Hi Marco,

> I remember that some time ago you already answered about this matter of binary
> size, but I didn't understand why is so important this aspect.
> I ask this only from the point of view of a software developer.

It's just a general attribute of high quality software - that it's lean and doesn't take a long time to download and install, doesn't take up a whole lot of disk space, doesn't take a long time to start up, etc...


> What do you think ?
> Is it feasible ?

It might be feasible to turn it on in the future if MoI needs to use a database store for storing history information. But it's very likely that it would use SQLite and not a No-sql engine.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I think i maybe found possible memory leak/bug in latest beta.

What i did is i scaled up that model i sent you hour ago and i scaled it 100x (to be bigger) but my export settings OBJ left on last used when object was smaller so i had angle set to 3 and divide to larger than 2 so Moi started generating poly-count, it took minute or so and it was processed to 22% and it already used 38GB of System RAM so i concluded it won't have enough ram to finish operation and then I canceled export. BUT my MOI is even 5 minutes later still not properly responding properly and GUI is slow and staggering, Memory usage oscillated from initial 38GB at processing back to 1 GB and then go up to 5GB (now is at 7GB while i type this message so it's been 8 minutes since i clicked cancel and popup window closed) but my CPU usage is still 1-2% (1 core used at full/max).

Since you have that model (NDA) you might wanna try do that to see is it memory leak or some other kind of bug.

cheers

Thanks a lot Michael for your reply.

@You : "...It might be feasible to turn it on in the future if MoI needs to use a database store for storing history information..."

I understand your point of view. No problem.
Anyway I hope that some day you will decide to enable Local Storage. :)

@You : "...But it's very likely that it would use SQLite and not a No-sql engine..."

Two questions :

1) If I decide to use SQLite, can I access it directly from Moi's scripts/command ?
Is this solution good for both WIndows/Mac version of Moi ?
What I want to say is : if I decide to write a plugin that should manage a SqlLite database inside some commands/script written for Moi V4,
can I "write once - run everywhere" ? Here for "everywhere" I mean both Windows and Mac version of Moi.
Or for example, if I want to access a SQLite db from within a Moi script, I must run Moi in admin mode on Windows or do other kind of "trick" on Mac ?

2) SQLite or not, I think that at least I could work on a bunch of JSON files, used for storing all the data that I want to manage.
Same thoughts like question 1. In this case "write once - run everywhere" ?

Thanks a lot for your kind support.
I stay tuned.

Hi Lewis - I think Divide larger than of 2 is probably too small for your 100x scaled object, try like 20 or 10. Just at 5 it's generating 4 million polygons.

The strange behavior is probably from having memory get swapped out to disk, everything will grind to a halt and perform very poorly once that starts going.

It is possible to limit the amount of memory that MoI will use on Windows, there's a setting in moi.ini under:

[Settings]
MaxProcessMemoryUseGB=

If you set that to say 1/2 of your system ram that should make MoI fail when it reaches that level instead of having things bog down so much.

- Michael

Hi Marco,

> 1) If I decide to use SQLite, can I access it directly from Moi's scripts/command ?

MoI does not currently have anything specifically set up to use SQLite from scripts but it might be possible to write out text files with SQL statements using moi.filesystem.openFileStream() and then invoke the sqlite binary to read them using moi.filesystem.shellExecute().


> Is this solution good for both WIndows/Mac version of Moi ?

It might be - Mac has a version of sqlite built in, for Windows it would need to be deployed.


> What I want to say is : if I decide to write a plugin that should manage a SqlLite database inside
> some commands/script written for Moi V4, can I "write once - run everywhere" ? Here for
> "everywhere" I mean both Windows and Mac version of Moi.
> Or for example, if I want to access a SQLite db from within a Moi script, I must run Moi in
> admin mode on Windows or do other kind of "trick" on Mac ?

I'm not sure of the answers for these questions, it would probably take some experimentation and testing to determine these things.


> 2) SQLite or not, I think that at least I could work on a bunch of JSON files, used
> for storing all the data that I want to manage.
> Same thoughts like question 1. In this case "write once - run everywhere" ?

You can write a text file with cross platform support by using moi.filesystem.openFileStream(). There may be operating system
specific limits on where you can place them though, for example Windows restricts writing to the Program Files directory
unless the program is run with elevated privileges.

- Michael

Hi Metin, thanks for testing it!

>
> • Appdata commands folder: works!
>
> • Separation of Alt and Command keyboard shortcuts: works! Great!
>
> • Extrude responsiveness: better now!
>
> • Alt+RMB view manipulation: works! I'm very pleased with this, many thanks! I can now fully synchronise
> MoI's viewport navigation with the navigation in ZBrush. Now let's hope Wacom soon fixes the driver issue
> that causes a viewport to become inactive until left-clicked.

Great!


> — My only remark is that after the initialisation of any object, shape or solid, the realtime size manipulation
> in the viewport feels slightly unresponsive / laggy. This is the first time I notice that, but I can't say with full
> certainty if it was better in the previous beta. It might also have something to do with the latest High Sierra
> AMD graphics drivers update.

Could you please describe this in some more detail? I haven't seen anything like this over here yet.

Does it happen only when you've got some kind of complex model loaded or does it also happen starting with a blank scene?

And the size manipulation you're talking about is grabbing one of the edit frame corners and dragging it?


> — One last, very minor reminder: the viewport indicator text labels (Front, Left, etc.) are still
> tiny on a Retina display.

Yup, text display inside of viewports is the last remaining area that still needs work for getting back to full V3 functionality.


- Michael

Thank you very much Michael for your full explanation!!
Really much appreciated!

