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Multi-Artboard lag (Decreases graphics performance) (Updated)


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Hi guys,

 

I've noted that Affinity software decreases the graphics performance when I'm working with Artboards.

I don't know if it doesn't have any solution or yes.

 

I attach a video showing it.

With Artboards the performance decreases, with single page document is perfect as usual (60fps).

That showed document has only 10 pages but it will have over 80. I'm worried about that because sometimes when I'm drawing precise lines the refresh of the screen decreases and makes me difficult do the composition.

 

Anyway thanks so much for your great work.

 

P.S. I'm using a MacBook Pro late 2013.

 

UPDATE: I'm still having graphics performance issues. I sent you a file to Affinity email to know where is the problem. My rules designing or a bug (Graphics issue 3 video)

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Hi Herojas,

 

I'm currently working on a UI project that has something like 40 artboards, but performance is almost unchanged.

 

My machine is older than your (MBPR late 2012).

 

Una pregunta!  :)

 

Are the illustrations I can see in those pages rasterised/pixel layers or vectors?

Those seem to me pretty complex.

 

I have found a similar loss of performance, but with lots of vectors/fx all together.

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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Hola como estas Paolo, (Jeje)

 

Yes, it is the case.

All symbols are made by me with FX effects for shadows, 3D effects, etc...

 

Did you find any solution or guide rules to minimize that behavior?

In my work I need to use Fx's effect to make the manuals and for sure I'll add more of them at other pages.

 

How are you doing your UI project? Are you using FX's effects or just plane draws?

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  • Staff

Hmmm.... I've not seen the same kind of degradation in that scenario before... Is there any chance you'd send the document to us at support@seriflabs.com and I could see what the profiler shows me the problem is? I wouldn't expect it to be suffering in this particular task?... Thanks!

Matt

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Hola como estas Paolo, (Jeje)

 

Yes, it is the case.

All symbols are made by me with FX effects for shadows, 3D effects, etc...

 

Did you find any solution or guide rules to minimize that behavior?

In my work I need to use Fx's effect to make the manuals and for sure I'll add more of them at other pages.

 

How are you doing your UI project? Are you using FX's effects or just plane draws?

 

Yep as I imagined...

My current project is mainly flat design, so I didn't notice any sort slowness since I employed layer FX to colorise things (icons, buttons etc...).

Not so perceivable as your situation but is there. I've been always considering my machine as guilty

 

I found it much more perceivable in another project (similar to the one you're showing), and solved a bit using embedded files.

 

Anyway good news!

Matt is going to solve this for sure!  :)

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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Yes for sure.

I was thinking as you before I sent the video. "My machine is not enough for that quantity of FX effects and pages".

Anyway I thought "I'll make the question" 

 

It was a shame to have that incredible performance (60fps) never seen by me at any software, decreased by a bug.

 

Now I hope we'll have same graphics performance in all scenarios that makes we love Affinity software. :D  

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Staff

I attach new video with the issue...

Okay, that's a different problem - I can try to look into it, but I may have missed the window for 1.5 Release (unless it's completely trivial to resolve)... I'll let you know how I get on when I get chance :)

 

Sorry for the inconvenience,

Matt

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  • Staff

The snapping setup could definitely be the cause of the problem - on my MacBook Pro (2015) it seems to be working really quickly to be honest, but it does get a tiny bit slower with snapping turned on, but that's natural. Is it quite slow on your system? Would you be able to send me a video again so I could see it and see if I can reproduce something similar?

 

Thanks,

Matt

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  • Staff

Hi guys,

 

I've noted that Affinity software decreases the graphics performance when I'm working with Artboards.

I don't know if it doesn't have any solution or yes.

 

I attach a video showing it.

With Artboards the performance decreases, with single page document is perfect as usual (60fps).

That showed document has only 10 pages but it will have over 80. I'm worried about that because sometimes when I'm drawing precise lines the refresh of the screen decreases and makes me difficult do the composition.

 

Anyway thanks so much for your great work.

 

P.S. I'm using a MacBook Pro late 2013.

 

UPDATE: I'm still having graphics performance issues. I sent you a file to Affinity email to know where is the problem. My rules designing or a bug (Graphics issue 3 video)

 

This is because you have Candidates set to "All layers".  You really DO NOT want to use this option for big complicated documents.  It'll try perform snapping with every layer in the document.  When you've got all the options turned on (like you have) that's a lot of calculations.

 

I only added "All layers" for people who insisted they needed to snap to everything and want to shoot themselves in the performance foot want full snapping for simple documents.

 

Simple resolution - don't turn everything on.  And use either the "Candidate list" or "Immediate layers" modes only.  The array of options is there so that people can perform just the type of snapping they need without both a performance and usability hit.  We have provided some Presets to also help with this.

 

After the MAS release of 1.5 I plan to add time-outs to snapping to help alleviate this kind of issue, but ultimately the choice of what snapping to enable is down to the user. With great power comes great responsibility.

 

I am also adding the option to mark layers as excluded from snapping to help exclude the child nodes of top level layers/objects.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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"With great power comes great responsibility"

 

Thanks so much Peter Parker (Ben)  :D

Works fine now.

 

That's I was talking about. Something that I was doing wrong but honestly I didn't know.

Now I understand the issue and the solution, it have all the sense.

I've been using many time FreeHand, Corel, Illustrator, now I'm knowing Affinity software.

 

Sorry to take your time with those kind of things  :)

 

P.S. Also thanks to Matt of course

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  • Staff

I've also spotted something else about this document which will hammer snapping performance.  A lot of the layers are made up of other nested "Layers" or "Groups".  There is nothing wrong with this in itself, but this pattern is unfortunately bad for snapping in this scenario.

 

If you have a top level Vector object, such as a rectangle, with child objects inside of that, the snapper can work out the bounding box of that layer by just calculating it for the rectangle (since its children will be clipped to it).  For "Layers" or "Groups" the snapper has to work out the bounding box by summing up the boxes for all the child objects.  This works recursively until it reaches a vector or pixel object for which it can calculate the real bounds.  Snapping in your document would be loads faster (with the options I mentioned before) if your top level layers were Vector objects (even if they are just used for clipping, with no fill or line colour).

 

This also applies if you have a surrounding rectangle with lots of objects as sibling objects in your document tree (such as your control panel images).  This would snap better if the details layers were children of the surrounding rectangle object.

 

For people making reusable symbols, this will be a good approach to follow.  We may release some "good practice tips" for forming Symbols and Assets when we have a few more snapping features in 1.6.

 

I also have some ideas for caching bounding boxes which will help performance, but a combination of this with well structured documents will give the best performance.

SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer
  • Software engineer  -  Photographer  -  Guitarist  -  Philosopher
  • iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395
  • MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300
  • iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB
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Snapping in your document would be loads faster (with the options I mentioned before) if your top level layers were Vector objects (even if they are just used for clipping, with no fill or line colour).

 

This also applies if you have a surrounding rectangle with lots of objects as sibling objects in your document tree (such as your control panel images).  This would snap better if the details layers were children of the surrounding rectangle object.

 

Sorry Ben I don't understand the rule you are trying to explain me.

I would like to understand that because my main job is do those kind of designs. Now I'm preparing a user guide with over 100 pages with compositions even more complex than the file Matt sent to you.

 

Please can you send me my AD file Matt sent you with the correct architecture of layers and groups? Just to see the way you are following.

I don't understand how I can improve the organization of that file for example.

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