A way to Optimize Maya performance for new system ?

# 1 11-05-2012 , 08:01 PM

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A way to Optimize Maya performance for new system ?

After being "stuck" on a laptop for last 6 months I just couldn't take it anymore and had to build a new desktop user added image

system specs:
Level 10 GT case
Asus Sabertooth 990FX Sata III motherboard
AMD FX8150 8 core CPU oc'ed to 4.45 GHz
32 GB Ripjaws X Series DDR3 PC3 14900 Memory
512 GB Samsung 830 Series Sata III SSD
Dual PNY Quadro 2000D Graphic cards
Dual Dell 24" w/s Monitors @ 1900x1200
LG Bluray burner
Antec Kuhler H2O 90 Liquid Cooling
Enermax 1000w Power Supply
Eikon Biometric Fingerprint Reader
Bose Companion 5 system
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Maya 2013 x64 (upgraded from 2011)

............

This system is at minimum, 3 times better, than last desktop ...
yet when I open my "computer desk" project and render, it still takes 14 hours to complete on production setting,
which isn't much better than with my last desktop.....
I have went in to task manager and set Maya to run at "high priority"
when watching computer performance while rendering I see it utilizes 90% of the cpu power
yet it only uses about 5 GB of the RAM ....

Is there a setting within Maya to optimize for better performance, enabling usage of more of the RAM?
I've searched the forum, searched the help files, and did some Googling, and didn't find the answer I'm looking for.
(could possibly be Googling for the wrong thing LOL )

if it's my scene, perhaps someone would be willing to look at scene file for me,
and suggest ways to alter/fix the settings.

Any help with this?
TIA
J.B.

Last edited by BeAstMaSter; 11-05-2012 at 08:21 PM. Reason: edited spelling

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# 2 11-05-2012 , 08:58 PM

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Software rendering is mostly cpu intensive, if you can upload it I'll take a look at the file.

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# 3 11-05-2012 , 09:34 PM

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Also with mental ray you are locked to I believe 8 threads or cores not sure which. You have to run standalone to use more CPU cores. It would also be nice if you could use GPU cores but most professional systems do not use SLI but instead ship the rendering off to a render farm, which of course is cpu based. So I doubt we will see gpu or cuda enabled maya any time soon.

How long is the animation and what is the ave time to render a single frame? You clearly have a bottle neck and it could be the memory to disk. Once the system memory is full everything is then throttled my memory to disk write speed.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 4 11-05-2012 , 10:12 PM

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Genny, I zipped up the .mb file and a link is at bottom of this reply for you to grab, many thanks in advance for taking a look at it, and any recommendations you have about the preferences are truly appreciated.

ctbram, is not an animation, just rendering a still image.
I understand about the cpu thread usage, and that usage looks OK
I purchased the Quadro 2000D because the D series was supposedly optimized for 3D modeling performance.
There is no SLI for these cards, have 1 monitor connected to each card,
and honestly only expecting Maya to make use of the 1 card the main monitor is on.
Maybe my expectations for this card is beyond it's capabilities, but I think something else is wrong here (like my settings).
Even if issue is re:disk write speed, hell it's a Sata III SSD disk with plenty of space, and I would think render time should've been cut in half at minimum.

link to scene file for anyone wanting to take a look:
https://cozmos.net/filez/comp_desk10.zip
If it makes a difference, you'll see a camera called desk_cam, that is the view I use when doing the rendering.

I've also added the area lights with linear decay to the monitors, per your earlier recommendations when I posted the project in the WIP section.

thanks for the replies, and any recommendations

J.B

Last edited by BeAstMaSter; 11-05-2012 at 10:38 PM.

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# 5 11-05-2012 , 11:00 PM

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ah sorry I saw 14 hours and assumed it was an animation. I am looking forward to seeing the file because I have rendered 6 million poly models in maya in less then 30 minutes.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 6 11-05-2012 , 11:02 PM

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please reload a .ma file. The binary dumps an error on line 1 when I try to open it in maya 2012.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 7 11-05-2012 , 11:54 PM

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sorry about the troubles ctbram
dunno if I'm doing this right, I have opened the scene, then did a "save as" and saved as .ma this time
should I do an "export all" instead?

if the save as is correct, here is a link to the .ma file:
https://cozmos.net/filez/comp_desk10-1.zip
and the swatches if needed:
https://cozmos.net/filez/mayaSwatches.zip

If you've done 6 mill. in 30 minutes, this is a helluva lot smaller, so reinforces my opinion I have settings incorrectly applied.
Will be interesting to see what you find user added image

again, many thanks for all your time & efforts

J.B.

