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Home ? Tech Help ? help - biting off more than computer can chew..

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27/07/2016 00:42:04

AllClass
AllClass
Posts: 68 		Just finished a fairly epic 10 second scene -

20 characters,
x1 camera (moving)
full ambient shadowing
x2 lasers effect
x1 smoke effect
x1 roman candle

My laptop crashed trying to render this beast. I am too poor to buy fancy graphic cards and computers, but AM thinking of adding more RAM.
Just wondering if any tech gurus know if this will actually make any difference when rendering? I know the graphics card needs to be improved but it crashed due to limited threads..
I really don't want to have to sacrifice/strip back the footage so would be hugely grateful for any tips or feedback.
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27/07/2016 10:03:23

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		I don't think adding more ram will help much. :/
You might want to try rendering in 2 second chunks, or turning down the shadow sharpness.
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27/07/2016 12:36:29

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		I notice on my computer adding a lot of characters (20 is a lot for me) really slows things down. You could try to buy back some resources by substituting 2d graphics of any characters that don't need to move.

Or, you could divide your characters up between 5 layers so each one has only 4 characters in it.. then turn off all but one layer at a time, and record the video for that layer only. You can rejoin all the layers in your video editor later in post production.

group the characters in layers by distance from the camera.. all the closest characters in the same layer and all the farthest characters in their own layer and likewise those in the middle. That way when you combine the videos for each layer in your editor, the ones in the back will be eclipsed by the foreground characters, as expected.
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27/07/2016 12:42:52

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		another workaround I've used when I have too many characters is to frame scenes in such a way that only a few characters are in the scene at a time. I usually save multiple copies of the set so each scene has its own set.. then I remove everything that won't be shown in the scene. That way , you may have one brief scene where every character is shown at once, but it will take a lot less time to render it... and the other scenes with fewer characters will run much better.
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27/07/2016 14:14:13

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		If your laptop allows you to allocate more system RAM to the Video card then that should help - you'll have to go into your laptop's BIOS settings to do this. Other than that no, you need More Power!!
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27/07/2016 18:15:33

clayster2012Muvizu mogul
clayster2012
Posts: 645 		I had the same problem with the Saloon scene in Finger Pistols, but that was before I upgraded my computer, so what I did was I made a copy of the Saloon scene set, in the copy set I kept all of the cameras and characters in the same positions but I deleted half of the characters, I then went and changed the textures to most of the set to green, and I made the render of the shoot, then I went back to the Original set and kept all of the cameras and characters in the same positions and deleted the other half of the characters and I didn't change the textures to the set, and I made the render to that shoot, when I did it this way it made everything much faster and easy to work with, Ok now the next thing that I did was I went into hitFilm and imported both clips to the scene original and copy with the green textures, now I dragged the original clip to the timeline and made it composite shot, now in the composite shot tab I dragged the copy clip with the green texture into it's timeline but i placed it over the the original clip making it the only scene visible, in the effects tab I dragged the green screen effect to the copied clip and now I have both scene as one scene again, its a lot work yea but it did the job for me, but now my computer is faster and stronger and i no longer do it this way, well maybe when I do special effects, this method could be useful to some people.
edited by clayster2012 on 27/07/2016
edited by clayster2012 on 27/07/2016
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27/07/2016 18:34:25

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		It's even easier now you can just offload that stuff to a different layer and don't need to worry about keying the colour out. Good advise, clayster!
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27/07/2016 19:20:01

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738
but that was before I upgraded my computer,


so... what did you get? We all wanna know...

(total specs)
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27/07/2016 21:25:30

clayster2012Muvizu mogul
clayster2012
Posts: 645 		PatMarrNC wrote:
but that was before I upgraded my computer,


so... what did you get? We all wanna know...

(total specs)



lol.. if you want to know, it isn't really much though but ok

GRAPHICS CARD Nvidia GeForce GTX 970


PROCESSOR Intel Core i7-6700K
RAM 16GB

STORAGE 1TB, 7,200-rpm hard drive
edited by clayster2012 on 27/07/2016
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27/07/2016 21:29:38

clayster2012Muvizu mogul
clayster2012
Posts: 645 		I only upgraded the graphics card

i had a AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series
edited by clayster2012 on 27/07/2016
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27/07/2016 23:19:00

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		do you see a noticeable difference?
Did you have to upgrade your power supply to drive the graphics card?

==================================
useful benchmark /price chart for anybody looking to swap graphics cards
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
edited by PatMarrNC on 27/07/2016
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27/07/2016 23:34:31

clayster2012Muvizu mogul
clayster2012
Posts: 645 		PatMarrNC wrote:
do you see a noticeable difference?
Did you have to upgrade your power supply to drive the graphics card?

==================================
useful benchmark /price chart for anybody looking to swap graphics cards
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
edited by PatMarrNC on 27/07/2016


Yep I upgraded the power supply from 500 to a 750
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27/07/2016 23:42:10

clayster2012Muvizu mogul
clayster2012
Posts: 645 		it runs a lot faster!
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28/07/2016 00:10:30

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		how do you determine the power supply requirements?
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28/07/2016 00:42:07

clayster2012Muvizu mogul
clayster2012
Posts: 645 		PatMarrNC wrote:
how do you determine the power supply requirements?

the specifications are on the box that it came in, but i went to geek squad and got advice, I already had a 750 they said it wouldn't hurt it so I installed it anyways, so far its all good!

other then the 500 would of worked fine.
edited by clayster2012 on 28/07/2016
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28/07/2016 01:00:22

AllClass
AllClass
Posts: 68 		Seriously thank you everybody for the invaluable advice!

I think I'm behind the times and have a lot to learn based on your feedback.
Currently not using layers/imports etc to it's potential, i'm basically just adding items/characters etc and working it all around the timeline

Taking 2 hours to render 10 seconds of footage is daunting (considering its part of a 4 min project) but I'm having so much fun it's worth it.
Also seems to not crash now I tried the trick of putting copper coins on my laptop as a heat conductor.
Thanks again everyone
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28/07/2016 03:16:51

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		walmart sells a pad you put under laptops to keep them cool. Not sure how it works
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28/07/2016 15:24:10

ziggy72Muvizu mogulExperimental user
ziggy72
Posts: 1988 		PatMarrNC wrote:
walmart sells a pad you put under laptops to keep them cool. Not sure how it works

A USB cable powers the fans in the pad to cool the underside. Never heard of using coins as heatsinks before! A can of compressed air can work wonders too - blast the cooling ducts at the sides and it will blow away the dust/fluff that's causing the heat build-up.
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28/07/2016 15:26:02

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		When trying to cool my old laptop, I made some 2 block high Lego legs to allow more air into the bottom vents. It didn't seem to improve performance, but it did stop it from turning off from overheating.
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28/07/2016 15:31:24

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		looking at that graphics card benchmark list, I see that my card is pretty far down the list. It raises the question of "how much should I spend on a pastime that doesn't generate income?" The pursuit of better technology creates a financial black hole that can easily outgrow one's ability to feed it.

Still... those benchmark numbers have a way of getting one's attention....
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