frustrated newb

#1

I am moving in a circle. It is getting realy frustrating to use Blender, every project that I have started, I had to quit because of some problems. My most recent: I downloaded 2.5 alpha and started modeling my face mesh. Things got realy slow as soon I got to the interesting part. I have completed my half face mesh and want to do touch ups to make it look like me. Blender got soooooo slow that I had to even turn off my wifi and stop all background softwares and still just to move a vertice was with so much delay that I could never get it right.
So I installed 2.53 now it seems very good BUT the screen keeps flickering that I cant complete any command. There is delay in showing what I have done. I.e. I select it doesnt highlight untill I click the mouse several times to force the screen to to flick to update and show the most recent activity.
I decided to switch back to 2.49 and IT CAN NOT READ MY MESH!!! :frowning:
Pleaaaase HLEP! I have 3 gb Ram and 2.53 CPU laptop (toshiba L350)
The models that I am making are quite simple yet I cant finish any of them. Everyone is talking about all these cool stuff while I dont even know if I can get any furthur to finish a simple face mesh, mind you that I havent even started animating! :(:beer:
I still would be happy to switch to 2.49 if I can import my face mesh!

#2

In 2.5, go to the User Preferences and in the System tab try changing the OpenGL settings, try VBO on/off and see if setting one of the Window Draw Methods shows any improvement.

Blender uses opengl to draw the 3d view. If you have issues with drawing the view also try updating your graphics card drivers. Ideally your laptop will have a dedicated graphics card rather than a crappy inbuilt Intel one.

#3

Thanks for the reply. I will try that tonight but there is another issue with changing the setting, Blender crashes when I change anything, but it seems like it saves the change and when I open it the next time the changes are there.
I have updated the driver, didnt change anything. BTW did I mention that I have Vista HP.

I will let you know if the setting change worked.

Any suggestions on how I can send my mesh to 2.49 and continue there?

Thanks

#4

If you open a blend file in blender 2.49 that was created in blender 2.5 you will get an error message pop up. Immediately mouse click on that error message to accept it, donā€™t move your mouse away or it wonā€™t open it. Your object should open fine in 2.49 unless it has some function that was specific to 2.5 like some modifiers or some animation.

#5

Richard, I tried this. The drawing methode was on Automatic and I changed it to overlap with VBO on and it is fine. I tried triple buffer and it was good but everything was back to beeing slow. I have a feeling that as I progress with my mesh it will get slower anyway but I realy like to know what I can expect from the software and my computer. HOw do you guys finish a whole character with back ground and all that fancy rendering?!! DO I realy need a super computer for that?

I also am getting an error after I close belnder :

Run time Error: Program: c:ā€¦\Blender.exe
R6025
-Pure virtual function call

Does anyone know what this is?

Thanks

#6

I donā€™t know about the error, but the slowdown seems to be a graphics card thing in your case.

I have a lot of students with notebooks that complain about this issue. If you want to use a notebook to work with CG you need one with a offboard GPU (or one with a good onboard). You canā€™t really push too much with Intelā€™s onboard graphic card for example. Softwares that uses more CPU than GPU (like ZBrush) will suffer much lessā€¦

#7

Hmmmā€¦

Hereā€™s a few things that can help.

  1. The simple way to transfer models between 2.49 and 2.50 is to APPEND them into fresh files. You can look up on APPEND to learn more.

  2. You mentioned doing the ā€œinteresting partā€ of your model. I assume you mean sculpting and details. If you are experiencing slowdown in this phase, it could be that the mesh is too dense.
    In which case make sure that you do not use Sub-Surf Modifier in Combination with Multi-Res Sculpt. This is both the strength and weakness of Blender in that it includes Sub-Surf used in 3D modeling and a Multi-Res mode that is typically only found in Sculpting software. Never use both together, it messes up the math and slows everything to a halt. If you plan to use Multi-Res, then delete Sub-Surf Modifier.

  3. If you are using just Multi-Res, blender does have the power of using ā€œPinā€ to allow Blender to work with a lower Res level (ie: Faster speed) while presenting you with a Higher-Res visualization.

#8

I donā€™t know about the error, but the slowdown seems to be a graphics card thing in your case.

Second that. At the school I teach we had to get inexpensive nvidia video cards to get Blender working nicely on the hp desktops. I believe your laptop has an Intel 4500 chip - which is horrible for Blender, unfortunately. One thing that might help a bit is updating the intel drivers to the newest Intel drivers (not the Toshiba ones). I wouldnā€™t hold my breath, though.

#9

Might not be your card, per se. Try updating your video drivers before you get a new card. :smiley:

Iā€™ve seen quite a few slow display and flickering problems go away for folks with updated drivers. Then again, Iā€™ve hosed my Ubuntu machine more than once updating drivers, so play at your own risk, eh?

#10

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