oblomov]

Excuse me, but preview is turned off completely, only the bounding box is here. So, why phx should do anything at all ? The only thing came to my mind is bounding box, which even in case of frame blending (linear) is quite easy to compute, no? I think boundingbox info is stored independently of any voxel data (maybe boundingbox, voxel count - I don't think you loop through each and every voxel, storing its count, etc...). To me it shouldn't eat anything at all, no RAM, cheap boundingbox info and that's it - in my case of course, when only bbox is shown.

My working pc is 64gb only. 10 grid volumes, seen only as boxes eats 30gb or RAM just to show me bbox.

P.S. Have you tried opening my scene with playspeed = 1.0 ? It eats RAM too. Nothing changes...

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Please uncheck all your grid channels in the Preview - RGB and Smoke/Special as well (go out of Liquid attribute editor mode)

This is a good place for future improvement because:
- If blending is needed, the whole cache data from the two source frames gets blended, no matter if you needed it or not.
- The cache can be loaded in bounding box-mode only, but only in case the whole preview is disabled. If there is anything to show, the cache data is read. it's possible to first check if the enabled preview channels are available in the cache and switch to grid-only preview if they are not.

For now, disable the preview as a workaround.

[Paul Oblomov]

So for now, phx will continue to ignore maya preview settings ? With this unchecked every next frame is slow + maya eats >50% CPU to load smth. This only happens to vp 2.0. Legacy is fine.

http://joxi.ru/MAjbpq9hjk9ZMA


Also, I don't get it: loading scene:

first frame RAM=9gb
second frame RAM=5gb
thirdd frame RAM=3gb
fourth frame RAM=1gb

I made three copies of cache, so fourth frame is zero. Why phx loads anything. Play speed is 1.0, turned off everything, advanced mode etc... Only legacy mode is fine.

Once again - turning off anything - doesn't solve anything. Only legacy mode works - with turned off everything - preview, maya settings etc..

http://joxi.ru/Vm69doRt4vJXor

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Don't think Maya preview settings were ever implemented. Gonna add a task about this.

Seems like I gotta install Process explorer, since after the last Windows update, all my processes are using 1-2K of memory in Task Manager...