CS4 3D, an inauspicious beginning

WG
Posted By
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 17, 2008
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1528
Replies
40
Status
Closed
Just got PS CS4. Installed without problem. I thought I’d open a 3D layer of a 28MB OBJ file without materials applied. The same file opens in a 3D layer just fine in CS3 though it takes 15 seconds or so. In CS4 it hangs and eventually the app has to be force quit. Not a great start.

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AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Oct 17, 2008
Does your video card have 256 MB VRAM, and does it support OpenGL in CS4?

Check you prefs to see that you have enabled OpenGL Drawing.
GB
g_ballard
Oct 17, 2008
initialize, zero write, install from scratch, remove all 3rd party ram PCI cards and hardware
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 17, 2008
Yep, ATI Radeon X1900 (512mb vram) Open GL Engine detected by the program upon installation and checked automatically. I went through the prefs at first startup, prior to any actions.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 17, 2008
initialize, zero write, install from scratch, remove all 3rd party ram PCI cards and hardware

No. That’s shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 17, 2008
I’ve successfully loaded several 3D OBJ files with simpler geometry, the largest 6 mb which does roughly relate to the number of polys. I’m going to try and simplify my first model and see if it loads.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 17, 2008
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that I tried loading that 28mb model and then went off and worked elsewhere for a half an hour or so. I checked in on PS and found it had loaded sometime during that extended period. The bad news is that PS CS4 doesn’t seem to work well at all with large model files while it seems to work fine if the model is under 10mb.
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Oct 17, 2008
It might be that you need an even more powerful video card than yours for these large files?

What happens if you deselect some of the options in the Advanced section of the OpenGL Prefs.; or if you turn OpenGL off and work in Software rendering as you did in CS3?

[These are only wild suggestions because i have little experience in advanced 3D modelling.]
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 17, 2008
I don’t believe it has anything to do with the vid card, Ann, though that isn’t an unreasonable suggestion. My belief is founded on the fact that the file opens just fine in CS3. If you actually needed a $1,500 to $2,500 video card to use Photoshop’s 3D tools they are useless.

From my perspective, Photoshop made an attempt to enter the 3D world in CS3, sort of dipping it’s toes in the water in a manner of speaking. The tools were barely useful in my experience but then I use quite a number of 3D apps.

I had hoped that the 3D tools would be significantly more valuable in CS4. There certainly are more tools available implementation is pretty crude. After seeing Adobe trying two sets of 3D tools, I think they might just as well drop it. They aren’t a professional addition but more a crude toy although I’m sure some people will find use for them and others will praise them to the skies.
CC
Chris_Cox
Oct 17, 2008
Welles – would you be willing to send that file to Adobe so we can try to reproduce the problem? It could be a number of things (pathological case in the file, a bug in our code, or a bug in the OpenGL driver) making it take that long.

We have been working with multi-million polygon files on cards similar to yours.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 17, 2008
Hi Chris,

I’d be glad to do so. It was a model originally made in XenoDream and I made it so can give you the rights to use it any way you want. You can download it from my iDisk.

<http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/FileSharing2.html>

The file is Widget2.obj.zip

I do hope you find something was wrong with my file as I would love to be able to do quick 3D composite work right in Photoshop rather than render whole images all the time.
CC
Chris_Cox
Oct 17, 2008
Alright, got the file. Our 3D engineers will be looking at it shortly.
SG
steve_guilhamet
Oct 18, 2008
Hi Welles,

A quick note that the file opens and is fairly responsive for me on MacPro with Radeon HD 3870 and Vista64 with GeForce 8800 GT (granted newer cards then the X1900). Are you using a G5 or MacPro?
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 18, 2008
Hi Steve,

MacPro Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.6GHz (2006) with an ATI Radeon X1900XT 512mb VRAM, 12mb RAM, 200GB partition on a separate HD for primary scratch. Mac OS 10.5.5 (9F33). Though it doesn’t really matter, the model was exported from XenoDream 2.1 and works with Vue 6 Infinite and has been rendered with Maxwell Render on a PC by a friend.
C
Cindy
Oct 18, 2008
For whatever it is worth, it hangs when I try to open it too. MacPro Dual-Core Intel Xeon 2.6GHz (2006) with an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 5mb RAM which is not as powerful as yours. Running OS 10.4.11
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 18, 2008
Hey Cindy,

Thanks for trying it out. That’s a little more data for the engineers. Just for fun, this was a silly render made in Vue as a test of that model.

