Keyshot 5 incredibly laggy

[Xidor]

I hope I can get some help from you guys!

I'm running Keyshot 5 on 12 core PC at work here. Ever since the transition from KS 4 to 5, Keyshot can be terribly laggy to the point I am not productive. For example if I drag the cursor on the screen to rotate the model, nothing happens till a few seconds later. Or if I select the environment tab in the project window, it takes forever for it to respond.

Can it be a memory issue? I tried quitting all the other applications running to see if that helps. Sometimes restarting helps. This is a real problem!

At home on my own Macbook Pro Retina laptop at the measly 4 cores, there is no lag and its mostly pretty good like Keyshot 4 was. Will be inertesting to see what happens when I get a new Mac Pro system at home.

Thanks for any insights.

[MisterNeil]

Hello Nelson,

I've experienced the same problem as you are reporting. My solution was to reduce the amount of cores being used from 12 to 10. Once that's done, you'll see KeyShot 5 operating smoothly again. When you render, change setting to 12 core.

You mentioned you will be getting a new Mac Pro system. I am currently using the latest 6-Core Mac Pro at work and it's extremely SLOW when rendering HD animations consisting of over 1300 frames at 25 fps. So SLOW that the Mac would take over 14 days to render.

My recommendation, and if the budget allows it, get a dual multi-core PC workstation computer. Boxx offers a very nice setup. Visit here to configure your ideal computer: http://config.boxxtech.com/products/cf_step2_or.asp?ModelInstanceID=1352

Keep in mind I have been a die-hard Mac user since 1991. However, when you need to get the job done in a timely fashion, getting the right tools becomes very important. If Boxx is too pricey, then consider HP's offerings or Lenovo's.

Hope this helps.

Neil

[Xidor]

Neil,

Thank you for the reply and sharing your experience. I'll try changing from 12 to 10 cores the next time I experience this lagging performance. I see there is an update to the software, maybe that will help too.

Of course when I saw your post, I tried your suggestion. But when I launched Keyshot, the lagging wasn't happening! I will keep your suggestion in mind as this has happened before. One day it runs fine at 12 cores. The next day its as slow as molasis. I wondered if it was a network issue, but PhotoShop and Illustrator are working fine.

Regarding the new Mac Pros, my dream has always been to have a 12 core Mac Pro for my home system. So I'll be looking at my options and the cost to set up a new system. So I may opt for a 6 or 8 core depending on the costs.

I have the animation module but I haven't used it a lot. I do have a model I recently built that I want to do a fly-by animation with. It even has lights and rotating parts. So that should be fun. But I'm surprised the amount of time your Mac Pro took to do a render. I've done rotation renders at work, simple stuff on the same 12 core PC. But it didn't take long to render. Under an hour.

By the way, I wonder if an animation can be done of a model that has lights that flash on and off? I am told this is called key framing. Perhaps not a function Keyshot is able to do.

[MisterNeil]

Hi Nelson,

I'm glad to hear your software and computer are not lagging now. Hopefully the issue does not appear again.

Regarding my animation, it was over 1 minute long and the measurements were 3840 px wide by 2160 px high. My multimedia artist needed the extra resolution so he could zoom in and out in After Effects. I ended up outputting the frames half the size 3.5 days later to render, and resized all 1,300 plus frames to double the size using the Perfect Resize Photoshop plugin. IT WORKED. I got the job done in time and the resolution of each frame looked great, even though they were resized.

BTW, I've looked into the 12-core Mac Pro and the difference in rendering my file would have shaved only a couple of days. Still too long for me and my department to wait. Good luck with your decision.

Neil

[Xidor]

Well, I spoke too soon. I had to do a quick render for a meeting and of course when the need is urgent, this lagging issue arises. I tried your advise and reset Keyshot to 10 cores and the problem was greatly reduced! So that was really helpful! The next time I'll also try Performance mode. But that won't solve the lagging problem I'll bet.

This is strange as up till recently the most cores I had was 4, so perhaps this is a problem with machines with 12 cores, or 6 and 8 cores also have this problem as you've experienced.

[MisterNeil]

Hi Nelson,

My take on the lagging is: if you assign all the cores for KeyShot when working on a file, what will the other apps or your operating system be using? As soon as I use all my cores in KeyShot my cursor starts to stagger when moved, etc. Its for this reason I lesson the amount of cores, until I need to render, then I set to all 12 cores. Using performance mode helps as well. I'm glad my suggestion was helpful.

Neil

[Xidor]

That makes sense Neil.

Today I was experimenting with a model that I've been developing for a personal project. It has lots of lights on it as well as lights that illuminate through frosted glass. I'm sure that's taxing the processors. I'm using my MacBook Pro and even though it's defaulting to all the cores, 4 cores plus the 4 virtual cores making it 8 cores, I don't get the lagging problem.

I wanted to see what would happen using your suggestion. I reset Keyshot to only use 2 cores. So while I'm adjusting materials and the views and lighting, now the fans don't rev up anymore. Also when I rotate the model, the rezzing up time isn't that bad in this mode. When I go to render, the render dialog box defaults to all the cores. So I don't have to reset that. That's nice. At 8 cores, this render still takes time compared to my work computer at 12 cores. Of course my MacBook Pro's fan kick in as the rendering starts.

[TpwUK]

Another trick you can do is to go into your applications folder using finder, right click on KS icon, select 'get info' and then tick prevent app nap

Martin

[Xidor]

Thanks for the app nap suggestion. That won't help me on the PC at work I'm guessing. But will look into it on my Mac at home.