Multiple Cores not being Used

# 1 26-10-2011 , 06:56 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2007

Location: The Netherlands

Posts: 88

Dear Reader,

have tried searching this forum but did not found a thread on this subject....
while i think more people would encounter this issue

*What's the problem?

Maya is painfully slow.....

i have 2 x Quad Xeon 2.66 and Maya is using just one Core
i'm not sure if it is Core or RAM related why Maya is this slow

*What happened when the problem occured?

Maya is very slow, so slows down my creation process down to a coffebreak speed at almost everything i do
creating something like a new nurbcube takes about 5-10 sec, deleting it same length,
or changing a setting,
like changing the color of one of my display layers takes about 20-30 sec

selecting something is going normal, but adding it to a display layer is again slower then normal

*What were you doing when the problem arose?

have a file loaded, this file maintains many and even more constraints with expressions
the file once loaded uses 12 gig of my 24 gig ram
the loading process of this file takes almost half an hour, and this loading also uses just one core
and my RAM gets loaded slowly

when loaded, my scene is easy in my viewport, i can move the camera nice and smooth

*What are your system specs?

HP Z800
2 x Quad Xeon 2.66
24 gig 1333mhz RAM
2 x Quadro FX5600 in SLI
2 x 150 gig 15k drives in Raid0
Windows 7 Professional 64bit

*What version of Maya are you using?

Maya 2011 hotfix3 64bit

*What's your pet's name?

Frits

*How many goldfish can you really eat in one sitting?

will try tomorrow and share the outcome.....;-)

so my question is....

is there a way to let Maya use more then just one core for its basic actions, or can i adjust something in my windows or bios to have a better flow when it comes to using high amounts of RAM

or are there other ways to get my fast maya interface back

i would love to have my smooth Maya back, with all this power for creation i have left

this because i now have my object 95% ready and still have to add some stuff, and later build the lighting, do the rendersetting and camerapath ofcourse
this would mean these final steps would take me a couple of days, while they are not that complex things to do...

Thank you for your time

*
The Universe is larger then you ever can think, But smaller then the size of your imagination.

all are welcome at www.ieoie.nl

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# 2 26-10-2011 , 07:15 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

No, Maya only uses one core for non-rendering processes, but that doesn't seem like your problem. How big/complex is your file if it takes 12GB of RAM?

-stwert

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# 3 26-10-2011 , 09:26 PM

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Join Date: Aug 2007

Location: The Netherlands

Posts: 88

No, Maya only uses one core for non-rendering processes, but that doesn't seem like your problem. How big/complex is your file if it takes 12GB of RAM?

Originally Posted by stwert

Ok, thanks for sharing, did not know it was standard using only one Core, when i take a look at my task manager that one core is always full in action when i do something, it flows over multiple cores but it is not more than 1 core at once

i created a bending tube....
https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthre...772#post326772
a tube is an extrusion along a curve, this curve is controlable by constraints, to make the curve bend i use an expression
all troubles fixed now with it....
in my scene are about 3000 of these tubes
user added image

my scene is 498mb in size, my task manager says i use almost about 15 gig of my 24 RAM
let windos and other stuff use 2 maybe 3, the rest is taken by the file
still have over 80 gig of free space on my working drive, and about 400 on my archive drive...

thank you for thinking with me.,....
;-)

*
The Universe is larger then you ever can think, But smaller then the size of your imagination.

all are welcome at www.ieoie.nl

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# 4 26-10-2011 , 09:45 PM

The thin red line
Join Date: Aug 2009

Location: England

Posts: 4,472

I was under the same impression that Stwert had that only one core works at a time when using maya not rendering, but I turned a high poly model around in maya and in my task manager all the core move up rapidly, what is causing this?........dave

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# 5 27-10-2011 , 12:28 AM

Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004

Posts: 2,988

I doubt it's the software's fault. As I've said many times, what you're doing is very processor-intensive; and only some operations can use multiple cores at once. I could go into the computer science reason behind this, but it would take a very long time. (If you ever get around to playing with the C++ API, you'll see there's a tonne of commands that need to run just to do a simple operation) Also NURBS take up a lot of processing time, as the interpolations between the CV's need to be calculated per-refresh.