<http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/Artifact.jpg>
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Oct 18, 2008
WOW!

That is way above my pay-grade!

[ I did try to open your 3D object in CS4 but my System was not up to it either.]
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 18, 2008
Just silly stuff, Ann. Let me show you what a friend did with it. We’ve been going back and forth for a couple of days doing stupid stuff with that model. I think this one is particularly funny.

<http://homepage.mac.com/wellesgoodrich/WhatIsIt.jpg>
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Oct 18, 2008
Great fun!
RC
r.c._durston
Oct 18, 2008
Hey Welles, it worked for me. Opened in about one minute on a MBP 2ghz CoreDuo with 2gb ram andRadeon X1600 with 128mb Vram.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 18, 2008
OK I’ve finally got the limitations on my Mac Pro pretty well dialed in. Any OBJ under 10mb or so opens up quite rapidly and the tools work well. It is actually better than my original gripe expressed. Unfortunately the first file I tried seemed to freeze PS CS4 simply because it was loading sloooowly and the day before I had loaded it in PS CS3 in 15 seconds (plus the app icon in the dock said Application Not Responding… I should know better).

Anyway that model does load in about 5.5 minutes and does work but, again, sloowly. So I’d suggest that people stay away from really large OBJ files in Photoshop’s CS4 3D capacities to gain the full utility of the tools. For lots of folks they will still be valuable. For me I think I’ll mostly use PS for mats, depth and bump maps and so forth (and of course all the 2D image manips) but render 3D and image composites in Vue where I can billboard images and place models to render.

Though in a sense this doesn’t belong in this thread there are some wonderful new features in PS CS4. Just the capacity to see a well rendered image at 51.86% zoom is worth the buy-in!
C
Cindy
Oct 18, 2008
Just for fun, this was a silly render made in Vue as a test of that model.

That’s really cool Welles!
WZ
Wade_Zimmerman
Oct 18, 2008
Steve, the same problem I think I mentioned this to already. I have even updated my card to the nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB VRAM still hangs.

Althoug I was able to open a fie that is 34.1 MB in a bout ten-fifteen seconds or so.

The speed s a bit slow. It has t perfor better I cannot open that file at all.
CC
Chris_Cox
Oct 21, 2008
Welles – one thing to try: go ahead and create UV coordinates for the model, then save and open in Photoshop. Photoshop might be spending all of it’s time on UV parameterization.
JP
jean_p
Oct 21, 2008
I can get the model open okay on my system in CS4. (8 core xeon 2.8, 6.5 GB RAM. 10.5.4)

I let it sit a little while, but not terribly long; just while I read a couple of posts here.

I made UVs in a different app, it opened much more quickly. I don’t have Vue to test with — my other app may have done something else to clean the file up when it exported it with UVs.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 21, 2008
Hi Chris,

You’ve identified the problem with that file. I ran it through UV Mapper and saved the file as a single group with planar mapping and sure enough it opened up in 40 seconds.
JP
jean_p
Oct 21, 2008
Welles, I wouldn’t assume that creating UVs in UVMapper proves the UV generation is the issue.

I take problematic OBJ files through UV mapper all the time to clean them up, because UVMapper writes very good OBJs when other apps make messes of them. My test was with Strata 5.5, which also writes very good OBJ files. I can’t rule out the possibility that Strata cleaned the file up, and I know from experience that UVMapper writes much better OBJ files than many 3D apps.

the only way to prove that the UV generation is the issue is to generate your UVs in the same app that you started with… can Vue create UVs?

For all that, I still think it is a good theory, I just don’t think it is proved by bringing UVMapper into the picture.

