HORRENDOUS RENDERING TIMES !!

[cosmo777]

I work in Pal, 720 x 576. Here are some facts that will make you shudder !! Made a simple one-letter text ( T ), applied a text effect, and set the project for 250 frames. It wants 29 minutes just to do that !! Makes me cringe at how long it would take do do a " fancy " production.
I can do similar projects in Adobe After Effects in seconds !!

I believe the Ulead architecture is archaic, badly-written, out-dated, and prehistoric. The abilities of the program are great-the rendering stinks !! I now find myself NOT USING the program, because, after all, who wants to spend the rest of their life rendering ONE SIMPLE PROJECT.

Ulead should give everyone their money back. The program is a dud.
I have examined a litany of settings-nothing I choose speeds up the rendering. The people at Adobe must be splitting their sides, laughing at this abysmal concoction of out-dated architecture.
Anyway, that's only my opinion. The rest of you, who think the program is marvellous, and have nothing better to do, for the rest of your life, will undoubtfully get all defensive, and tell me I'm wrong !!
I only make comments on WHAT I SEE !!
Regards from Cosmo

[cosmo777]

Oh, I forgot to mention. Just bought a brand new machine, Core 2 Duo, with 2 terrabytes of hard drive space, and 2 gig of RAM. This machine absolutely speeds along like burning rubber with all my other other programs !! So, it's not the machine's fault. Funny thing is, when I put the same basic project on my humble Laptop, that has a crappy graphics card, and only 512 meg of ram, it takes the same time !! Makes me wonder, what's the point of a NEW POWERFUL MACHINE, when it comes to Ulead !!
Cosmo

[Ron P.]

First Cosmos, no I'm not going to get defensive, and I'm certainly not going to tell you you are wrong.

Cool3D PS, is a very old program, and yes it uses a rendering engine that is older then that used with Cool 3D. Projects done in the less expensive program can render much faster (however still takes a considerable amount of time) then with C3DPS.

Several of us still use it because we can not afford the likes of AI. I've never even tried to use that program, because I know that if I did like it, I could not afford it anyway.

I will add that 3D rendering is very demanding on PCs, and therefore take a long time to render. I've read on other forums about other 3D programs where rendering 3D images would take 22hrs or more. That's not an animation, but images. Of course the Dual Core, or Duo Core, were not heard of then either, but the P4's were around, so it wasn't that long ago.

Believe me we (users of this app) have waited and wanted, begged Ulead to come out with a patch, fix or upgrade to it. However for some reason they decided to leave this one alone. Member H.T. Chien knows the full story behind C3DPS using the slower rendering engine, as he was involved with it while he worked for Ulead. So maybe he can shed some more light on this.

[cosmo777]

Vidoman,
Thanks for your confirmation of my feelings - I feel now, that I am not alone. Gosh, the features in this program are fantastic. I feel so sad that I am forced to stay away from this program-all because of rendering times!!
With best regards from Cosmo

[snoops]

Well, I'm not going to say C3D renders quickly that's for sure.
But you can't compare After Effects with C3D... like expecting a beetle to run as fast as a Ferrari.

EDIT: I didn't know C3DPS has a different engine than the normal C3D: If this option does not exist... sorry!
From what you've posted I'm pretty sure you didn't bother to check the program rendering settings to make it use your hardware to accelerate 3D:

Use HAL Rendering
Ulead COOL 3D now takes advantage of your video hardware's advanced 3D capabilities. Select Use HAL Rendering from the Image menu to directly access the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for much faster rendering and displaying. If your computer supports HAL, select this option in the Image menu to get better performance.

And to be fair, I got C3D (not production studio) free with my MF5+ order. So I make a few interesting animations and go for a coffee or surf while it renders. No big deal for me. If I needed it faster I'd buy professional software. C3D is not in that ball park or price range, is it?

In C3D you can use simple values and set the actual quality, resolution, fps etc. before rendering so that it is smoother and quicker while working on the project.

[Ron P.]

Cosmos,

I looked real quick for H.T.'s post on this (since there are only 9 pages in this forum) and found it. If your interested you can read it here:

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?p=7488#7488

[cosmo777]

Thanks Vidman,
I found the link very interesting. I will now go and check if I can use those HAL settings that the link spoke about.
Many thanks for your valueable contributions, much appreciated.
Regards from Cosmo

[cosmo777]

Henry,
Where is this Picture Menu with the Hal rendering options ?
I have looked everywhere and can't find it.
Thanks

[htchien]

Hi,

Cool3D PS, is a very old program, and yes it uses a rendering engine that is older then that used with Cool 3D. Projects done in the less expensive program can render much faster (however still takes a considerable amount of time) then with C3DPS.