Last edited by BeAstMaSter; 11-05-2012 at 11:58 PM. Reason: added swatches

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# 8 12-05-2012 , 01:24 AM

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Got a ton of errors and warnings about not finding objects and thus not being able to set attributes and not being able to perform merge vert operations. I was on the master render layer, all display layers were visible and the panel was set to show all but the only things visible were the desk and some area and point lights even though the outliner had many more surfaces listed. I don't know if this is what you're getting or maybe something was lost in translation but those phantom surfaces had MR coughing up blood, it was crawling and throwing errors about ignoring unnamed objects and empty surfaces. I deleted them and the scene rendered in seconds.

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# 9 12-05-2012 , 01:41 AM

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now I'm really confused

where are you seeing those errors?
I haven't seen any errors when working with the scene
the scene should consist of 2 cabinets, 1 countertop, 1 monitor stand, and 4 "monitors", and 8-10 lights throughout the scene .... (same as image in my finished project post, with the addition of 4 lights for monitor screens)

and rendered in seconds ?? user added image

any way you could send me back the file that you modified so I could look and see what was changed
and hopefully understand what I did wrong in the first place?
I would appreciate it, and definitely appreciate you taking the time to look at this in the 1st place.

J.B.

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# 10 12-05-2012 , 04:06 AM

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Bah, I didn't save it. I've deleted only the lights without deleting the phantom geo and poof, renders, still throws out the errors but it renders in like 13 secs with the original render settings anyways @_@ Argh! I'll be poking around some more because I'm curious about what is going on here. I don't know if it's something in 2013 that isn't going over well in 2012 or what. Not being able to find a texture is understandable but that other stuff I don't know.

The first set of errors I get when rendering the rest when the file opens.

Try recreating the lights and giving it another shot.
user added image

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# 11 12-05-2012 , 04:14 AM

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omg yeah I have not opened the scene yet but if that desk is it and you are taking 14 hours with the system you have then there is definately a bunch of broken stuff in the scene file. That scene would take seconds to render on a plam pilot lol.

What you should do is select the stuff you need to render and delete all the stuff you do not need. You can also run file / optimize to delete unused stuff.

You just need to do a lot of cleaning. You can also run mesh cleanup and another option is to just select the geo you want to render and export it out then import it into a fresh scene. This is another way to flush all the garbage nodes that may have accumulated. Maya if infamous for creating these phantom nodes that cause all sorts of issues.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 12-05-2012 at 06:56 AM.

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# 12 12-05-2012 , 04:49 AM

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I was fiddling with the mesh clean up, and the top of the desk would send Maya down in flames without fail when set it to clear out the non manifold stuff.

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# 13 12-05-2012 , 01:18 PM

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here is the image and what it's supposed to look like:
https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35760

only difference between then and now is I added the area lights with linear decay as suggested for the monitors. The final render (recently) looks quite nice with the exception of taking 14 hours....

And here I thought the modeling part of it was actually the best part, just needing fixing the lights and learn a bit more on rendering user added image

In the outliner, am I correct to presume the items with the white icon and red arrow are the broken pieces? Is funny, when scene was created (in Maya 2011) I was working in the outliner a lot, and they were never there.....
could scene have gotten corrupted thru saving files to temp media and also because I've upgraded to Maya 2013?
I'd rather ask these here first, than start a support ticket with Autodesk, especially if all the issues I'm having is my fault to begin with......

Think it's time for me to do a couple more tutorials from here, then in future just recreate this desk scene from scratch when I have better knowledge.
been wanting to do the Victorian House, 'tis a good reason to start it this weekend user added image

Thanks for all the time you've spent on this, is good to know it's my modeling, and not my system or wrong preferences being set.

J.B.

I'm not lazy, I'm just resting before I get tired

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# 14 12-05-2012 , 03:54 PM

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Was having a tough time setting this aside LOL
at least until I "see" and understand what I did wrong, so I don't do it again in future...

1. went into outliner and deleted all objects with the white icon/red arrow, (except 2- the monitor shelf, and the keyboard mounts)
2. deleted all the extra fill lights I used as highlights for the curved cabinets
3. created 3 poly planes with basic lambert applied to use as walls and floor,
just so I'm not trying to illuminate and shadow an infinite area...
4. went in to render settings and reset to default, then changed output size to 1280, and quality to preview.

render time still 1:29:23

evidently quite a bit still affecting the scene.
have many saves from beginning, think in future I'll go back to very 1st
with just the curve, and start creating everything again from beginning.
Only part I don't look forward to is the uv'ing, that was a real PITA with the mitered corners user added image

still don't really understand where I went wrong, but I guess I'll see in my next attempts to create.

For now I'm off to start the victorian house tut.

J.B.

I'm not lazy, I'm just resting before I get tired

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