AE 2023.2.1 3D IS UNUSABLE

[Roberto Tafuro]

Hallo to all and sorry for my bad english. Here are my specs:

Windows 10 Pro
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz, 2101 Mhz, 8 core, 16 processori logici
Motherboard X99-M WS
(RAM) 64,0 GB
GTX 1080Ti Driver 528.49

Here is the deal: the new 3D gizmo and 3D space are really terrible. I can't move easly layers in 3D space. Performance decrease drastically when duplicating layers, now the Toggle masks etc doesn't disable layer controls (gizmo for ex), layers block while i'm moving them and in the video i'm holding Shift to move layers faster, but it doesn't work. Look in the video how the performance decrease when turning on the 3D gizmo. It's big, it's difficult to move, if you have small layers is impossible to see where they are because are covered by the gizmo. Dear Adobe, we have to work with this program. We can't roll back all office machine to a decent version (probably 2014?). You need to resolve this issues ASAP. I've tried the new beta release. I can't see any improvent, except for this mercury 3D, that is really wired (i see strobing effects and the layers disappear when moving).

Why i can't use anymore my cpu to handle a simple UI?

This are fresh install. I have no scripts in BG or any UI changes. This is the All Panel window.

What we have to do?

- Keyframes are a nightmare if you have multiple layers selected whith keyframes selected. You can't move anymore the timeline up or down;

- Expressions are like a disco on LSD;

- 3D gizmo is HUGE;

- 3D space is unusable;

- Editing text is a nightmare, the spinning wheel appears every 10 seconds;

- The performance is laggy and buggy

I'm really frustrated.

[Warren Heaton]

What happens when you change the Composition Resolution from Full to Half or Quarter?

What happens if you roll back to a prior version?

Have you run the After Effects benchmark project from Adobe to see how your performance compares to other workstations?  

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-beta-discussions/multi-frame-rendering-is-here-aka-the-...

Have you checked how your workstation compares with Puger Systems recommended configurations (i9 and Threadripper based)?

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/pugetbench-for-after-effects-1287/

[Roberto Tafuro]

Sorry but we can run smoothly C4D, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, Photoshop and Blender. Ae is unusable. The CPU is slow, we know, is old. We don't want the speed of NASA, we want to move layers smoothly. Changing resolution from full to half or third doesn't change the problem unfortunately. we can't roll back at this moment, we are in a farm and pc are updated automatically, so we have all the same version.

[TimKurkoski]

Hi @Roberto Tafuro,

Thank you for reporting the issues you've been having. I'm sorry to hear you've been having such a frustrating experience with After Effects.

There's no magic wand I can wave that will make everything better for you. You posted about a few different issues, so let's take them one at a time.

The first, most general issue you posted about is regarding slow redraw and interactive performance in the Composition panel, especially when the 3D gizmo is being drawn.

Could you please install the latest build of After Effects Beta (as of today, 23.4 build 26) and repeat these tests? I don't expect these to be fully solved but we very recently did apply some fixes that affect overlay redraw in the Composition panel. It would be good to know if these have improved the situation for you.

It would also be good to know if the redraw problems improve on your machine if you disable overlays, via View > Show Layer Controls. This is only a test to help determine if overlay drawing is a contributor to the slowdowns you're seeing. I suspect it is.

Next, please try disabling GPU drawing of the overlays: Preferences > Display > Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels. When enabled, After Effects uses the GPU to prepare preview renders for screen display, including drawing overlays, applying color management transforms, and resizing the image based on zoom and window size. When disabled, After Effects uses the GPU CPU for this. [ <- corrected typo "GPU" -> "CPU" ]

Redraw speed of the Composition and Timeline panels is an area of focus for the After Effects team. Improving some of the conditions that contribute to poor performance in these areas requires working quite deep within our code and may take some time to fully solve.

In the meantime, a major contributing factor to these problems will be both CPU and GPU performance, both of which can cover up these type of performance deficiencies. I see that you're using a quite old 1080Ti GPU, and this is probably having an impact on the ability of After Effects to refresh the GPU as fast as it wants to. This is why disabling Hardware Accelerate Panels may have a significant impact. If you have the option of upgrading the GPU, I expect it will help.

