Render view has made Blender unresponsive on a (pretty) powerful PC

posted to: Adding Lights

Hi, I haven't encountered this issue before but after adding the lights (lamps) to the scene Blender has become REALLY unresponsive in render view. I'm using Eevee and my machine is an i7-6700 with 32GB ram, several SSDs and an Nvidia RTX 2060.

The only thing I did differently was to use an array modifier to add the lighting objects through the scene (it fitted nicely) but I think it's the actual lights (lamp objects) that are killing it.

I disabled the array modifiers and nothing changed but I just loaded the scene without the actual lights and it's ok.........er except I can't see anything! 

:-)

  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    Ah! I think I know what's going on. I altered the scale of the light object in the side panel (N) rather than the light properties panel.
    After multiplying that several times.....Blender got fed up.

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  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    Hmmm, maybe not. It's still REALLY slow and can't render a single image. I opened the final course files version and that runs ok in rendered view.

    I've definitely been using Alt-D for duplication. I wonder if I have too many vertices in my models?

  • Martin Bergwerf replied

    Hi James, can you add a link to your .blend, so we can try some troubleshooting?

    Also mention which Blender version you are using, please.

  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    Hi, yes, thank you. I've added a Google drive link below. It's only a small file but the PC doesn't like it at all!

    I can open the course files final version fine. It's not speedy in Render view but it works.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/14AXhYW326sJ3NpOXn3ngNbXmi3dtRnDK/view?usp=sharing

  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    Oh, I'm using Blender 3.2

  • Martin Bergwerf replied

    Hey James,

    I haven't found exactly what is causing this, but if try an earlier version (I tested 3.0.1 and 3.1.2), you should get a lot better performance.

    On my computer (not as good as yours), the file takes more than 30 seconds to load in 3.2 (and 3.3 and 3.4) and if I switch to Cycles, Blender crashes when trying to use Rendered View. (Once I got a ton of "Too many lights" errors before it crashed..)

    In 3.0 and 3.1 it takes less less than 6 seconds to load and Cycles Rendered View is also no problem.

    This is thus a bug/regression  in 3.2 and higher, that should be reported...

    I also noticed, that turning off Shadows in the Lights helps with performance, but that's not really helpful, of course.

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  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    Wow, that's really interesting. Thank you. Yes, it's not a good sign when it takes 30s to load!

  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    I did just notice that I have around half the amount of objects in my scene (compared to the course file) but double the amount of Verts (4.73M). Just learned an important lesson about low vert count in the early stages :-)


  • Omar Domenech replied
    I learned that same lessons as you did. When I started using Blender I wasn't mindful of performance, I didn't know things took up memory, I just slapped a subdiv at level 4 to everything. After a few snag like those and errors and scenes that could barely move or load, I started to change how I approached building a scene from the very top. Always mindful from the very beginning of performance and not overloading things. The amount of headaches I must've avoided I wont even ever know. 
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  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    I find the depth and complexity of this software utterly compelling. I wish I didn't, it's just that the creative possibilities are endless!

    I thought After effects was tricky :-)

  • Kent Trammell replied

    Smartassmusic I couldn't agree more! Within the visual art space, Blender truly offers limitless creative potential. Arguably even more than commercial alternatives since it's open source. It's an incredible gift to the art world.

    1 love
  • James Treweek(Smartassmusic) replied

    Loving your work Kent. I loved the stylised 3D forest scene but the human 3D portraits are jaw dropping.

    I suspect you're very much a "proper" artist  underneath all this tech'.    :-)

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  • Kent Trammell replied

    Smartassmusic That's very kind of you to say! I can't say I know what a "proper" artist is but I doubt I'm one of them 😅