Program Not Responding when applying sheet effects
OK, this issue is not new for me. usually when I have been working for a while on a map and then turn on sheet effects to see what happens, the program will toggle between responsive and non-responsive. when this happens I know from experience that the program will never finish the render (like its constantly stuck in a state of re-draw). usually the workaround is to constantly click on the sheets bar and wait for the program to bring up the sheet effects box so I can turn off effects and then save. I then exit the program, re-enter the program, zoom all the way out, then turn on effects and it will render within 30 seconds.
lately though, this hasn't been working and I can't get CC3 to apply sheet effects without it going into a constant state of re-draw.
my current map is 1600x1600 and I have only just begun to add the land mass with some contours and a few trees; nothing special.
are there any software patches or updates that I can apply or is there some kind of other trick I can use to get it to render more efficiently?
lately though, this hasn't been working and I can't get CC3 to apply sheet effects without it going into a constant state of re-draw.
my current map is 1600x1600 and I have only just begun to add the land mass with some contours and a few trees; nothing special.
are there any software patches or updates that I can apply or is there some kind of other trick I can use to get it to render more efficiently?
Comments
I haven't been able to come up with a real fix, but sometime it seems that it is related to my amount of free memory (as opposed to available memory). Free memory is not SUPPOSED to be an issue (available memory is what's important), but when free memory drops down to below 800MB or so, that's when I notice problems. I reboot my computer to fix it...
Free memory is what the system thinks is available. A hash table is created at bootup. It holds pointers to free memory available for program loading. When Windows things the 'free memory' is full, additional programs cannot be loaded. Rebooting resets the hash table.
I'm also surprised that there haven't been any patches or updates in a while, at least not since I purchased it over a year ago. I know there are few graphical glitches that could use some attention.
Profantasy has mentioned they are working on a newer version of CC3.
I can only assume this is because CC3 never uses more than a single core of mine, and if what JimP is saying is true...doesn't use the GPU either.
Odd though, as when I turn off the GPU acceleration in rendering software or Photoshop, I get a huge performance gain because of how fast my CPU is.
I can render enormously complex scenes quite rapidly in most software.
However, these programs are multithreaded, so I get 87% more performance than what CC3 attempts, which is never more than 13% of my CPU (one core).
If these rendering programs only ever used 1 core, of course it would take forever and a decade to render even small images.
The program is quite odd. In some areas, it has good performance for such amazing software. In others, it loads like it's software from the 90's.
What is even MORE strange is that sometimes, my effects can take a split second, while other times those exact same effects can take a few minutes. It doesn't seem to matter what is on my map.
Edit: I forgot to mention, this is only with effects. With Effects off, the rendering is always instant.
Currently, in hard number, that means that CC3 is a 32-bit program, which means it cannot utilize more than 2GB of RAM. Additionally it only uses 1 core, and can not take advantage of the GPU. So for optimal performance of CC3, a CPU with a high clock speed and few cores easily beats a CPU with a lower clock speed and many cores.
Total memory is what is installed in your machine. Free memory memory is memory that has not been touched by anything since reboot. It should not matter if this is low. Available memory is what is important. Available memory is what can be brought in to support an application.
Free memory could be zero and your machine should still run fine. Some computer whizzes say that in an optimal system, free memory SHOULD be zero.
That being said, CC3 seems to bug out on me when free memory gets low.
I have plenty of programs that are considered memory hogs but, none of them will continuously gobble up memory until its all gone and then stop responding.
but, meh, it still gets the job done (eventually), so I just wanted to submit it as a possible suggestion for the next version.