You could do a more valid comparison by saving the file back out of UVMapper once with UVs and once without. Then compare Photoshop’s load time with those 2 files.
WG
Welles_Goodrich
Oct 21, 2008
jean p

Hmmm, you may well be right. I made the original in XenoDream, not Vue. I merely imported it into Vue to use in a scene. I can’t attest to the quality of OBJ files exported from XD. I’ve just begun to learn that software (there’s no Mac version). The only experiential prelude to my post here was that the day before I received CS4 I had used that model in a 3D layer in CS3 and it opened up in 15 seconds or so. The next day with PS CS4 it was 5.5 minutes and it seemed, the first time I tried to import it into PS CS4 to be much longer than that.
JS
Jerry_Skrocki
Oct 22, 2008
Open GL limitations and CS4:

<http://www.adobe.com/go/kb404898>
FP
fred_perrine
Nov 1, 2008
I just got photoshop CS4 upgrade but when I go to load it freezes on "checking system profile" under Adobe Photoshop CS4 installer initializing – it goes about 90% of the way then freezes. I have shut down everything except the finder and have restarted my machine. I also tried copying the disk to my desktop. Nothing has worked for me so far. I have a PowerMac G5 Quad with 4 GB of memory running system 10.4.11 with ample disk space. Any suggestion?. I will try to phone Adobe tech support on Monday.

Thanks

Fred Perrine
NK
Neil_Keller
Nov 1, 2008
fred,

Before attempting the upgrade, did you repair permissions, do disk repairs, and run DiskWarrior? Also, I don’t know what you consider "ample disk space".

Neil
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Nov 1, 2008
My guess is that your System is in need of maintenance.

Try running DiskWarrior and doing an Archive & Install of OSX from the original CD followed by running the latest Combo Updater.

You could also try doing the CS4 installation from a new User Account.
R
Ram
Nov 1, 2008
with ample disk space

"Ample" as in well over 100GB of available unfragmented disk space?
GH
Gloria_Hansen
Jan 23, 2009
I’m in the same boat. I’ve run DiskWarrior, tried from a new user account, a safe boot, a root install, and I did an archive and install of OSX followed by adding the latest updater. I also copied the install to the desktop.
It hangs at 90%.
Adobe, unfortunately, has no definitive answer to the problem. The software did install on an older Mac. This is a newer Mac, some 300 gigs of empty drive space, 4 gigs of RAM.

Does anyone have any ideas?
GH
Gloria_Hansen
Jan 23, 2009
I should add, that I’m trying an install of Design Premium CS4.
WZ
Wade_Zimmerman
Jan 23, 2009
Glorria you should be not having any problems.

I would say you want to reformat your disk first backing up all the data and reinstall your system then CS 4 and what ever else you need.
AW
Allen_Wicks
Jan 24, 2009
I would say you want to reformat your disk first backing up all the data and reinstall your system then CS 4 and what ever else you need.

Ouch. Sounds like a reason to stay with CS3. 🙂
WZ
Wade_Zimmerman
Jan 25, 2009
Not CS 4’s problem Allen something is wrong with Gloria’s system or she has done something like jump ahead of herself either because of impatience or lack of knowledge. Like most of us have done from time to time.

For instance I have to boots on two different drives one updates to OS 10.5.6 just fine the other seems stuck on will not update.I think I know what happened but I do not know the way to correct it. If I were able to work with the unix console I could probably find the problem and correct it but I have little knowledge of that method so I have to do an archival reinstall.

In this case CS 4 is installed on the OS 10.5.6 system and works great. But I have CS 3 on the 10.5.5 and that version of the Design Premium has always had some but not a lot of difficulties, well at least more then CS 4 which has some problems with some a couple of motion graphic applications.

So this may be an accidental occurrence hat has taken place on Gloria’s system and she may have no choice. And she may in the ned be better off!
MR
Mark_Reynolds
Jan 26, 2009
"I think I know what happened but I do not know the way to correct it." – you download the full upgrade package from Apple 10.5.6. Upgrades downloaded using Software Update are not as reliable. Back up before you do it.
WZ
Wade_Zimmerman
Jan 26, 2009
Well it is done and I really do not need it at the moment and if I do I can do an archival reinstall on that disk which only has the OS and the Applications on that partition.

But you are correct I download from the system updater. Now it will not let me erase the download files since I cannot locate them. Which is kind of stupid on Apples part!

Anyone know where the download is stored?
R
Ram
Jan 26, 2009
Anyone know where the download is stored?

Unless you selected "Update and Keep Package" from the download menu in Software Update, the download is NOT stored.

If you did select that menu item, then the package is stored together with all other packages:

ROOT LEVEL /Library/Packages.

If you downloaded it with your web browser from the Apple site rather than through Software Update, then it will end up in your default downloads location, of course.

If Spotblight fails to find it (and it does miss a bunch of files) try EasyFind (freeware). What EasyFind doesn’t find is just not on your machine, period.

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