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Print at Dec 17, 2025, 10:20:38 PM

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 5, 2013, 11:01:31 AM

rendering best-quality photos.
I had to abandon one of these on an admittedly quite large model, it looked like it would take all night to render, if it even started.

My computer is fairly high spec: 4GB ram, quad core, 1.8GB Nvidia graphics card etc. Is there any setting I can alter to make it render faster? Even more simple models seem to take a long time.

Posted by Puybaret at Apr 5, 2013, 11:03:22 AM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Did you try to increase the max memory used by the program?
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 5, 2013, 12:22:42 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
no, I didn't. Thanks for the tip, I'll try that.

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 5, 2013, 12:59:52 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Does the .ini file just contain that -Xmx1024m (or other amount), nothing else? After being infuriated by windows' safeguards that won't let me save in the program files directory, I saved the file (text file) in another directory and copied it into program files/SweetHome3D which is the location of the .exe. Then I restarted SH3D but it's still amazingly slow, and looking in task manager it shows javaw using only about 650MB, and my picture won't render even with 2nd-best quality :( System is windows ultimate.

I'll try restarting windows. I believe Java to be up to date, certainly, the Java updater prompts me to install new ones fairly regularly. The comment about 64-bit java: can that be installed on a 32 bit windows? Maybe I should try using 63 bit windows again, in the past I've had too many problems with hardware drivers and older software for that to be an option.

Posted by hansmex at Apr 5, 2013, 1:32:52 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Austin,

Windows 63 bit operating system... Wow! laughing

There are several reasons why you can't render your picture. Here are two tricks that I have used in the past to solve problems.

- There is a faulty model in your design.
To find out if this is the case, use Delete and Undo to find out which one it is.
First delete half of your models and try to make the render. If it works, you know one of the deleted models causes the problem. If not, restore those models and delete the other half. Using this method you can narrow down which model causes the problem.

- The file is too big.
If your file is very big (25 or 50 Mb or bigger), there is another trick that may help. Even if a model will not be visible in the render, SH3D takes it into account when calculating the render. Solution: temporarily make invisible, or delete, all the models that will not be visible in the picture you are trying to make.

Hans
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Hans

new website - under constuction
hansdirkse.info

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 5, 2013, 1:45:24 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
yeah I saw that typo just now... Just went off getting latest java, in case it was an old one. I'll see what happens next. There is of course the thing where 32 bit windows will only use about 3.3GB memory, however, task manager shows only about 1.96GB used.

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 5, 2013, 2:06:32 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
I also found this http://www.wikihow.com/Increase-Java-Memory-in-Windows-7 while searching for info, which I will try.

Posted by Puybaret at Apr 5, 2013, 2:09:07 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
The .ini file is for the 32 bit installer version which comes with its private version of Java. Thus you don't need to install Java on your system, or if you installed Java, updating it won't change the Java version used by Sweet Home 3D.

If you want to run Sweet Home 3D in 64 bit, you have to download the Jar executable version of Sweet Home 3D and install Java 64 bit (or use the one you already installed). Then, you can launch the command:

path\to\java.exe -Xmx4096m -jar path\to\SweetHome3D-4.0.jar

where you'll have to replace path\to by the paths where the 64 bit JRE is installed and SweetHome3D-4.0.jar is stored.
Hope you can handle it...
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 5, 2013, 7:44:42 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
ah ok. I'll put it back and see what happens. Been looking into things like PAE but although the CPU supports it and it's supposedly enabled, don't seem to make any difference. I really don't, at this point, want to install win7 x64, I suspect I'll have too many compatibility issues. I imagine the Java on the system is 32 bit (unless it does both) since the system is 32.

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 5, 2013, 7:56:33 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Everything so far has exactly the same result, none at all, that is. Task manager still reports the java process using the same amount of ram and the rendering process is so slow as to be more or less unusable :( I guess I'll just have to not make such large projects.

Posted by Puybaret at Apr 5, 2013, 8:58:38 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
If you're ok to send me your file, I'll have a look.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 9, 2013, 12:17:12 AM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Well... win 7 x64 installed, so now it uses all the memory, and java x64 plus your sweethome .jar, and now (finally) task manager reports java using something near 1.5gb rather than 650mb. The scene it's rendering is still not *fast* exactly, but there is visible progress, which is more than it did before. More tellingly, CPU use is at 100%: all 4 cores at the top of the graph... never seen that before on this system. It has to be possible that it's CPU which is now throttling the process, seeing as I told Java it could have 2GB and it's not actually using that much. The CPU is a quad-core intel [just looked - Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4GHz], but not the latest kind... Does Java (or Sweethome) use the graphics processor? I wonder if there's any setting for that...

