When I create characters in ASP, I use a lot of points. I like to zoom-in close to my imported sketches and capture every nuance I see.
This is my question: Could having a lot of points in my shapes slow down playback in the Workspace window?
I know about the usual things that slow down the playing of an animation, and I know about frame-skipping and the other things you can do to speed-up playback.
But I'm curious. I've always assumed that ASP can easily handle thousands of points during playback, and that any slowness in playback was caused by other things.
Is this correct?
Also, could having ten-thousand points per frame slow down "rendering" a significant amount when compared to, say, 500 points per frame? I'm guessing "no," that a resonably fast personal computer will do all the necessary calculations so fast that the difference is negligible.
Just curious. Not sure if anybody knows this.
I suppose I could get a stopwatch and do some experiments...
Can having "too many points" slow down playback?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
One thing is for absolute sure -- the more points you have, the more information stored in the (ascii) Anime file. And, thus, the slower it will save and load.
My hunch is that many points can indeed slow down playback -- for sure many layers can, and the pointer to layers can't be much more complicated. Think of it this way -- AS has to check every single point for a key on every frame. I'd bet a dollar that doubling the points alone can slow the playback by half.
My hunch is that many points can indeed slow down playback -- for sure many layers can, and the pointer to layers can't be much more complicated. Think of it this way -- AS has to check every single point for a key on every frame. I'd bet a dollar that doubling the points alone can slow the playback by half.
It might not be horrible. It just depends on the complexity of your scenes. Even slowing playback by four or five times might still allow you to see it in Real Time, depending on your processor and choice of Mac or PC (there have been some fairly reliable reports here that the Mac version operates more slowly than the PC version).
When I have two or less rigged characters in a scene (and an audio file loaded) it plays more or less in Real Time. But adding just one more character will definitely slow playback down (actually, what happens in practice is that it skips and stutters since it attempts to "keep up"). Four or more characters and it's nearly impossible to watch or use for animation purposes.
But in those cases I simply disable those characters and work with what I can -- and I suspect you can do the same. Now, it isn't *smart* to create more points than you need, but if that's what you need I wouldn't worry about using them. IOW, don't simplify your characters just because you're worried about playback speed (but conversely, don't overcomplicate your characters unnecessarily -- in addition to playback speed all kinds of other things will be much worse, like bone manipulation or even just simple shape adjustment).
It's actually pretty amazing how few verts you really need for even complicated shapes -- and if you do need to distort them with bones or by hand it's *much* easier if you only have what you need.
When I have two or less rigged characters in a scene (and an audio file loaded) it plays more or less in Real Time. But adding just one more character will definitely slow playback down (actually, what happens in practice is that it skips and stutters since it attempts to "keep up"). Four or more characters and it's nearly impossible to watch or use for animation purposes.
But in those cases I simply disable those characters and work with what I can -- and I suspect you can do the same. Now, it isn't *smart* to create more points than you need, but if that's what you need I wouldn't worry about using them. IOW, don't simplify your characters just because you're worried about playback speed (but conversely, don't overcomplicate your characters unnecessarily -- in addition to playback speed all kinds of other things will be much worse, like bone manipulation or even just simple shape adjustment).
It's actually pretty amazing how few verts you really need for even complicated shapes -- and if you do need to distort them with bones or by hand it's *much* easier if you only have what you need.
I've had huge multi layered files with lots of points run very smoothly.
I think this discussion may have more to do with what we consider "a lot of points". I would suggest that many people use way more points than are needed.
If you import a standard Adobe Illustrator file of a character and do not clean up all the extra useless points you will have many more points, two or three or even four times the points needed than the same character drawn or created in AS by someone who knows how to keep the point count low and efficient.
The beauty of AS is that you don't NEED a ton of points in most situations. You really need to watch some of the those videos that Sang has done showing him drawing and creating in AS. That guy is very good at minimalistic point usage in AS.
I've seen files created by importing AI documents that have more points on one layer than all the points of every layer of a character I created and drew inside AS from scratch.
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Not only will massive points slow down performance but lots of bones will as well. It also depends on the computer platform. From my experience the PC version of AS is much faster. Sorry Mac folks (I use Mac mostly, but have ASP on a PC as well). A few years back I saw a top of the line Mac struggle with a complex file while my very old and slow "ordinary" PC was wicked fast running the same file.
-vern
I think this discussion may have more to do with what we consider "a lot of points". I would suggest that many people use way more points than are needed.
