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herseem - all messages by user

2013/7/25 12:17:55
Out of memory Hi Jim,

Well, I tried to paste an image of the task manager in here but couldn't work out how to do that. Before attempting to load any scenes, there were three copies of Muvizu.exe running for some reason, with only one using any CPU - around 40% CPU - but all around 300MB. when I try to load the Dungeon scene the copy of Muvizu taking all the CPU climbs to about 720MB at around 60% loaded and then gives up. I've noticed now that each time I close Muvizu it leaves it running in memory, even though I close it down properly. It seems that the three copies were from previous attempts

Mike Hersee
2013/7/25 9:56:11
Out of memory I've just downloaded the latest 32-bit version, installed it on Windows XP with 4GB (I know that it only uses about 3GB of that 4GB), and on trying to load the dungeon scene it gets to about 60% and runs out of memory! WTF?? On then trying to load several other scenes they all fall over with the same problem. Some scenes load normally. Never had that problem before even the last time I used Muvizu was on a 2GB machine. How can this be? I also do video editing using Serif MoviePlus X6, which is also a fairly heavy use of the computer and that doesn't have a problem. Why is this, and what can we do about it?

Note: I have not loaded any other major applications since booting, such as any browser or email client, and it still does it. I have changed machine though, and am using the onboard graphics card with a new motherboard - could it be graphics memory its out of, or is it referring to main memory?

I've just checked the onboard graphics and it's the Intel G41 Express chipset, 'adapater string' - Intel(R) GMA 4500, with 256 MB. I'm pretty sure the last graphics adapter I used with Muvizu had no more memory than that.

Mike
edited by herseem on 25/07/2013
2012/9/14 23:39:51
Software for voice I'm going to point out here that actually in commercial animations the voice of characters is incredibly important. To take C3PO in Star Wars for instance, would that have worked if the voice had been generated by text to speech? I don't think so. Even robots in animations need to have human voices, otherwise it just doesn't work as a means of entertainment. That's also why they use some of the best and most expensive voices in the business to do voice overs for animation. It's your choice, I'm just suggesting that using text-to-speech for voices just kills the entertainment value the script and the animation might otherwise have had.
2012/9/11 8:16:40
Camera movement And another thing: I think having a precise degree of control over camera changes, which would be easily achievable through the method I suggested, is actually quite important.
2012/9/11 7:41:46
Camera movement Firstly, amazing program - thanks to everyone who's contributed to it. I know how much effort can go into creating something for other people to use.

I also wanted to do some camera movement shots and I've found the current camera movement options to be a real nuisance. I have previously used a free animation program called Anim8 - I expect some people here have used it. It has a much better system for camera motion in that you can set views at different points on the timeline and it will work out the position and angle for all the intermediate frames. Enabling start and end points and Muvizu creating smooth and progressive movement between them would be much more in keeping with the philosophy of Muvizu itself, which is direct, don't animate. Directing the camera motion is a key part of direction.

A key point about setting intermediate camera positions / characteristics (eg, degree of zoom, depth of field) on the timeline and allowing Muvizu to create the movement / change from one position to another is that you can run the animation, and if you're not entirely happy with the results, you can move one of the intermediate points, either along the timeline or the position in 3D, or adjust the parameters, and run it again. That is considerably easier to end up with what you wanted than having to manually reproduce what might be a complicated series of movements and adjustments until you get it right.

Even if you get the camera movement right, if you decide you need to reposition a character slightly or change the timing of a particular event (eg, moving from one place to another), all you might need to do would be adjust a couple of intermediate camera positions or angles to keep the camera in sync with the motion.

What I'm looking to create right now is a flying camera view similar to what is often used at the intro of variety of TV programmes. Simply having the camera track a character would not be adequate for that.

The way I anticipate this approach would manifest that would be easiest to understand and most similar to the current way of creating cameras is that instead of creating a camera, you'd first create one of perhaps several camera tracks. You'd then create a camera position, which would be exactly the same as creating a camera, except that you'd assign a camera position to a camera track. Then each camera position would have additional attributes of whether it was first, last or intermediate position, and position on the timeline. First last or intermediate would be determined automatically but it would be at least visible. You could move a camera track backwards and forwards on the timeline in the same way that you can move other tracks backwards and forwards (and therefore moving all the intermediate points simultaneously) as well as adjusting individual camera positions in relation to the camera timeline as a whole.