For the moment I think I'm going to get rid of SQLite and I will make some test with "JSON files + moi.filesystem.openFileStream()"

I will let you know my results :)

Thanks again and have a nice day.

Ciao!

Hi Michael,

Yes divide by 2 is too many polygons for sure (but settings are left as last used and once you open that window MOI starts generating with last used settings, maybe we should have "start" at Export obj window to avoid such issues of automatic generating up on opening ?). No it wasn't swapping (my machine has 128GB of RAM) it's just gone weird and i finally managed to close MOI after 10 minutes of memory chewing up and down :).

It's not big problem i just wanted to report in case you can simulate on your end.

Thanks

Hi Lewis, I can't quite simulate it exactly over here because I've only got 16GB, and when that gets filled up yes performance goes way downhill but that's just what I'd expect.

I think it's possible that the sluggish performance you were seeing is still related to a type of paging similar to swapping to disk. There are some other circumstances where that can happen other than just running out, like if you minimize a program's main window its working set is trimmed and then page faults will occur for any touched pages to bring them back to the active working set. (see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/293215/the-working-set-of-an-application-is-trimmed-when-its-top-level-window). When there is a really large amount of memory involved all these operations done by the OS take more time to finish.

- Michael

Yep swapping on HDD is always performance downhill, well i guess good thing is that it didn't crash anyway :).

Hi Michael,

The slight lag is apparent as soon as I initialise the creation of any object (curve or solid) by left-clicking once in the viewport and then moving the pen to determine the size.

It happens at any time, also when I've just started a fresh scene. It might be an AMD-specific issue, as I've recently switched to a new iMac. Previously I had an iMac containing an NVidia graphics card. I don't know if you're using OpenCL. I've heard MacOS support for OpenCL is crappy compared to their Metal support.

Hi,

Congratulations on the amazing work!

I don’t know if this has been pointed:

On the Mac version : Hovering on a viewport and pressing middle button doesn’t pan (Wacom Intuos 5).
Left clicking in the viewport first works.

If I hover and use the touchpad it works ok.

Thanks,

Marc

Michael, i have one GUI/usability bug report if possible to fix.

When i open *.step file and go to "Save as" then file requester for name is empty so i need to type in full name.
It would be good if it could remember name form opened object so we don't need to type in name form scratch if changing formats.
That system works if opened file is *.3dm so it keeps opened model name automatically so if i choose different format as *.OBJ, *.LWO, *.IGES i don't need to type in object name again, i just go and change extension/file format.

Thanks

Hi Metin,

re:
> The slight lag is apparent as soon as I initialise the creation of any object (curve or solid) by left-clicking
> once in the viewport and then moving the pen to determine the size.

Does it only happen with object creation and not anything else? If you draw a sphere and then after it has been create it and click and drag on it to move it, do you see it then?

Is there any difference in behavior with Split view mode vs a single view mode?

I'm not able to see anything like that here and I'm on really low end machines.


> <....> I don't know if you're using OpenCL. I've heard MacOS support for OpenCL is crappy
> compared to their Metal support.

I'm not using OpenCL but I am using OpenGL.

- Michael

Hi Marc, thanks!

> I don’t know if this has been pointed:
>
> On the Mac version : Hovering on a viewport and pressing middle button doesn’t pan (Wacom Intuos 5).
> Left clicking in the viewport first works.
>
> If I hover and use the touchpad it works ok.

I was able to track this down to a bug in the Wacom driver, some information here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=8731.101

I sent in a detailed bug report a little over a month ago with a simplified standalone program that reproduces the same behavior. I hope that they'll be able to fix it in their next driver update.

- Michael

Hi Lewis, so the reason why the current file name is only set when reading a 3DM file is that is the "native" format for MoI - it is the only format that MoI can store everything it can create into.

If you open a STEP file the current name isn't set so that if you do a plain "Save" it will open up a dialog for you to explicitly choose a format rather than just automatically saving back to a STEP file which will then lose views and background bitmaps that you may have created for example.

This is mostly a concern for a plain "Save" that doesn't show any dialog though. I'll have to think of it for a bit but it might be ok to do what you describe only for "SaveAs" or "Export" and not for "Save"...

- Michael

Thanks again Michael ...
I left my office for a few hours with the computer on and the framing model hidden but still on. When I started to work again the problem recurred. Rebooting, as you suggested, fixed it.
But I found some other problems with the model itself. Solids that I had arrayed are now joined surfaces (except the parent one). Fortunately, for this project that is not really a problem. I don't know if these are related to the freeze phenomenon but it seems like unusual behavior.
I should note that this is a model that has been revised numerous times so sloppy changes on my part may be some of the cause (though not the display freeze).
cheers,
eric

Hi eric, thanks for letting me know. That's a bummer that it is happening some more.

One thing that may work that's quicker than a full reboot is to use this keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Win+Shift+B - on Windows 10 that will restart the graphics driver and it's likely to be as effective as a full reboot.

Hopefully it's something they will solve with a driver update.

re: arrayed solid becomes joined surface, that's not too likely to be related. It could be possible for that to happen if your solid had any areas of self-intersection in it, that can make a volumetric analysis of the object to behave inconsistently.

If you'd like to e-mail me the base object + copies that are behaving strangely I could take a look.

- Michael

Hi eric, also did you say before that you had disabled the "Threaded optimization" option in the nVidia driver settings?

- Michael

Hi Michael
<did you say before that you had disabled the "Threaded optimization" option in the nVidia driver settings?>
No I have not done that. I don't know how to. FOUND IT. IT IS OFF.
cheers
eric