tips for rendering particle effects and complex animations more efficiently

[Mattyj]

Hi there,

I have a MS Surface Pro 2021 model, and a Windows PC with 32gb of RAM and a gtx1080..when attempting to render a short (less than ten secs) but relatively complex (lots of layer effects and particle effects) video I find that neither machine can handle this well…are there any tips out there, aside from upgrading hardware specs, to make rendering animations such as these, more efficient on perhaps under powered hardware?

[Greenlaw]

Have you tried rendering in layers? For example, use Layer Comps to break out the BG layers, particle layer, characters and FG as separate Layer Comps. Moho Exporter can then be used to automatically split the project into separate renders. This makes the task easier for your computer to handle because it's not trying to do everything all at once. Once you've exported all the layers, you can comp them in a new Moho project or in a compositing program and export your final animation.

Since Moho (or the compositing program) doesn't need to calculate any of the animation or effects this time, this render should run smoothly and quickly.

[MrMiracle77]

Particle effects add a lot of overhead for any system. I think Moho treats each individual particle as its own layer, so if your particle count is in the 100s and each particle has some property that adds even more complexity (brushes, transparency, masking), this further compounds the overhead.

The first step on a PC is to cut down on any background processes that might be running. Windows Task Manager will even give you percentages across multiple applications and services, some of which you might not need.

Since you have an aftermarket video card, make sure any on-CPU video capabilities are disabled in bios. This will eat up some memory bandwidth, which is vital to rendering speed. While you're in bios, make sure dual-channel memory is enabled (possibly quad-channel, if you're really fancy). This isn't always enabled by default.

[Greenlaw]

Other things that might improve render efficiency:

Reduce the number of render threads to reduce the computer's RAM needs. Keep in mind that when you increase the value, Moho is essentially rendering multiple copies of the project at the same time, and that can potentially use up all your RAM and crash Moho.

If you still have trouble, try disabling Multi-threaded Rendering altogether.

If you STILL have trouble, disable Extra-Smooth Images. When this option is on, Moho is rendering a double-size version of your project and then scaling it down to improve the AA quality. So basically, enabling this option can potentially increase the render time by 4, and use up a lot more computer resources.

Another consideration:

If you're trying to render a movie file from Moho and Moho is crashing, try rendering a PNG Image Sequence instead. Image Sequences render more efficiently and require fewer computer resources than movie files. After the frames are rendered, you can import the files to a new Moho project and render the movie version from there.

That's all the general info I can think of. If Moho is still crashing, I'd need to know more about the project itself.

[Mattyj]

Cheers everyone, just comping the different aspects of the animation including particle effects then exporting individually as image sequences, then putting together in a video editor (Premier) made a HUGE difference, ty great tips...i did adjust the memory setting in BIOS to include I think it was advanced memory boost or something? But couldnt find the other suggestions, nw though, just exporting the individual comps as image sequence made massive difference.