Render one Model Just for Preview

[Gary]

In another thread, I mentioned my confusion with how models appear in the preview window when I'm fiddling with sliders/controls for a model, and since the changes aren't taking effect right away, and I slated it to software bugs where it isn't the reason. Rather, it's my impatience.

An example is when I was experimenting with the spiral effect on all the lights along my gutters to make a nice, slow flowing effect... it was being all chaotic with the effect stopping and restarting seemingly randomly as I was previewing. The way to truly see how the effect looks is to click the Render All button and wait a minute or two for it to create a FSEQ file that I'm not anywhere close to using (I turned off the Render on Save option so I can save my work often without much delay).

Is there a way to render just one effect, to save myself the time? I saw the right-click, Render and Export Model option, but it's not fast, either (it seems to take even longer than a "standard" render)... plus I'm creating a file I don't need.

[Phrog30]

If you are making changes to effects and you aren't seeing the changes immediately in the model preview then something is wrong.

Post your files.

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[Gilrock]

When you click on an effect it renders...problem solved.   The only thing render all does is render all the other effects in the proper render order but if you just want to see the effect you are messing with then that happens when you click on it.  You may still see some of the other data from other effects you have on the same channels/model.  The preview was not random stopping and restarting.  The preview loops so if you have a really short duration you'll see it repeating that loop really quick.

[Gary]

If you are making changes to effects and you aren't seeing the changes immediately in the model preview then something is wrong.

Post your files.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

What files do you need? I suppose my sequence's XML file, and the xlights_*.xml files as well?

I created a test sequence without any music. It contains one plasma effect that's about 12 seconds long. When I click on it right after opening it in xLights, it's dark. If I click away from it and then click on it again, I get a seonc or so of the animation and then black. If I click away, twiddle my thumbs for 30-60 seconds or so, and I click on the effect again, I get to enjoy all 12 seconds of the effect. Once the effect is "built", if I change the colors for the effect, a similar thing happens... it's takes a while for the new colours to be processed into the effect... but instead of looking at black, I'm looking at my previous colour choices before they get "overwritten" by my new choices.

I noticed that xLight takes about 10% of my CPU time when it's just idle, but when I change colours, it goes up to about 50% for 30-60 seconds, and then back down to 10% again.

It may also help if I post a video on YouTube or something... what free (and spyware free) screen/video capture software do people recommend around here? Audio capture would be a bonus.

[dkulp]

Plasma/Butterfly (and sometimes Text) are the effects that take the longest to render as every single pixel has a ton of math that goes into it.   On large models, they can take a long time.   That's what you are seeing.  It's rendering it, it just takes a while.   When you first click on it, it starts rendering, but it takes a while.   You can "see" it in action.   Expand out the Strands and then the first strand to see some nodes.   Click on the effect (or change a setting) and then hit play.  You should be able to see the node data changing as it re-renders.

[Gilrock]

How about posting those files and then we can compare videos?  I'll show you how well it performs on a good PC.

Edit:  Sorry didn't notice you already posted them.  When you hit reply and look at previous posts it doesn't show the attachments.

[Phrog30]

I opened your files and I think you have some issues.  I'm not seeing long render times, but the effect you have is doing weird things.

I replaced your effect with the bars effect and it behaves very oddly.  Not sure what is wrong, but I believe you need to look into this further.  I don't have the time right now to dig into it any further.

James

[Phrog30]

Nevermind what I said.  I had a few minutes to look at your files.  The effect was being "weird" because you had rotozoom set to something other than none.  This was making things look weird.  I set rotozoom to none and it's working like I would expect.  Again, I'm not seeing long render times.  I would post your computer specs.  Maybe it's time for an upgrade.

James

[keithsw1111]

It could also be the extra math involved in rotozoom is slowing it down.

[Phrog30]

It wasn't slow on my machine, just looked awful.

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[Gary]

Nevermind what I said.  I had a few minutes to look at your files.  The effect was being "weird" because you had rotozoom set to something other than none.  This was making things look weird.  I set rotozoom to none and it's working like I would expect.  Again, I'm not seeing long render times.  I would post your computer specs.  Maybe it's time for an upgrade.

I thought I turned Rotozoom off. When placing effects on the grid, it seems to remember the last Rotozoom setting used, sort of like how the Fade In/Out Transitions seem to be remembered.

The computer is hardly impressive. According to Windows 7, it has:
AMD Turion 62 Mobile Technology TL-60 2.00 GHz
4 GB of RAM (3.19 usable)

According to the Windows Experience Index:
The Processor has a score of 4.7
Memory has a score of 6.1
Graphics is 3.5
Gaming graphics: 3.2

Knowing it's not the fastest, I would understand that rendering an entire sequence would take a while, but a render of one effect would take mere seconds--not a minute or so.

I had a PC upgrade in mind, but thought that I'd hold off for this year, and wait until the sophistication of my sequencing would make my CPU struggle with layering, morphing, and Roto-Zooming all combined.

[Phrog30]

I'm not going to say that replacing your computer will make things better. But, there are smartphones that have better specs than that.

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[Gilrock]

I bet that PC was awesome in 2001.

[Gary]

I'm not going to say that replacing your computer will make things better. But, there are smartphones that have better specs than that.

I bet that PC was awesome in 2001.

Tough crowd. In my defense, the laptop originally had Windows Vista which was originally released in 2006 and Windows 7 came out in 2009, so the laptop is only between 7 and 10 years old.    I was thinking that a laptop running Windows 7 isn't really that old, but when I look at Windows Vista's release date, it's time to consider a new laptop.

I was quite surprised, however that when I installed xLights on my work PC (shhhh! Don't tell anyone) which is only about a year old, the build took about 20 seconds. It's an Intel Core i5-4570 @ 3.20 GHz, with 8 GB of RAM (7.88 usable), and solid state hard drive. Windows 10 doesn't have the "Windows Experience" index to compare to.

And come to think of it, I suppose it doesn't help that my sequencing goes with 25 ms timing, either.

I'll have to go home with my stopwatch to get an exact time to compare more accurately. I was wondering, does xLights take advantage of multiple core CPUs? I think I did read that a 64-bit version is not on the horizon at this point, is this correct?

[Gilrock]

Yes we spawn a lot of rendering threads so the more cores the better.