Actually, the rendering engine of COOL 3D PS is not older than that used in COOL 3D. In fact, it's much newer than COOL 3D as I've stated in another post (C3DPS: use DirectX 8, C3D: use DirectX 6).

I will add that 3D rendering is very demanding on PCs, and therefore take a long time to render. I've read on other forums about other 3D programs where rendering 3D images would take 22hrs or more. That's not an animation, but images. Of course the Dual Core, or Duo Core, were not heard of then either, but the P4's were around, so it wasn't that long ago.

If you really compare the rendering performance of C3DPS with some other commercial 3D programs, C3DPS is really not that slow. However, if you have no experiences on 3D programs, yes you will think C3DPS is slow. So I can feel the pain of Cosmo.

Believe me we (users of this app) have waited and wanted, begged Ulead to come out with a patch, fix or upgrade to it. However for some reason they decided to leave this one alone. Member H.T. Chien knows the full story behind C3DPS using the slower rendering engine, as he was involved with it while he worked for Ulead. So maybe he can shed some more light on this.

I might know the reason but I might not be able to talk about the decision of Ulead. I can only say some technical stuffs about the rendering engine. And I think the link you provided should explain some of the technical stuffs.

I didn't know C3DPS has a different engine than the normal C3D: If this option does not exist... sorry!

Actually the C3DPS engine is been upgraded from the C3D engine to support DirectX 8 and later, and that's why you might still see C3DPS running on Vista but C3D cannot because Microsoft removed the old DirectX 6 support in Vista.

Where is this Picture Menu with the Hal rendering options ?

The HAL Rendering option is only available in COOL 3D 3.5 and earlier. In COOL 3D Production Studio, if you can start it without any errors or warnings then it already has the HAL rendering feature on by default. (In other words there is no software rendering in C3DPS because it's the requirement of DirectX 8 and later)

Hope this helps.

H.T.

[Ron P.]

Sorry about the misinterpretations, and advise.. I thought I remembered a post (and it wasn't the one I linked to) where there was discussion about 3.5 being able to render faster then PS. Maybe not. Could this be due to 3.5 using HAL?

Your last info H.T. kinda answered a question I was going to post. I used to get the HAL with PS, but after the above question I spent about an hour trying to get it to kick in. I did however do a reinstall of PS, and for a while had the SE version installed. I think when I uninstalled the SE version it took the HAL with it. Would that be possible?

[Ron P.]

This is the post I was thinking of H.T. and yes I did get it confused...

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?p=59678#59678

[htchien]

Hi,

Sorry about the misinterpretations, and advise.. I thought I remembered a post (and it wasn't the one I linked to) where there was discussion about 3.5 being able to render faster then PS. Maybe not. Could this be due to 3.5 using HAL?

I remember that post, which you've already provided the link.

No, it's not due to C3D 3.5 is using HAL because C3DPS is using HAL rendering also (and C3DPS will use HAL rendering only).

If C3DPS cannot start with HAL rendering on, it would fail with some error message and the project window might become either of the followings:

White project window

or

A black project window which you cannot add anything to it.

Your last info H.T. kinda answered a question I was going to post. I used to get the HAL with PS, but after the above question I spent about an hour trying to get it to kick in. I did however do a reinstall of PS, and for a while had the SE version installed. I think when I uninstalled the SE version it took the HAL with it. Would that be possible?

I'm a little confused by this, but if I understand it right, that would not be possible I think? The rendering in both C3D / C3DPS are independent. They should not effect each other if you have them both installed.

H.T.

[Ron P.]

Well I have been able to run 3DPS, however the HAL rendering was not showing. So I done a clean reinstall and now it's back.

[Dahl]

As usual, it would just help if Ulead would say in their help files or basic tutorials that we can expect very slow rendering. I am sure many people turn away from an excellent program because they get frustrated. If they knew in advance how long it would take they would adapt to this peculiarity of the program a lot quicker.

[BuZZarD]

The rendering times are slow... Granted.
But I'm sure that's 3D for you in general.
3DPS is an old program, but as with all Ulead products, they are damn easy to use and you don't need a degree to understand them.

I've spent a small fortune on software to do various things, but when it comes down to putting everything together, I use a Ulead product everytime.

I would LOVE to see cool 3DPS get an overhaul for dx9/10 and to make use of the hardware out there (I'd buy it on it's release hint ...Hint).

Until then, I'll stick with what works and do most of my rendering overnight.