Frame rate very low even on a powerful 2019 Mac Pro system with fast SSD and GPU

Any resolve on this? I'm 25% done with a walking character with head turns using shared puppets for optimization and still cant get more than 20fps. Even disabling 50% of behaviors doesnt help.

I already compromised and removed limb IK, and body capture, as well as walk behaviors and still get 20 fps.

I'm pretty sure its because the shared puppets all have independent behaviors which is unnecessary and bogs down the software (not my pc, cpu at 25%, memory at 15%). I believe the software has poor process management.

Same problem on PC. I assume, it is the single core performance of the CPU that is the main limiter here. Also Editor differs greatly from rendered result in terms of physics behaviour. Physics seems to be "actual FPS-Based" while the renderer is scaled to your stage settings. This makes all dangles and blinks very different. For example, I have a floppy tentacle. It is really soft and "rubberbands" around in editor view, which runs at 15-40 fps, depending on which other puppets are armed. But in final render, it is stiff like a frozen jelly.

Hmm. Now that you mention it, this user voice forum doesn't seem to have direct messaging and it also didn't send me email as promised for comments on this idea. (speaking of that, sorry for the delay in replying)

If you use the Adobe forums you can message me there. Otherwise, my email id for my corporate email (adobe.com) is dtull if you want to use that.

If Chloe is also going slow, it makes me think it's not puppet specific and there's something bogging your machine down. If open Activity Monitor, are there processes competing for the CPU?

Hi Guy. Are you using PSD or AI files? If you are using PSD files, ensure that your canvas size is around HD size. If you are using AI files, flatten any of the layers within the document that you don't need individually addressable. You could also send me your puppet and I can help troubleshoot the performance issues.

Hi Dan, and thanks for the quick reply which I've just seen this morning. I'm happy to send both the custom puppet and an example of the animation I'm getting, I'll DM you with a link. However I'm having the exact same issues with the Chloe template in 1080p 30ps (or 60p), so the puppet doesn't seem to be the issue.

Before recording I'm getting around 27fps, while recording it drops to around 17 but looks like less for some parts, particularly the draggers on the hands. It doesn't seem to make any difference what size the scene is, or the frame rate it's set to. The transform is just a scale. Render as vector is unchecked (it doesn't seem to make any difference if it's set to 'on' for Chloe, though the custom puppet arm with a dragger distorts when I turn it on). For my custom puppet I'm using camera eye gaze and face, a couple of draggers, and lip synch, though I'm turning off everything but the draggers for recording and still getting the same issue.

Hope that helps!

PS - can't actually work out how to private message the link!

Also, if you don't mind sharing the project/puppet and private messaging me a link, I can take a look, but this also seems like a good thread for exploring some performance diagnosis techniques in general, so I'm happy to stick with that route, too.

Sounds like a heck of a machine! Let's dig in and see what we can figure out.

The first thing to do is to gather some information about the scene and puppet you're animating. Is this a custom puppet? What resolution are the layers? What resolution is the scene? How many layers are there? How many behaviors are applied? What framerate is the scene set to run at? If it is using Illustrator artwork, select the puppet in the project panel and let me know what the Render as Vector and Resolution popups are set to currently and also what transform is being applied to the puppet in the scene.

Assuming it is a custom puppet, what framerate do you get if you create a new scene at 1920x1080 and use a basic template puppet like Chloe? (set the scene framerate to 60 for this test, with a machine like this it ought to stay pegged at 60 unless something is seriously wrong)

Dan Tull