Image export and memory question.
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I have a PC at work with 4 gb ram and a Quadro graphics card with 256 mb memory.
At home I have a PC with 4 gb ram and a Geforce graphics card with 512 mb memory.
Now at work I was only able to export a image at 3000 pixels wide approximatly but at home I could export the same scene at over 4000 pixels without problems.
Now to my question: I was under the impression that the amount of ram was what decided if SketchUp could export a image or not. Is the graphics card memory involved in this somehow also? -
Which versions of SU are you using?
image export was greatly improved in 7 whereas 3000-4000 was pretty much the limit in 6.
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It hasn't gotten any better for me. It won't let me export anything larger than 4000 pixels wide, anything higher than that gives me an error message. This gets really annoying when you are trying to do a large print as I'm not really able to get the crisp lines that I would like. Is there some kinda ruby out there that will let me export bigger or maybe have a higher dpi output? I'm using Sketchup Pro 7 and I've got 2gigs of ram.
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Im using su7.
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Well, back in Autumn/Fall,when I foirst encountered SU 7 - with 2 Gb of memory and a GeForce 6800 at 256 Mb - I could export png's at 9999 and tiff's at 9600 pixels (AA off) and around 5000-6000 pixels (AA on). Note that each image took only about 1-2 minutes to export. I also did the test with a model of mine which has 1.2 million + poly's just to make sure it's not the simplicity of the model.
I think however that I did the exports with shadows off.
I was actually amazed at the speed and export improvement of SU 7.
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Yeah, SU 7 should be giving larger exports than 3-4,000 pixels. Make sure you uncheck anti-aliasing. Let a program like photoshop do that for you. If I want a 1,000 pixel wide image, I export at 5,000 and then downsize it in photoshop and it uses bicubic downsampling when it shrink sthe image and it comes out looking incredible.
Chris
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So if I want a 30x42 print made, I need to turn AA off and try to export at somewhere around 8000 pixels wide and then shrink it down in Photoshop to something like 4000 pixels wide to get those smooth sharp lines from Sketchup? I'll give it a shot and see if it works on a fairly large model...
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I've found it to vary also by the number off applications open. Having a large PhotoShop file open while tyring to export might cause SU to fail at large resolutions. Or having other large SU models open.
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Increasing your virtual memory will help.
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...or in fact anything that requires much RAM.
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Well, my test with AA off hasnt been good. Lines partly dissapearing and things like that.
My question was if you know if SketchUp uses the graphics card while exporting since thats what differs between my job and home PC. Since both have the same amount of ram they should both be able of exporting the same resolution dont you think?
Both PC were only running SU by the way.
(Oh, and one more thing that differs...job PC has XP and home PC Vista if now that has anything to do with it.) -
Well, AFAIK the main thing should be RAM here. (Vista may use/waste much more RAM however...)
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@gaieus said:
Well, AFAIK the main thing should be RAM here. (Vista may use/waste much more RAM however...)
Then it is strange that my PC with Vista can manage to export a bigger image dont you think?
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Or... due to Vista's Aero, Vista might make more use of the GPU instead of the CPU and regular RAM... ...who knows...
There's so many factors that could contribute to this difference.
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Hm. It may be strange. The video card is essential however for displaying things real time (i.e. rendering SU while you are working on it). SU as a software (without the support of the video card) will handle image export though. You can even test this: if you turn off hardware acceleration under preferences (i.e. there's no video card support), you cannot have the slightest AA settings in Preferences. Image export will still support AA - i.e. it is NOT handled by your video card. Maybe you could test the performance of the two computers with HW acceleration totally turned off on both.
RAM is important because (with bigger images) until it is totally built up, it is stored in the RAM.
Note that me saying all this with no professional, computering background.
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So with 4 GB ram what sizes can you expect to export with Anti Aliasing and shadows on?
Could we perhaps have a test file that everyone tries to export and see how much it differs between PCs? -
@pixero said:
So with 4 GB ram what sizes can you expect to export with Anti Aliasing and shadows on?
Could we perhaps have a test file that everyone tries to export and see how much it differs between PCs?That would be interesting.
Though we need also needs to know about the system:
Processor + Motherboard
RAM
Graphic card
OS
Might be useful to know the available amount of RAM before SU begins and how much available before the export process is performed. -
That's a good idea. Do you have anything particular in mind? (Like the one you would like to export?
)Make a separate topic if you'd like and I can make it sticky for a while.
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I was thinking some fairly advanced scene from google warehouse since I cant distribute my work file to everyone.
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