Zbrush 4R7 Lags when zoomed in close to a mesh?

VickiVampiress

Hi! I've finally managed to gain the courage to try and take on Zbrush, but I'm having a little problem that I can't really find anywhere else online, including at Pixologic's forums.

Basically, whenever I zoom in close to a mesh, created as a tool in draw mode (even if the mesh isn't subdivided), and I translate the object, CPU usage spikes as high as a whopping 80%. This happens regardless of the complexity or subdivision level of the object. Whether it's a sphere, a cube, or a complex, human base mesh. I have no idea what's causing this, cause it's not happening for my friend, who has similar hardware.

I know it's a Zbrush problem, and not my system. Every game and every app I've ran, including Substance Painter at 4k texture resolution runs without a hitch. I'm always afraid that my CPU isn't powerful enough, but with an i7-4790 I don't feel that should be the case, especially when ALL other software runs perfectly.

Any help would be highly appreciated!

EDIT: In case my specs would be of use to anyone:

Windows 10 Pro x64
CP-750 Combat Power PSU
Intel Core i7-4790 3,6 Ghz (4,0 turbo) Quad Core CPU
MSI Z97 Gaming 5 Motherboard
MSI GTX 1070 8GB OC
12GB DDR3 1333 Mhz RAM
500GB Samsung EVO
2x Western Digital 1TB Black

musashidan

Are you running 64bit ZB? What is your document res?

VickiVampiress

Yes, 64 bit. I've been keeping my document res at 1920x1080, which should work fine as far as I (and my friend who has experience with Zbrush) know. Dynamic subdiv in the Geometry tab is also disabled.

pior

I know it's a Zbrush problem, and not my system. Every game and every app I've ran, including Substance Painter at 4k texture resolution runs without a hitch.

Games and Substance apps rely on your videocard ; Zbrush does not, it uses your CPU and ram only. Zbrush slowing down when zooming in is actually regular Zbrush behavior (it's weird and kind of stupid, but that's the way it works). Overall Zbrush performance goes down with large document size and closeup zoom.

Under Preferences > Performance, make sure to turn on "Multidraw" and "QuickAndDirtyEdit". This should boost up performance quite a bit.

VickiVampiress

I'm aware games and Substance Painter rely on the GPU, not the CPU. It was just an example. Any other app that is very CPU intensive runs fine though.

It's kind of dumb how the document size influences so much, although I understand why it's happening.

Anyway, Multidraw and QuickAndDirtyEdit were already enabled. I experimented with those settings, with no real difference, unfortunately.

VickiVampiress

Okay, reducing the document size helps immensely apparently. Kind of a bummer, cause to get it silky smooth I have to go quite low, which just doesn't make sense to me, seeing as any other CPU intensive app runs just fine. Also makes me wonder why Zbrush doesn't use GPU accelerated graphics. Mudbox runs just fine at 8,5 million polygons, yet Zbrush is giving me these issues before I've even really begun.

I think I'll have to deal with it, cause Zbrush just has features that are too good to pass on because of such a relatively minor (albeit annoying) issue. I just hope I can find a sweet spot, or some kind of "fix".

musashidan

Use the old school workaround that some of us here grew up on.   when working on a highres mesh close up, you can setup polygroups on different areas and just ctrl+shift click a region of interest to isolate it. This will speed things up.


Zbrush doesn't work like Mbox because it isn't a true 3d environment. At the time ZB was created the hardware was nothing like todays so Ofer developed it as a workaround to sidestep the limitations of single/dual core cpus and 3gig maximum ram, which enabled us to work on multimillion meshes at a time that it was thought pretty much impossible on a bog standard desktop.

VickiVampiress

Oh yeah, I'm aware of that @musashidan . It's both the thing I like and hate most about Zbrush. I remember reading about how old the Zbrush engine actually was. It's kind of a bummer that it's held back like this, in my opinion. I think it would've been better if they separated the 2D and "3D" environments a bit more, because the combination of the two makes things unnecessarily confusing and unstable.

Good idea about the polygroups though. I suppose I'll just try working around the problem for now. Kind of a bummer though, cause I really like Zbrush's features more than those of Mudbox.