This appendix gives you some things to keep in mind, and some smart things to do (and not to do) so that you can get the most out of Ez3d.
System Configuration
* Try to have at least 24 Meg of memory, if not 32 Meg. 3D modeling and rendering can be very memory-intensive. Ez3d will run at optimal speed if you have more than 32 Meg of memory.
* Get plenty of disk space. Textures and 3D models can easily soak up a lot of space. Save off textures and objects to tape to save space on your disk. A 1 to 2 Gig disk, and a tape drive will be worthwhile investments.
* The graphics (especially for texture mapping and shading) works best on a 24-bit graphics machine, though Ez3d is designed to run on both 8-bit and 24-bit hardware. There are more than a few companies offering (and more are emerging) OpenGL accelerated 3D Graphics plug-in cards.
* If you are going to be ray-tracing very complicated scenes (with lots of textures), you may run out of "swap space" (Swap space, 40 Meg by default, is the space on the disk that is used as virtual memory when the program exceeds the limits of actual memory). In this case, you will want to increase your swap space (Refer to help cards on "SwapSpace" for your operating system to find out how to increase swap space on your system drive).
Improving Speed
Because of underlying system software, and because it is a new product, Ez3d can appear to be slow sometimes, especially for complex projects. But you can overcome many of these problems by being smart.
* Try to keep the scene uncluttered at all times. When you finish modeling one object, save it off to a file, and remove it from the scene. The objects can be loaded back in at the time of scene composition.
* If you have too many objects in the scene, use "Hide" to only display the object(s) you are currently working on. You can use "Show" anytime to display the entire scene. The graphics will be much faster this way.
* If you don't want to use "Hide" because you want to see the relative positions of objects, in the viewer pop-up menu, use "Draw Style - Bounding Box" or "Points" to display objects as a rectangular box, or using points, respectively. This will speed up display.
* When you have texture mapped objects in the scene, in the viewer pop-up, set "Draw Style" to "No Texture" or at least "Move No Texture". This mode allows you to texture objects, but without having to show the texture all the time.
* When you have many, complex objects in the scene, picking and moving can be slow sometimes. Be patient (and follow the other suggestions in this section to minimize your problem).
* "Potter" and "Spline Surfer" can be a little slow for complicated objects. Turn off "Auto-update" in these cases.
* Use less than 5 spline steps in "Potter" and "Spline Surfer". You can bump up the smoothness of objects when you are rendering. The more the number of spline steps, the more the number of polygons to be drawn, and the slower your system will be.
* Try to save files in "EZ3D-INVENTOR" format, in binary form. This is the default, and loading/saving is fastest for this format. Save out in this format anyway, even if your desired output format is something else.
* Try to use "Test Render" instead of "Render" while you are still experimenting. "Render" may take several hours, and should typically be run during non-working hours. Ez3d allows rendering to continue in the background even after you quit out of the program. "Multi-tasking" is all fine, but running a rendering in the background while you are working on Ez3d will slow down both your work, and the rendering. Also, rendering time is dependent on the processing speed of the CPU, and the amount of memory you have.
Known Problems And Work-arounds
* If you have been using Ez3d for several hours at end, you may notice a slowdown in the general interface (especially 3D interaction). Save your work, save the interface settings if you like, and restart Ez3d. You will find an improvement in speed.
* In "Potter" and "Mold", adding and moving points in the middle of the axis spline can be a little troublesome. To overcome this, when you start editing the spline, set up the view so that a spline end-point is directly pickable (without the object geometry coming in between). Move your cursor over the end-point until a green box appears. From then on, the spline editing should work like a charm.
* In "Mirror" and "Slice", the above problem is repeated. Move the cursor over the base of the arrow (lying on the mirror) to "wake up" the spline editor, before you do anything else.
* The 3D manipulators can be difficult to use sometimes, especially if the object is narrow or small. Zoom in closer till the manipulator handles are easily pickable. If this still poses difficulties, use "Attribute - Transform " to accurately scale or position objects.
* In "Potter", moving the cursor over a vertex, and pressing the "d" or "<Delete>" key is one way to delete the vertex. This may not work well sometimes, especially if this is the first action you are doing. To delete a vertex, drag a box around it using the left mouse. Then click on "Delete Region".
* Saving a scene can take up to 10 seconds for complex scenes. If you have "Auto-save at regular intervals" on, this may result in unexpected freezing of your interactions, when the system decides to auto-save. If this is a problem, use "Auto-save after every tool Close" instead, or turn off "Auto Save".
* Texture mapping will not work on grouped objects. You will have to texture map the individual objects separately before grouping them.
* If you have less than 16 Mb of memory, Ez3d will sometimes exit abnormally due to "insufficient memory or swap space". This may happen during "Test Render" of a complicated scene. When you try to "Render" the same scene, the rendering process may also exit due to the same reason. The work-around is to try and render the scene in two or more parts using "Set Sub-Window", and putting the images together using a Paint program. More memory would help too!
