Extremely long loading/Not Responding when meddling with brushes

[Kemelvor]

Hello over here,

I have a recurring and persistent issue since V2 (didn't have that issue with V1) : Everytime I try to move/copy/edit a brush, the whole software freeze. It can take up to 5/10min to move a single brush with everything frozen in the meantime. Most of the time, I just force close the software because of how long it can take.

It happens everytime I do it, on both Photo and Designer.  Perhaps a bit quicker when the software is freshly started but it isn't reliable. My computer is beefy (RTX3070/I7 10700K/64gb RAM) so it isn't a performance issue.

Perhaps it is tied, but I have a lot of custom brushes. Most of them are linked.

[carl123]

First thing you can try is to turn off (if enabled) Hardware Acceleration in...

Edit > Preferences > Performance

[Chris B]

Hey Kemelvor, if carl123's suggestion does not work, can you turn HA back on and then see if you can create a dump file from Task Manager. 

[Kemelvor]

No change with HA on or off, alas. Here's the dump file I created for you, while It was loading upon trying to edit a brush, @Chris B

It's quite heavy and doesn't fit into the forum's integrated uploader so here's a GDrive's link :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cqXrk-dkiCM9jWHLtMoNuz13995rJSYk/view?usp=sharing

[walt.farrell]

I'm curious how big your raster_brushes.propcol and/or vector_brushes.propcol files are. You can find them in %USERPROFILE%\.affinity\user (if I remember correctly; I'm away from my PC).

I've noticed the same behavior, but force-closing is likely to corrupt the files and lead to complete loss of the brushes, so I normally just wait for it to finish.

[Kemelvor]

This is the raster_brushes.propcol, at 4,47GB. Around 450mb for vector_brushes.propcol. I can already tell it's big but it's not a surprise since I do have a lot of brushes. It is likely the root of the problem. Kinda, since the number didn't dramatically increase from V1 to V2 and it was working fine then. Perhaps the new link feature worsened it ?

I could make a cleanup since I don't use most of them and I have a backup .afbrushes of all of them.

[Chris B]

8 hours ago, Kemelvor said:

Perhaps the new link feature worsened it ?

It has just occured to me that you said it happens in V2 only and in Photo and Designer - in V2 we have shared/linked brushes. So if every time you modify that 4.47GB file, the two apps are trying to update something in the background.

Can you confirm if it only happens when both Photo and Designer are open at the same time?

 

[Kemelvor]

Nope, it happens even when only one of them is open - Which is the common scenario when I try to touch brushes.

Since it's relevant, I add that Affinity is installed on an SSD.

[Chris B]

I've built my propcol file to 1GB and I'm now getting a hang. It happens whenever I duplicate a category. If I reset my brushes, it's fine again. So I'm guessing it's a size thing possibly related to the linked feature.

[Kemelvor]

Then the solution will be to clean up my brush folders. Not really a problem in the end since I do have a lot of redundant brushes I don't even use. Kinda solved, I guess ? Until optimization come around. I do admit it can be my fault, having pushed the system to the extreme.

Thank you for your help everyone.

[Chris B]

A tidy up may help but I don't really want to point blame at you. We don't suggest any limits so I think it's one for us to solve.

[Kemelvor]

It helped. Still reinstalled a fair amount of brushes (200 to 300 of them ?). All of them linked and it works fine now.

I do think stamps or very high resolution textured brushes were the culprit since they're the heaviest. I avoided them this time.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Hang when interacting with Brushes Panel with a large propcol" (REF: AFP-5853) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.1.0.1709".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.