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Loss of oomph - Carrara no longer putting the effort in

stalyvegasseb_d38d7ce0d8stalyvegasseb_d38d7ce0d8 Posts: 5
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

Hi folks, wondering if anyone can help. I have a self build pc: i7 3770K, 32Gb RAM, NVidia GeForce GTX650, 1 Tb SATA 3 HDD, non-standard cooling. A decent enough machine it is fair to say.

When I render an image of a rolling barrel, for instance, my CPU usage goes straight to 100% and pretty much stays there. However, When I render an image of a building that I am making, my CPU usage drops to 60-70%, and sometimes almost as low as ticking-over speed.

What can cause this? Is it simply that there are so many more polygons in my building, or is it a settings thing or what? My knowledge is patchy on this so all help, no matter how obvious will be welcome.

But I have checked that it is plugged in and switched on at the wall :)

Comments

  • MarkBremmerMarkBremmer Posts: 190
    edited December 1969

    I can't tell you why, but I know it happens periodically – and has for awhile. I can generally get the system to wake up by choosing a smaller tile size prior to render in the Render Room.

    FYI, this also seems to work if you have a render that essentially stops rendering. And, just because, when I have something like this happen, I make sure to quit and restart Carrara to help clear out the cobwebs.

  • stalyvegasseb_d38d7ce0d8stalyvegasseb_d38d7ce0d8 Posts: 5
    edited December 1969

    Thanks, I have my tile size set as low as possible because I read somewhere that is the best way to utilise multiple cores. After some experimenting, I am laying the cause at the feet of my terrain texture, that seems to be when my processor slows to a crawl. As soon as the render hits architecture it cranks up again.

    I think some tinkering is in order

  • MarkBremmerMarkBremmer Posts: 190
    edited December 1969

    On my rig, the sweet spot is 48 or one step higher. The 32 actually takes longer by about 10%. However, it also seems manage memory better for terrains, water and hair renders. Go figure.

  • Philemo_CarraraPhilemo_Carrara Posts: 1,175
    edited December 1969

    By chance, would you have the texture cache set in preference ? If so, with 32gb memory, you can afford to remove it :-)
    It's a common source of otherwise incomprehensible render slowing down.

  • JoeMamma2000JoeMamma2000 Posts: 2,615
    edited December 1969

    I'm wondering if maybe there's also some feature in Carrara, like the Bullet sim, that isn't multi-core aware and might be causing a drop in CPU usage.....

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,044
    edited December 1969

    I believe the old physics engine is not multi-threaded. I had assumed Bullet would be multi-threaded, but maybe it isn't.

  • CbirdCbird Posts: 493
    edited December 1969

    I read a non-Carrara article which looked at tile render size in relation to final render dimensions. A good "fit" not leaving slivers at the ends of rows resulted in better times. I haven't played around to see if it makes a difference in Carrara. Also sorry I can't remember where I read it.

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