Posted by Llewelyn at Apr 9, 2013, 12:26:09 AM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
as for sending the file it's a bit big... about 31MB.

Posted by nigec at Apr 16, 2013, 10:20:13 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
100% CPU usage is "normal" on any renderer, if your worried grab something like Core Temp and monitor the cpu's temp, mine usually runs at 55 across 8 threads (i7) rendering a 2gb scene

Posted by trankilou at May 29, 2013, 1:30:44 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Hello,

I have the same issue :

I have a quiet strong config (last imac high end config) :

Intel Core i7-3770 3.4 Ghz, 8GB of RAM, 3TB Fusion Drive, Nvidia GTX 680Mx

If i want to make a video @HQ quality in Full HD resolution, which last 1m30 (1 pass around the house, exterior => means around 2500 pictures to calculate) , it asks me... 10 days !!

Do you thinks is there a little problem ?

If not, what kind of computer do you need to be able to use HQ quality in video at 1920x1080 resolution ??

PS: even at 720p resolution, the time asked is greedy

Posted by hansmex at May 29, 2013, 2:52:26 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Juju,

Questions about rendering times keep popping up with a certain regularity.
That's why there's a section in the FAQ dedicated to this subject:

How can I speed up the rendering process in photo and video creation panes?

One other suggestion is to make invisible all models that will not appear in your picture/video.

Hans
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Hans

new website - under constuction
hansdirkse.info

Posted by Puybaret at May 29, 2013, 3:16:27 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Look at the FAQ How can I speed up the rendering process in photo and video creation panes? to see if any of the tips could help you get a smaller rendering time. You could add to these tips some ideas like mixing videos and high quality images like in this example or this one.

Do you thinks is there a little problem ?

The estimated time is indicative and based on the time taken to compute the first images. Actually, it could be less or more according to the characteristics of each rendered image.
When I programed the video creation feature, I added the estimated time to inform users and help them decide if it would worth it to wait or not. Personally, I wouldn't take the risk to wait more than one day, but I got some reports from users who successfully waited days for video completion.
For your information, there's very little chances that I can optimize this tool in the near future.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator

Posted by trankilou at May 29, 2013, 6:36:34 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Hello,

I forgot to mention , it is the first thing I did :)

Of course I have increase memory to 4Go. This doesn't change anything and I notice, the amount of memory used is not very different between paramater in plist.info set to 1GB or 4GB.

I didn't notice other parameters I could tweak ?

Regarding object I can set transparency to 0: Does this concern all object of the whole project ? For instance : If I render the ground, I should disable of object which belong to First floor ?

Juju

Posted by trankilou at May 29, 2013, 6:50:14 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.

Juju,

One other suggestion is to make invisible all models that will not appear in your picture/video.

Hans

I gave a try and the result is really hugh :

For rendering 2917 frames (720x405) I drop from 125 hours to... 18 hours !

Much better. In a perfect world I could do full hd rendering... :D

Posted by trankilou at May 29, 2013, 7:06:54 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.

You could add to these tips some ideas like mixing videos and high quality images like in
For your information, there's very little chances that I can optimize this tool in the near future.

Mixing video and realistic pictures is a really good idea, thxs for the tips !

Regarding optimization, what do you need (time of course :) ) ? Maybe I could help or find some help

As I read in another post, using GPU (or better OPenCL on OSX which managed CPU/GPU dispatching) would be really efficient ( GPU engine are now highly flexible )

regards,

Juju

Posted by Puybaret at May 29, 2013, 10:50:09 PM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
Using GPU would imply to completely rewrite the SunFlow photo rendering engine, and as I'm not the author of this library, you can easily imagine that it would represent an enormous amount of work.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator

Posted by trankilou at May 30, 2013, 4:41:47 AM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
I can only imagine :(

Posted by Llewelyn at May 31, 2013, 10:12:49 AM

Re: rendering best-quality photos.
I guess using the GPU is not going to happen, I can see why. Unless of course someone else writes a photo renderer you can use which does that - seems to me in my limited understanding that modern graphics cards are more or less a dedicated additional computer whose only task is graphics rendering.

I've not been doing much sweethome recently, got sidetracked into World of Tanks again :/

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