If you import a standard Adobe Illustrator file of a character and do not clean up all the extra useless points you will have many more points, two or three or even four times the points needed than the same character drawn or created in AS by someone who knows how to keep the point count low and efficient.
The beauty of AS is that you don't NEED a ton of points in most situations. You really need to watch some of the those videos that Sang has done showing him drawing and creating in AS. That guy is very good at minimalistic point usage in AS.
I've seen files created by importing AI documents that have more points on one layer than all the points of every layer of a character I created and drew inside AS from scratch.
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Not only will massive points slow down performance but lots of bones will as well. It also depends on the computer platform. From my experience the PC version of AS is much faster. Sorry Mac folks (I use Mac mostly, but have ASP on a PC as well). A few years back I saw a top of the line Mac struggle with a complex file while my very old and slow "ordinary" PC was wicked fast running the same file.
-vern
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synthsin75
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Just tested this on PC. About 2500 points on a single layer plays back fine, but doubling that shows pretty severe slow down. The odd thing is that duplicating the 2500 point layer four times actually runs better than a single 5000 point layer.
So it would seem that perhaps each level of a file has its own limitations. Playback slows down from having: so many points per layer, so many layers per file, etc.
So you might try splitting up some of that point heavy art and see if you can strike a balance between the number of points and layers.
So it would seem that perhaps each level of a file has its own limitations. Playback slows down from having: so many points per layer, so many layers per file, etc.
So you might try splitting up some of that point heavy art and see if you can strike a balance between the number of points and layers.
When I was creating content for sale on CP I ran into a point slowdown barrier so I started to measured things by the total file size, (vector only), rather than points. Generally an AS file that was around 6mb would begin to have realtime playback issues so I learned to keep the files well under 6mb.
Cheers
D.K
Cheers
D.K
Wow, thanks for doing that, synthsin75! While I am pondering in my cloud of confusion, you conduct experiments.synthsin75 wrote:Just tested this on PC. About 2500 points on a single layer plays back fine, but doubling that shows pretty severe slow down. The odd thing is that duplicating the 2500 point layer four times actually runs better than a single 5000 point layer.
Ah! That is the information I needed. Thanks!synthsin75 wrote: So it would seem that perhaps each level of a file has its own limitations. Playback slows down from having: so many points per layer, so many layers per file, etc.
So you might try splitting up some of that point heavy art and see if you can strike a balance between the number of points and layers.
That's a nifty solution. The file-size threshold probably varies from computer to computer based on processor speed, but discovering any computer's threshold would be easy: simply notice when playback slows down, save the file and learn the file size. Thanks!DK wrote:When I was creating content for sale on CP I ran into a point slowdown barrier so I started to measured things by the total file size, (vector only), rather than points. Generally an AS file that was around 6mb would begin to have realtime playback issues so I learned to keep the files well under 6mb.
Cheers
D.K
Here's a good tip I found. I use AS on my slow mac as I indicated previously. This does not show up on the PC as much but is very noticeable on the mac.
If you have bunches of layers and they are all visible (eyeball icon or animated visibility is the same) it slows down performance big time. I had a huge project and there were up to 15 image layers of fairly large images. Along with that were 10-40 mask layers in a switch for EACH image layer. The files got really difficult to work with. Very slow response time as I drew those masks as I progressed up each layer. I would draw the masks for layer 1... really fast. Leave it on then do layer 2 etc etc... it got slower and slower... until...
I turned off all the layers except the one I was working on. If only the one layer I needed to see was actually visible in the preview then the performance was exactly the same as having a small file with just one layer. This works for any really big file.
So if you are animating a complex multilayered character turn of all the layers except one that gives a general out line to see while animating if you are animating bones or drawing or whatever.
-vern
If you have bunches of layers and they are all visible (eyeball icon or animated visibility is the same) it slows down performance big time. I had a huge project and there were up to 15 image layers of fairly large images. Along with that were 10-40 mask layers in a switch for EACH image layer. The files got really difficult to work with. Very slow response time as I drew those masks as I progressed up each layer. I would draw the masks for layer 1... really fast. Leave it on then do layer 2 etc etc... it got slower and slower... until...
I turned off all the layers except the one I was working on. If only the one layer I needed to see was actually visible in the preview then the performance was exactly the same as having a small file with just one layer. This works for any really big file.
So if you are animating a complex multilayered character turn of all the layers except one that gives a general out line to see while animating if you are animating bones or drawing or whatever.
-vern