You might want to just have a camera shift it's focal point during a shot, from foreground to background, for instance (In the Disney cartoon version of Aladdin there's a shot that does that). You'd create a camera track, go to two different points on the timeline, and create your identical camera positions in exactly the same position in each, adjust the focal point on the two cameras separately, and assign them to the same camera track. Actually, you'd probably have four camera positions there: one each at the beginning and end and the two either side of the transition from one focal point to the other. So the camera itself wouldn't move in that instance, but the focal point would change smoothly between the two cameras either side of the focal point transition as the timeline progresses.

When directing and choosing which camera had the shot, camera positions assigned to a camera track would not be selectable, only camera tracks would be selectable as if they were individual static cameras. So when directing the chosen viewpoint, the available shots to select from would be a mixture of static cameras and camera tracks.

In my opinion that would be a highly-regarded facility.

Mike Hersee
2012/9/6 8:56:14
Excruciatingly slow when editing. Ok, I've effectively solved the problem. Simply closing down Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Chrome does the trick. It now runs just fine.

I'm a bit surprised because I always thought that the purpose of virtual memory was so that the operating system could page out applications that aren't currently doing anything in favour of those that are, and I wouldn't have thought having them running would make THAT much difference, but it really does make a huge difference. I'm not going to have to upgrade yet after all.

Thanks for all the tips and comments.
2012/9/5 21:36:55
Excruciatingly slow when editing. That's very disappointing to read about the graphics card / motherboard combination, especially when everything else runs pretty quickly. I've previously had much, much older PCs with built-in motherboard graphics cards, where the graphics chip only had a small heatsink to keep it cool and no fan (ie, very slow in comparison to the HD 3600), and they ran 3D graphics games much faster than muvizu can even open a menu.

My movie editing program, Serif MoviePlus, has different resolutions that can be used for editing, so you can edit at a realistic speed on only a low-powered machine, and then leave the final render to bake overnight. Why can't muvizu do that?

Fusion only works on Vista or above, not XP, and I've downloaded the latest graphics card drivers from AMD, that made no difference. I've just discovered that making it full screen rather than in a window speeds it up a small amount though.
2012/9/5 12:45:19
Excruciatingly slow when editing. Hi Jim,

Unfortunately this motherboard won't take more than the 2Gb of RAM it's already got, and the graphics card doesn't allow for any RAM to be added at all. I've just reinstalled Muvizu (for the first time on this computer) last night, and that has all the latest C++ and NET framework. I notice that the website recommends installing directx 9 even if later versions are installed, but I just tried and the installer refuses to install directx 9 when it says a later version is installed.

So how much memory is required to run muvizu at a half-decent speed then? I find it hard to believe that it requires the absolute most tip-top up to date machine with 4Gb of RAM and 1Gb of memory on the graphics card, because that would eliminate the majority of the population. And I'm not talking about rendering a whole scene, I'm just talking about the staggeringly slow response when trying to move the camera or the view, or even just change attributes of a character.

Surely I can't be the first person to have some serious performance issues with just basic functions?

Mike
2012/9/5 11:14:25
Excruciatingly slow when editing. Hi, I was recently given an old computer minus hard disk for me to upgrade to, with 3GHz Athlon 64 and I have 2Gb of DDR400 memory installed. The graphics card is an 8x AGP Radeon 3600 with 400MHz clock and 512Mb of DDR2 memory on board, and has shader 4.01. I'm running Windows XP Home. On most other software everything is pretty zippy, even editing video, but Muvizu is so excruciatingly slow it's virtually unusuable. It's as if I get one frame every 2 seconds, meaning that the mouse just won't even respond for at least 50% of the time. It's as if I'm trying to control the software by pulling on bits of string. It's really painful and difficult.rant

I'm just wondering what the heck I can realistically do to improve the performance without having to upgrade to a new motherboard as I've just gone through the painful process of upgrading to this one. Surely the performance doesn't need to be that bad on hardware that is really quite fast on everything else I do? What could be the cause? All suggestions gratefully received.

Mike
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Muvizu is easy to use 3D animation software that allows anyone to create high quality animations quickly and easily. Muvizu’s animation engine is ideal for storytellers, animators, teachers and businesses looking to engage, enchant and delight audiences with animated content.