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fra9000
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Apple iMac G4 PowerPC still running SH3D!

Hey!

First of all I would like just to thanks all developers that kept maintaining MacOS X PPC code for SweetHome 3D!

It's just fantastic to see my 2003 iMac G4 17" still receiving love from SH3D in 2023 (20th anniversary).

Version 7.1 running on it:


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When it comes to "features requests" proposal, I would suggest:

- Keeping on maintaining the old PPC code in future :)
- Enable GPU accell for rendering (with the option to still use CPU rendering for compatibility reasons)
- Add to the Mac PPC build the YafaRay renderer to vastly improve renderer speed and quality
- Possibility to deactivate the "simultaneus 3D rendered view" to speed up performances on older systems. Yes the 3D view can be hidden but I'm not sure if it does deactivate the portion of code for 3D render in the background.
- I found myself keep on chaging "Wall Thickness" and "Wall Height" parameters in the Preference panel, which is quite annoying and time consuming. Couldn't it be worth to allow that in a more easier way? Maybe directly from the top menu (some integer textfield next to the create wall button)?

I'm not sure how much my features proposal are actually feasible.
Just my 50 cents here :).

Thanks again!
Cheers from Italy.

Francesco
[May 30, 2023, 9:59:33 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Keet
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Re: Apple iMac G4 PowerPC still running SH3D!

- Possibility to deactivate the "simultaneus 3D rendered view" to speed up performances on older systems. Yes the 3D view can be hidden but I'm not sure if it does deactivate the portion of code for 3D render in the background.
That is a feature I would very much like to see. The 3D window rendering is VERY inefficient because it keeps stacking and executing rendering commands with every move/action even if a previous render has become useless. I'm not sure if this is a Sweethome3D problem or just how Java handles the stack of rendering commands but it could be much more efficient if invalid/unneeded rendering actions were terminated. Currently it's so bad that if you close Sweethome3D the last rendering still keeps executing until it's finished while the window is already closed. Stopping of obsolete rendering threads is badly needed but I'm not familiar enough with Java if this can be done.

A button to temporarily stop the 3D view rendering would be a first step to at least solve the problem when working with large projects where every click initiates a new full redraw where you only want to see the result after a few more actions.
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Dodecagon.nl
750+ 3D models, manuals, and projects
[May 30, 2023, 2:46:20 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Puybaret
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Re: Apple iMac G4 PowerPC still running SH3D!

Thanks Francesco for posting these nice images. I'm pleased to see that my efforts to maintain Sweet Home 3D for old systems are not useless. Not a huge effort, but still, at each release or when I change some special stuff in 3D, I spend a few minutes on an old MacBook G4 to test if it works.
What Java version do you use (see About dialog box)?
Keeping on maintaining the old PPC code in future :)
I don't plan to remove support in the close future, but I can't guaranty anything.
Enable GPU accell for rendering
This has nothing to do with PowerPC support, and if GPU accleration for photo rendering ever happens, it will be probably thanks to some third party libraries which might not exist for PowerPC, and the fact that such libraries support or not PowerPC won't be the number one criterion of choice.
Add to the Mac PPC build the YafaRay renderer to vastly improve renderer speed and quality
This would imply to have the XCode environment to compile libYafaRay and libYafarayJNI for PowerPC with no guaranty that it's feasible. I don't have such an environment.
Possibility to deactivate the "simultaneus 3D rendered view" to speed up performances on older systems.
The 3D view is not activated when a SH3D file hiding the 3D view is opened, i.e. if you want to deactivate the 3D view in an opened file, you should hide it by changing its size, save the file, close it and reopen it.
In the next version, updates will be deactivated automatically in the 3D view when it's not visible, either by changing its size to zero or by displaying back a zero sized 3D view in the main window. The second behavior will be quite handy because Sweet Home 3D keeps in memory the sizes of the 3D view when displayed in the main window and when displayed in a separate window. Therefore, if the size of the 3D view displayed in the main window is zero and the size of the 3D view displayed in a separate window is not zero, using the cmd + alt + Y shortcut (Ctrl + Alt + Y under other systems) will display/hide and activate/deactivate the 3D view.
I found myself keep on chaging "Wall Thickness" and "Wall Height" parameters in the Preference panel which is quite annoying and time consuming. Couldn't it be worth to allow that in a more easier way?
In case you didn't notice, you can change the size of different walls at the same time by selecting them then choosing Plan > Modify walls menu item.
Maybe directly from the top menu (some integer textfield next to the create wall button)?
This would take a lot of room in the toolbar and as you want two text fields, this would take even more room because it would also require some labels to distinguish them. By the way, I don't plan to add a second line in the tool bar.

A button to temporarily stop the 3D view rendering would be a first step to at least solve the problem when working with large projects
I won't add such a button and hope that the solution I propose above will be enough for you.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
[May 31, 2023, 5:05:46 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Keet
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Re: Apple iMac G4 PowerPC still running SH3D!

I won't add such a button and hope that the solution I propose above will be enough for you.
That solution will work for me. Hiding/minimizing the 3D window to stop 3DView updates does exactly what I wanted from a button. Now to wait for the next version...

Is the stacked updates problem I mentioned a Java or Sweethome3D problem? I was very surprised that the 3DView update continued to complete even after I closed the application. I could see this with a very large project where updates added to the update queue made Sweethome3D unresponsive. Luckily saving goes on a separate thread so after saving I could just kill the application, clean up the home dir and restart.
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Dodecagon.nl
750+ 3D models, manuals, and projects
[May 31, 2023, 5:35:24 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
fra9000
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Re: Apple iMac G4 PowerPC still running SH3D!

@Puybaret:

Thanks a lot for the reply!
Yeah I have seen your commit yesterday. I will surely check the performance in 7.2 and I will use the tricks you suggested.

So glad to see suggestions taken in account so promptly.

For the libYafaRay it would be a nice addition but of course it's up to you and the amount of time you have to spend on setting up a specific environment.

Thanks again for the great software!
Francesco
[Jun 1, 2023, 8:05:38 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
fra9000
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Re: Apple iMac G4 PowerPC still running SH3D!

Oh and it uses the Java 1.5.0_30 32bit version and the Java 3D 1.5.2 JOGL version under Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard (iMacG4 17", 1.25GHz G4, 2GB DDR RAM, 256GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 64GB VRAM, so the top and fully upgraded model).
[Jun 1, 2023, 8:16:10 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Puybaret
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Re: Apple iMac G4 PowerPC still running SH3D!

Thanks for the configuration details. Even if your iMac is probably not super fast, I guess that the SSD gave a serious boost to it wink
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
[Jun 1, 2023, 6:34:24 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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