Animator image size limitations

[SilasH]

I've been working on some animations that would loop on a display at a trade show, so I'm trying to make them as large as possible, with no regards to file size. However, I've found that once I get to certain size (a width of between 2000 and 2500 pixels at screen ratio) it all goes to hell. I'm on SW 2007 SP 2.0 and my graphics card is nvidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI. My driver is 6.14.10.9185
(released 3/19/07) and SolidWorks lists 6.14.10.7756 (dated 7/10/06). Frames per second doesn't seem to make a difference. Any similar experiences, or suggestions, besides rolling back the driver?

 

[Theophilus]

Are you rendering it in PhotoWorks? If so, I'd guess you're running out of RAM when you tell it to save to file. I had this happen last September and went and got a third GB of RAM and enabled the /3GB switch (search forum for details if necessary). That fixed my problem.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[SilasH]

It's definitely a memory intensive job, so I set it to run overnight, but wouldn't it just crash if it ran out of RAM, instead of rendering a bugged video? That's just what my intuition says, but obviously you've had experiences to the contrary.

 

[SilasH]

Also, does the Windows Task Manager give any helpful information about what's going on? I'm animating right now and it lists Solidwork's memory usage at around 200MB. It has the CPU usage at 100%, though. And what about breaking it up into multiple animations and splicing them together?

 

[Theophilus]

OK, I think you need to be specific about what's happening. You didn't mention it rendered, but in a way you didn't like--just that it went to hell. What's it really doing? Is your geometry out of sorts and getting rendered strange or are you getting artifacts in the images or what (specifically). Post an image of one of the frames, perhaps (see FAQs).

Within the Task Manager, I go to the Processes tab and then select View > Select Columns. The one to add is VM Size. This can tell you how much RAM you're consuming (although I would think Mem Usage would do that)--anyway, the two columns often differ substantially.

When I had this problem last fall, I'd see the RAM begin to spike when I started the rendered animation. Soon after it would hit something like 1.3 - 1.4GB of RAM and crash. So this might not be a RAM issue, but something else--depending on the specifics of what you're seeing.



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Have you tried the 8167 driver?

See also faq559-1194


SW07-SP3.1
SW06-SP5.1