> Toggle masks etc doesn't disable layer controls (gizmo for ex),

The Toggle Mask and Shape Path Visibility button only controls the visibility of the mask and shape path overlays in the Composition panel. To disable other overlays, use View > Show Layer Controls and/or View > View Options.

> the 3D gizmo. It's big, it's difficult to move, if you have small layers is impossible to see where they are because are covered by the gizmo

We're aware that the current 3D gizmo is a little slow to render and we're looking to update this in the future. After Effects shares the general design of the 3D gizmo with Adobe Dimension and the Substance family, like Substance Stager, however those apps have more recently updated the gizmo appearance and After Effects hasn't yet updated to match. Please check out the 3D gizmo in those apps and let us know what you think of it there.

I'll also mention that the wireframe 3D gizmo is available in After Effects. It's not possible to turn it on permanently, but you can switch to it while a layer is selected by pressing CTRL/Cmd + Shift + 1.

> This is the All Panel window.

In general, I would close any panels that you're not currently using. Given the limited resources of your current computer, minimizing UI components may provide a modest improvement.

Regarding the bullet points at the bottom of your post, I'd recommend you start a separate thread in the forum for each of them you feel are still unaddressed. I'll provide comments here on just a couple of them:

> - Keyframes are a nightmare if you have multiple layers selected whith keyframes selected. You can't move anymore the timeline up or down;

Please see my comments above RE: our continuing work on Composition panel and Timeline panel performance work in progress. I'd still encourage you to try the latest builds of After Effects Beta, as the improvements we make will appear there first.

> - Editing text is a nightmare, the spinning wheel appears every 10 seconds;

A separate ongoing effort is to improve performance of the text engine. We've found several significant optimizations recently; I'd again encourage you to try After Effects Beta. We migrate the fixes as fast as reasonable to the public releases, but sometimes we need to gather data on fixes before they are moved out of beta.

For text specifically, we've found that certain fonts or certain types of fonts can contribute to performance degredation. (Again, we're working through these issues to eliminate the problems.) I'd encourage you to observe whether the problems you're experiencing only occur when certain fonts are being used. Also, I highly recommend you check your system for duplicate fonts; either fonts of the same name that came from different sources, or fonts that are the same name but different type formats (i.e., TTF vs. OTF).

Big picture, Roberto: we hear you. The After Effects team is working hard to fix the types of problems that you've described here. We appreciate the time you've taken to share your experience.

[Roberto Tafuro]

Hallo Tim and thank you for your reply. I've tried the new Beta but unfortunately doesn't resolve the issue. I've performed a fresh install, but nothing seems to work. I know that the GPU is old, but this are not my pc, and my work house will upgrade hardware soon. But now we have to work and it's really a nightmare. Hardware acceleration and gradients doesn't reslove the issues. What i'm really missing, is that i can use Nuke, Da Vinci, Fusion, Cinema4D on this machine and everything works as espected. I work with AE since 6.5, with 4GB of ram. Now that we have super GPU (i know, is old, but it works in all other programs), a ton of ram and pretty decent CPU with multithread, i can't move a 200x200 solid layer in 3D space. This is what make me really sad. I love AE, i've spent hours and hours on it. But now i don't understand the direction and the future of this software.

[Roberto Tafuro]

Hello to all. I have an update, probably other people may have the same issue and are just looking in the wrong direction. I've formatted the PC and then i've reset the Bios to the default settings. It seems that the Optimization tool of Asus was running in background. Now the program is 200% faster and doesn't mean if you have hardware acceleration on and gradients on. So, probably the terrible performance of other AE may be related to Bios settings. I think that is in any Asus motherboard with the new Bios.

NOTE: AE 2022 WORKS AS EXPECTED WITH THE OPTIMAL TURNED ON. IT'S ONLY AE 2023 RELATED.

Hope this diecover may help other people in troubles.

https://youtu.be/M_o81UGqjFI