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#1 07-19-2012 2:04 pm
Hide Layer visibility on playback
I have upgraded from Maya 2009 to Maya 2012. And i must say the performance difference is huge. Maya 2012 being way slower on playback. I get like 7 FPS on playback performance on Low poly rigs. I have noticed so many performance issues with Maya 2012. I think its my hardware tho. I have a laptop with 1.6 Core i7 Quad. Radeon 5870. I manage to get good FPS by hiding a whole bunch of stuff on the characters mesh. I even have a layer for the controls, i hide everything and then playback. Is there a way i can set up the layer visibility to hidden on playback? so if i hit play button that layer isn't shown only on playback?
An other problem i have that i see with Maya 2012 is that it doesn't use the CPU at all. If i go to task manager, and set the app affinity to only use 1 Core (8 cores are shown). I actually get 14 FPS instead of 7. I am not sure what is going on with Maya and multithreaded CPU's, but it sucks.
I downloaded Maya 2013 demo to see if it was better there, but nope.
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#2 07-19-2012 2:17 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Hi!
I actually don't think this is an issue with maya, but rather with your graphics card. Maya 2012 also uses a newer version of OpenGL, and maybe your card doesn't support this too well? ATI is known to have major issues with maya viewport stuff. Have you tried upgrading the driver? Maybe that helps...
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#3 07-19-2012 2:25 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
wolfor wrote:
Hi!
I actually don't think this is an issue with maya, but rather with your graphics card. Maya 2012 also uses a newer version of OpenGL, that your card probably doesn't support too well. ATI is known to have major issues with maya viewport stuff. Have you tried upgrading the driver? Maybe that helps...
I have up to date drivers for the GPU. 
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#4 07-19-2012 2:34 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
I found its actually featured in the qualified hardware chart for maya 2012, so that doesn't seem to be the problem. But I also found that several people in other forums were saying it doesn't work that well with maya. I don't have any performance loss when testing a scene on my computer between maya 2009 and 2012, but I also have a nvidia card.
You could check if you use the driver autodesk used for testing on their recommended hardware site, maybe that helps a bit?
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#5 07-19-2012 2:37 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Alright i will test that. But i really don't think its the GPU, since most animation bottlenecks come from CPU. When i turn affinity to use only one core the FPS actually bump up quite a bit, so i suspect it might be CPU related. Why wont Maya use better 8 cores? If i make it only use 1 core i get double the FPS.
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#6 07-19-2012 2:59 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
You're right I haven't looked at that, 1.6 GHz is kinda slow, yes 
But as far as I know, Maya never supported hyperthreading, so you might just want to turn that off, maybe it helps a bit? (meaning using the 4 physically cores on the whole, and not splitting them up in 8 virtual cores. You should be able to set that up in the BIOS. This should make them twice as fast, hypothetically 
)
Last edited by wolfor (07-19-2012 5:34 pm)
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#7 07-19-2012 5:26 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Yeah Maya as of yet does not take advantage of multiple cores very well. If you can enable Viewport 2.0 (ONLY recommended with a good enough GPU, otherwise things tend to explode), there's an option to enable multi-threading, but from what I can tell there's actually a DECREASE in performance, at least when I use it.
I'm thinking you need a hardware upgrade, champ
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." - Abe Lincoln
The key to world domination
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#8 07-19-2012 7:08 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Camaro wrote:
Yeah Maya as of yet does not take advantage of multiple cores very well. If you can enable Viewport 2.0 (ONLY recommended with a good enough GPU, otherwise things tend to explode), there's an option to enable multi-threading, but from what I can tell there's actually a DECREASE in performance, at least when I use it.
I'm thinking you need a hardware upgrade, champ
I think i do . Might upgrade the CPU. Is there any chance you guys know how to make a Script, for a layer to be hidden on playback?
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#9 07-19-2012 7:56 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Yeah, after a bit of testing it's actually quite simple. Here's the code you need:
playButtonForward;
layerEditorLayerButtonVisibilityChange YOUR_LAYER_HERE;
Add that code to a hotkey button. I mapped mine to Ctrl+Shift+P. This will essentially press the play button and toggle the visibility of the layer when you press it the first time, and stop playing and toggle visibility again when you press it again.
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." - Abe Lincoln
The key to world domination
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#10 07-20-2012 3:50 am
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Camaro wrote:
Yeah, after a bit of testing it's actually quite simple. Here's the code you need:
playButtonForward;
layerEditorLayerButtonVisibilityChange YOUR_LAYER_HERE;
Add that code to a hotkey button. I mapped mine to Ctrl+Shift+P. This will essentially press the play button and toggle the visibility of the layer when you press it the first time, and stop playing and toggle visibility again when you press it again.
WOW thank you so much man!!!!
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#11 07-20-2012 3:56 am
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Glad to help
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." - Abe Lincoln
The key to world domination
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#12 07-23-2012 5:53 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Hey Guys,
New update here. I found out whats making the rigs slow. Its the face controls or the (blend shapes) i believe so. If i hide the head mesh for all rigs i get 30 FPS. Is this normal? Are blend shapes usually that heavy?
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#13 07-23-2012 6:21 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Usually, deformations takes up much more processing power than translations. Which rig are we actually talking about? What makes these things very slow are also wrap deformers, for example. many older rigs have a feature to turn off the facial deformers, if not, its quite easy, you just search for the blendshape node and turn the envelope to 0, then it won't get calculated
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#15 07-23-2012 7:11 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Well as I don't know which rig we're talking about, I can't really tell you how the node is called, but usually, when you select the head geo, you'll see a lot of inputs in the channel box, and one of them is the blendshape node. You can always tun it back on if you set the envelope to '1' again (if it says 'on' and 'off', it also works with '0' and '1')
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#16 07-23-2012 8:14 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
The rig is TOO from boutique 23. I managed to find the blend shape from the rigs that the head mesh is separate from the body. But for rigs like this where the body is attached to the head. i don't find a blend shape.
http://boutique23.com/
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#18 07-23-2012 9:07 pm
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Don't look for the blendshapes, but for the node on the main geometry.
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#20 07-24-2012 8:55 am
Re: Hide Layer visibility on playback
Yea, that's hard to explain if I don't have access to the rig it can be called any way, click through the inputs in the channel box, there's bound to be a blendshape node there somewhere. It has usually a longish list of blendshapes attached to it, if you click on it.
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