FumeFX and 64 bits?

[harlequin]

Good morning everyone.

Today, got myself at work a dual quad core processor with a massive 8 gigs of RAM to simulate and do some R&D for Max 64 bits and the 64 bits version of fumefx. I'm running Max 9 , currently.

My question is simple for those who already experiment with fumefx and 64 bits, what should i asked my System administrator to look at to setup my 3dMax and Fumefx properly? Any special setup needed from 3dMax to used all the resources available? Is Max or fumefx having multithreaded problem that i should be aware of?

I'm doing R&D on smoke moving around a character at high speed and wish i could show them the full power of 64 bits uberness . With the same simulation as before , my system seem to use more PF usage than usual ( more than 2 gig), but the 8 processors seem to clumsily use 15% CPU Usage, only!?

Any informations about your experience on the subject would be appreciated by my fellow system administrator.

Thanks in advance for your patience,

Simon

[Rif]

http://cgfluids.mba-studios.com/viewtop ... f=23&t=369

[harlequin]

Ahhh finally a real answer by professionnal. Keep up the good job here at sitni sati and cgfluid.com .We need more of those in the SFX industry. :o

Thanks Rif. So i got two questions in light of your answer overthere.

So it seem , i'm jacked up and good to go with my new machine at work! 8) Sadly, i'm simulating over ther network, should i go locally instead? Will i realy see a diffence? And why?

My second question is why my cpu usage in the windows task manager is hardly above 20%? when i'm simulating? Is it the 3d software ( max 9 64 bits), is it fumefx who can't handle it or the man behind the screen that is the problem( or the sys admin) ?

[jrand]

first question: I haven't simmed over a network but you could install a sim license on another machine. I do, do a bit of net-rendering. The only problem I could inevitably see with simming over a network would be bandwidth, some sim frames, especially with a machine like yours, could easily reach 400mb per frame, and I sure your net admins might wonder where all there bandwidth went. If you have a dedicated managed switch for your workgroup the impact shouldn't be nearly as noticable.

Second question:If you are using pflow to drive your fume you will run into the the issue the PFlow is only single threaded at the moment and you will only be using one core to calculate your particles. Otherwise fume will use just about all that you throw at it. If you have box#3 you can disk cache those particles before hand and the impact should hit as hard during simming.

[harlequin]

Greetings Jrand.

First, question, thanks for the clarification.

If you are using pflow to drive your fume you will run into the the issue the PFlow is only single threaded at the moment and you will only be using one core to calculate your particles. Otherwise fume will use just about all that you throw at it. If you have box#3 you can disk cache those particles before hand and the impact should hit as hard during simming.

Am i wrong or mislead, but i doubt my cpu are use fully and i'm not using pflow to drive my flow. My cpu usage is averaging 20% all the time on all 8 processors.

Do you peak at 100% when you toggle windows task manager on your average scene?

[Rif]

using Ffx 1.1 , Net Simming should use MT fully.. you need to make sure you set the Threats to All Cpu in your Ini perhaps so that the Net render use it this way ..

if its Not working , please let us know , i personnally didnt use this BB Simming SL license as i m always simming in Local ..

[jrand]

I have only a Dual-DualCore and 8gigs, for the most part my cpus are pegged between 80-100%

[harlequin]

Thanks guys.

Just found my problem. Please repeat after me : Simon is a noob and didn't checked "use all available processor in the preference"! :lol:

Ok problem solved.

By the way , great community we have here. 8) Keep up the good work.

Simon

[sitnisati]

Hmm.. I'm wondering how this option ended turned off.
Did you do it by mistake earler, or it was maybe a FFX initialization error ?

Kresimir