Expressions are also inherently slow, as I've said before; as they need to be evaluated each time you change the time slider, and some other operations. Switching these expressions over to utility nodes may help. (They are also multi-threaded I believe)

What you need to realize, is that Maya is not always fast. The more stuff you throw at it, the slower it will be. It's not a problem with the software, but computation in general. user added image

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Last edited by NextDesign; 27-10-2011 at 12:31 AM.

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# 6 27-10-2011 , 12:57 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2007

Location: The Netherlands

Posts: 88

I doubt it's the software's fault. As I've said many times, what you're doing is very processor-intensive; and only some operations can use multiple cores at once. I could go into the computer science reason behind this, but it would take a very long time. (If you ever get around to playing with the C++ API, you'll see there's a tonne of commands that need to run just to do a simple operation) Also NURBS take up a lot of processing time, as the interpolations between the CV's need to be calculated per-refresh.

Expressions are also inherently slow, as I've said before; as they need to be evaluated each time you change the time slider, and some other operations. Switching these expressions over to utility nodes may help. (They are also multi-threaded I believe)

What you need to realize, is that Maya is not always fast. The more stuff you throw at it, the slower it will be. It's not a problem with the software, but computation in general.

Originally Posted by NextDesign

thank you....
i accepted the loading is very slow...
the science is mostlikely not understood by me, so we better not go there...;-)

was wundering why the interface is this slow when the file is loaded
i'm not using the time slider yet.....
using nurbs was nescasary, else there were many more polygons, so it was choosing out of two things.....

the file is loaded in RAM, so why would creating a new NurbCube be that intensive to processors that are as good as not processing, or does my scene get refreshed the moment i create a new nurb cube....?

so was seeing if the workflow could be speed up

but it seems it isnt....

switching everything to utility nodes
1 i do not know how, for most of them...
2 i have to rebuild the whole shebang
3 saw a tutorial about bi-directional constraints, also working with utility nodes, but this was still to complex to be comprehended.... maybe when watching it more times, it can let a light shine true....

but for now....
with pain, i accept this slow interface

thank you all for commenting....

*
The Universe is larger then you ever can think, But smaller then the size of your imagination.

all are welcome at www.ieoie.nl

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# 7 27-10-2011 , 08:29 PM

Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004

Posts: 2,988

Every time you move your viewport, create a new object, or do anything in the viewport; it has to redraw, and therefore recalculate a lot of information.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 8 27-10-2011 , 08:33 PM

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Join Date: Aug 2007

Location: The Netherlands

Posts: 88

Every time you move your viewport, create a new object, or do anything in the viewport; it has to redraw, and therefore recalculate a lot of information.

Originally Posted by NextDesign

thank you for enlarging my knowledge.......

seems maya is less 2011 then i thought....

*
The Universe is larger then you ever can think, But smaller then the size of your imagination.

all are welcome at www.ieoie.nl

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# 9 28-10-2011 , 03:41 PM

Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004

Posts: 2,988

There is no way of getting around it, any 3d package would slow down with the amount of stuff you're throwing it at user added image

I once had a file that took 45 minutes to open user added image

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 10 28-10-2011 , 07:59 PM

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Join Date: Sep 2011

Location: Germany

Posts: 98

Would be asking if you deleted history be inappropriate? Anyway...Scenesize is heavy and you have massive objects in NURBS. We sometimes get NURBS-Data from Productdesigners and the files are always heavy. Only chance for a good framerate is viewport 2.0 which still isn´t usable for working but worth a try. You can also change the displaytesselation of your NURBS and only go highres for rendering. That might also help.

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Multiple Cores not being Used

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