Feature Focus: Modernized GPU support

[Jeff Almasol]

Character Animator (Beta) Version 23.1 builds (v23.1.0.16 and later) now have improved stability and performance when drawing content in the Scene and Puppet panels, and rendering to disk, by updating the GPU requirements from OpenGL to use Metal on macOS and DirectX 12 on Windows. Recent macOS systems should support Metal. Windows systems with older GPUs might require updated display drivers to support DirectX 12.

As you use Character Animator (Beta), please let us know if any errors or glitches appear while doing the following operations:

• Using the Scene or Puppet panels
• Rendering to disk (commands in the File > Export submenu)

Known issues and limitations

No known issues at this time. Please let us know if you encounter any problems.

What we want to know 

We want to hear about your experience using the Scene and Puppet panels:  

• Did you encounter any errors when launching Character Animator (Beta) or opening a scene or puppet?
• Are you seeing any visual glitches (e.g., blurry or offset content) in the Scene or Puppet panel?
• Is the responsiveness of the application noticeable slower?
• Did you have to update your graphics/display driver to resolve any errors?

 

Thank you! We’re looking forward to your feedback. 

 

Use this Beta forum thread to discuss this modernized GPU support and share your feedback with the Character Animator team and other Beta users. If you encounter a bug, let us know by posting a reply here or choosing “Report a bug” from the “Provide feedback” icon in the top-right corner of the app.

[ericc19576445]

Hi Jeff,

What is the current estimated timeframe where this will be added to the next release?

[Jeff Almasol]

Hi ericc19576445... It'll stay in Beta until we're comfortable that it's behaving well for Beta users, so would like to hear about any issues being encountered. Do you have a specific concern about compatibility and timing, such as the type of hardware you're using Character Animator on or the display driver version you need to use for other apps?

[ericc19576445]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for clarifying.

My PC: i9, 2 nvme ssd, 64gb ram, 6700xt (11gb) - using less than 30% resources across the board. No other programs open.

Currently, Im struggling to get 24fps without disabling and compromising so much. 

I'm currently building a walkable puppet with multiple profiles. In each body profile I have 4 sharables: head, body, left arm, right arm (each containing triggers, handles, etc) to ease the workflow and what I was hoping was performance.

It seems that its not possible to build a multi profile body with a sharable head in each (containing face, eye gaze, head turn, triggers, lip sync) without immediately losing half your fps. It seems that sharables in different body profiles duplicate all the containing behaviors and just completely bogs down CA (not my pc). 

To make things worse... i only currently have a head in front and walk left and havent rigged or imported sharables to the other profiles... so only 2 profiles are active. I also havent added facial expressions yet for any head profile. So its clearly going to get much worse. Right now I get 18fps at best and I'm not even half way done.

I'm also only using 200% resolution and a stage of 1920x1080.

Nothing I am doing is super unreasonable.  Im very sure it's related to the way sharables are handled.

This is using illustrator and my files are clean and contain no textures, simplified whenever possible, etc. do have 15 triggers per arm, but disabling the arm triggers doesn't make as much improvement than just disabling 1 face behavior for 1 profile. Clearly, the issue is in the face behavior conflict which is crazy to me because its a sharable and shouldn't even need to be double loading art or behaviors.

[jacquave]

Can you share the puppet with us to investigate?  If you open it in the non-Beta version of the app, what frame rate are you able to achieve?

[ericc19576445]

If i don't enable more than 1 head's behaviors,  i get around 18fps. Turning on 1 extra face behavior drops to 10-12. Adding more, like a body turn gives me 5.

I would rather not share my puppet. Its an NDA project. Can I provide steps to reproduce?

[jacquave]

Sure, if you can send a version that doesn't violate your NDA and shows the same problem, that would be great. 

[ericc19576445]

How should I send it to you?

[jacquave]

I sent you a DM here on this site.  You should see an Unread notification in the upper right.

