We’ve been developing in Director for some time, however there seems to be no stable performance indicator for how it will run.
For example, we have run our latest prototype on the following two systems:
And we get near identical framerates! Any clues, oh director experts out there? I know Director is not known for it’s reliability in large projects, but this seems a little odd!
3D in Director? really? please, where can i find some tutorials about this? i would appreciate the help
Are you sure you arent throttling the performance to a specific framerate? The control panel sets a target framerate and any machine will try its best to match that rate.
in the control panel set the target framerate to some ridiculously high number like 999 fps and then see how close each machine gets to that target framerate
the main performance boost in shockwave3d comes from the 3d acceleration of the video card
BlackTenshi: Director 8.5 has 3d capabilities. The lingo tutes in the help files should be enough to get you going! But feel free to ask questions.
Sam: Yep, we’ve tried the 999 framerate rule. 
The ramp up still doesn’t make it. We’ve also tried timeOut objects and many types of preloading. We’re only getting around 17 fps, even though there’s only about 50,000 polys in the scene with minimal textures. The confusing thing is that the framerate is consistent across varying machines, even with set score framerate at maximum.
We’ve tried the geforce2 mx, geforce 4 4400 ti, radeon 7500, and even the latest radeon 9700, all with current stable drivers and still nothing! I know director has to go through the windows API, but even so, the geforce 2 mx alone can handle 1.8 million triangle per second! Surely we should get better performance.
Any clues?:shrug:
using director for 50k polys - that was brave…i’ve worked with director a lot and i never get fps higher than 20-30…check vertical sync and antialiased mode (if on - turned them off). if that doesn’t help - try using lod - director has a very good lod function. this should fix the problem or at least give you + 7-8fps
also, if using flash movies in the same window, turn direct to stage ON. And of course, check if you’ve selected hardware renderer (gl or d3d - it is possible that director has some problems with some configurations - if you’ve selected ‘auto’ for renderer he simply uses software renderer).
Done and done already, I’m afraid. :hmm:
I could list all the things we have tried, but it would fill a decent sized book! The scene is one 800x600 w3d sprite. Nothing else going on stage. Yet. (And no, unfortunately, we can’t reduce the size of the sprite).
With a 25k poly scene, we can get 48 fps and up to 75fps. That’s with 12 bone-animated objects with 256x256 low-res textures.
The 50k scene does not have much more than this, so we should be getting aprroximately half the 25k scene, but we’re not. The frustrating thing is, the benchmarks don’t seem to make sense.
Oh, and for some reason laptops run the 3d engine a LOT better than standard desktops. Go figure. Windows XP boosts framerate too.
Oh, and has anyone noticed that with a large scene it can take quite a while to load/initialise? Our scene can take up to 15 seconds to kick off.
I’ve run the tests and I know you can get an above average framerate in director for 50,000 polys. This scene however is not working for me.
Any other suggestions? I’m pulling out hair here!
if you have only one w3d screen and you need nothing more in your scene, i suggest you to quit using director
(it’s obvious that this tool was not ment to be used for large no. of polys)
and simply use visual studio (c++) or borland’s c++ to do the job.
you’ll have to do next:
exporter or converter for your favorite 3d application you’re using for modeling your objects.
if you’re using 3dsmax you should have no problems at all.
install max’s sdk and open ase exporter workspace file. everything is there
(materials, static mesh, animesh, transformation keys - all you need)
just make your own fileformat.
if you don’t have max’s sdk, export scene in .ase fileformat -
that’s simple text format for wich you’ll have to make a converter
(a parser that will read needed data from .ase and pack it into
your fileformat).
i suggest you to use borland’s c++ builder 'cause it’s stl libraries
(scanf function etc.) are much faster (5-10times) than microsoft’s
dlls for the same functions.
also, you’ll be able to easely construct converter’s form (much
easely than in visual studio where you need mfc libraries to do
anything serious).
for all other programing - use visual studio (it’s opengl
implementation is faster than borland’s).
bad thing is that if you want to have lod - you’ll have to code it
yourself (and that is hard) but clipping - you can code it easily
your own (god knows how director clips polys and does it even
clips anything).
you’ll need 2-3months of hardwork (if you are at least familiar
with c++ programming) but that’s the best solution if you’re
planning to be a pro.
good luck.
p.s. i’ve got scene with 10k of polys + 1k transparent polys
(wich need to be sorted in each frame) and in 800x600x32bit it
goes over 200fps (hardware: athlon900mhz, gf2mx400 64mb,
RAM 512mb) - i’m sure that your scene with 50k should work over
80-90fps.
smrdasmrad, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but it’s not my decision. I’ve tried to convince the people upstairs to go down the opengl c++ path, but at present we’re stuck with director.
…but that’s the best solution if you’re planning to be a pro
This I disagree with. Director is a highly professional package, regardless of it’s shortcomings. There is nothing better for quick development, especially for web interaction.
However, the 3d is bad. Workable, but slow. At present, I think we’re going to have to hammer at optimisation to get our desired framerate.
Thanks for the help, anyway. You’ve been most generous!
You should post your problem in the Macromedia Shockwave3d support forum. There are several very knowledgeable people who frequent that forum.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/forums/
sam
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