[Sohaip26378871ns91]

I have message when export project PNG Sequence and wav in Version 23.1.0.23 :

GPU Exception: Updating your graphics card driver may fix that issue.
HRESULT error: Not enough memory resources are available to complete this operation.
***********************************
Graphic card :Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti

Memory size:8GB

[Jeff Almasol]

Does this occur if you restart your machine, immediately launch Character Animator (Beta), then attempt the export again?

What are the scene dimensions (width and height)?

What version of the NVIDIA driver are you using?

Thanks.

[jacquave]

Would you be willing to send me your project and assets in order to investigate the problem?  I promise not to share the content, but this could be crucial to understanding the problem.

[higherlove1]

Hello,

I'm testing this release and noticed on Stream that there is no impact on performance.  Still high CPU usage and low-to-none GPU usage.

Is this feature only applicable to rendering?

[jacquave]

The new GPU code is used for onscreen preview within the stage and puppet panels, as well as, export/rendering.  Depending on your content and framerate, it's common for the GPU usage to remain low.  Most of the work is related to rendering the animation changes within Javascript, face tracking, body tracking, lip sync processing, etc.

[higherlove1]

Bummer for me, but great work on improvements nonetheless.

I'll look forward to running multiple puppets on a single instance (one day 😁)

[weroa94057497]

It is properly working 

[RaizelDesign]

My program keeps freezing, but I'm also working on a large project and am almost at the end of it and I was wondering if the increased number of scenes and/or puppets might be affecting performance.

I'm not sure if I'm being clear. 

Basically, I've been working on the same project for months now. It's an approximately 15 minute long episode comprised of many scenes with many characters. I'm recording short snippets - maximum 1:30 sec, and trying to use simplified versions of my puppets whenever possible. I've noticed that as I've come to the end of the project and am working on what's probably my 20th or so scene and have increased the number of puppets whenever I needed to make a new one with different specs the program has really slowed drastically. 

Maybe I'm just getting impatient to finally complete the project? Or is it a thing that having more items in a project slows it down? Or, now that I see that this is a new thing being tested in Beta, can this be the reason for the sudden lag?

[Jim Acquavella]

You can try enabling the work area for smaller sections of the scene you are rendering as png files, render them separately and then use another program, like Adobe Media Encoder to convert them to your desired format.  If you are on a mac, and the application freezes, could you bring up Activity Monitor,  select Character Animator from the list of processes, then choose the circle ... menu and invoke "Sample Process"?  Post that report here.

[RaizelDesign]

I'm on a PC and I don't think I understand your first suggestion. It's also entirely possible that I'm posting about this on the wrong thread and my issue has nothing to do with this update. I wish I had a better understanding of the back-end of character animator, but I came here through a design/illustration and layout background with minimal technical/programming knowledge.

[Jim Acquavella]

My suggestion is to export (as png) sections of your scene (in smaller pieces) to avoid memory limitations you may be encountering.  It would also be helpful if you could try rendering in the non-beta build of Character Animator (the entire scene) and let us know if that works.

[RaizelDesign]

Since I moved this project to Beta in order to take advantage of the then-unreleased motion library, I don't think I can move it back to regular CA. Can I?

[CoSA_DaveS]

Sometimes the beta will be using a new project file format, which prevents going back to the regular release. But most of the time (including now) you can freely go back and forth with a project. Of course if you are using features that are in the beta only, they will not work in the regular release. But all the other parts of your project should still work. Right now there there are very few such features.

[RaizelDesign]

That's really good to know. Thank you!

[ericc19576445]

Hi Jeff,

I'd like to give the new beta a try and I don't think I'm in the beta program anymore.  How do I go about that? I will gladly give all the feedback and stress test data you need. 

[Jeff Almasol]

Everyone should have access to the Beta apps. If you open the Creative Cloud desktop app, there should be a "Beta apps" section in the left sidebar. From this section you can install the latest Character Animator (Beta) build.