Does somebody really use Toxik in feature film production with satisfaction?!

[Anonymous]

Depressing experience with Toxik! Or does somebody really use Toxik in feature film production with satisfaction?!

I’ve been trying toxik since january 2008, starting with the fxphd 103 course and I found it to be a nice application. Actually the one I chose to replace shake.
After the course I’ve used Toxik to do some keying and small composition and it still worked fine.
BUT since a month I am using Toxik 2009 in a feature film production (2K) and I have BIG issues with performance, stability, reliability and bugs.
One of the numerous problem comes from the CC Basics tool. If you use 1 or 2 in the comp everything is fine, but I have to match the footage with the cg for set extension and I need ten or more of the CC Basics tool, which leads to “forever cycling” (something like 20-30 seconds) before I can see the result of any slitly change. Not to mention that every ten modification it crashes.
But the CC tool is unfortunately not the only tool that is buggy. The Motio node is unstable, crashing a lot of time and/or “cycling for ever”, same kind of stuff with the Reaction node, and Tracking tool is also unstable, and that is even worst when you have all of them in one comp…
Even a Garbage mask containing a nice Roto made of someting like a dozen of shape will show performance drop like it shouldn’t have.
I’ve seen bugs on maxing two alpha channels!!!! Also don’t clik on the schematic after be on the Tracking node or it will crasch immediately. I have been able to count up to 37 crash in one day of work!! Ah, and almost forgot, the best part: when you have finished your comp you might not be able to render it. I have encounter a lot of render problem: would start but never finished stocked somewhere on a frame; had to shut down toxik and try to render again, normally the second time it renders but sometimes it just won’t…ahhh man.

Understand me correctly I really like Toxik’s interface, concept, logic, and the tools, but in my experience it is simply not ready for production.

Computer:
Windows Vista 64bit Business SP1
Dual Xeon X5460 @ 3.16GHz
8 gig of RAM
Quadro FX4600
Media cache on 3 drives’ raid 0 (around 200MB/s)

Thanks for your reactions,
antoine.

[karan]

hey antoine,

you might want to cross post your question here: http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewforum/116
because there are developers looking into that forum from time to time.

best,
rayk

[summerJ]

hi we use toxik in a feature film enviroment. i never came across these problems you mentioned. but i wouldn´t go with vista. i was on xp 64bit and now im on rh which is way better. i saw some strange behavior under vista. are you rendering local or of a farm?

all the best nanuk

[philnolan3d]

I’ve been using Toxik in production for a year a half now. Mostly on commercials. I just ran into that problem with the color correctors on a job I just finished. Hopefully they’ll have a fix for it in the service pack coming up. I didn’t have that problem with 2008. Other than that and the occasional crash I don’t have many problems working with Toxik. Its been working so well that I’ve shifted doing all my heavy compositing from Flame to Toxik. Still gotta use the Flame for client show and tell though.

Nanuk is probably right. Going with either xp64 or rh will be better than Vista. Vista sucks. I have major problems with a lot of software in Vista that work fine in xp64. Might want to get more ram too since Toxik is set to only use half of your ram unless you tell it otherwise.

Mike

[Filipp Lepalaan]

@nanuk 27303 wrote:

hi we use toxik in a feature film enviroment. i never came across these problems you mentioned. but i wouldn´t go with vista. i was on xp 64bit and now im on rh which is way better. i saw some strange behavior under vista. are you rendering local or of a farm?

all the best nanuk

We have tried XP64 but it doesn’t seem to be better. And we have been told by Patrick Turcotte from autodesk that running toxik under linux won’t resolve our problems.

But I am like you, I don’t like vista and would really go for redhat rather than windows, but that is not my choice. Put more ram is also not my choice (I would go for 16GB at least…)

Nanuk, have you done a lot of CC on your comp, like ten Basics CC one after the other?
Do you use a motio node to add motion blur to the matte? How heavy are your comp?

I am rendering localy, mostly with forward rendering. All projects files, footage&cg and rendered files goes to the server.

Thanks for your inputs,
antoine.

[summerJ]

@fantasio 27305 wrote:

We have tried XP64 but it doesn’t seem to be better. And we have been told by Patrick Turcotte from autodesk that running toxik under linux won’t resolve our problems.

But I am like you, I don’t like vista and would really go for redhat rather than windows, but that is not my choice. Put more ram is also not my choice (I would go for 16GB at least…)

Nanuk, have you done a lot of CC on your comp, like ten Basics CC one after the other?
Do you use a motio node to add motion blur to the matte? How heavy are your comp?

I am rendering localy, mostly with forward rendering. All projects files, footage&cg and rendered files goes to the server.

Thanks for your inputs,
antoine.

hey antoine,
if done heavy composting with txk (greescreen, roto, 3d tracking in reaction, cc, etc). motio at some points. not soooo often to be honest. donno if i had 10 cc´s in one comp but over 6 for sure. wasn´t a prob under rh ws5 64bit. i have 8 gb ram and a quadcore. fx 4600 as gpu. in earlier versions of toxik i had render issues but not under 2009. i´m not at the office at the moment. when i´m back on monday i will try to give it a stress test.

all the best nanuk

[summerJ]

hey antoine,

i gave txk another stress test with cc`s till you drop, motio and blurs. don´t have your mentioned issues. what are the tech spec of your machine?

nanuk

[Filipp Lepalaan]

See below link: the image is a print screen of one kind of typical comp that will low down performance like hell if not make toxik crach.

This is because there is 9 “Basic CC” tool one after the other that color correct different part of the cgi. On this comp I think that this color correction are the only problem. We have warned Autodesk and are in contact and what I understood is that they admit there is a problem. But it seems they haven’t found it. The beta version of the first service pack for 2009 (the released version is not out yet) don’t resolve the problem.

Tech sepcs are:
Computer:
Windows Vista 64bit Business SP1
Dual Xeon X5460 @ 3.16GHz
8 gig of RAM
Quadro FX4600
Media cache on 3 drives’ raid 0 (around 200MB/s)

thanks,
antoine.

[summerJ]

hmm, donno man. the comp does not look that complex. i dont have any issues. what are the files you are using. dpx, exr….?

[Julius Cortez]

Hey Antoine.

Been following this thread closely.

I’ve been using Toxik since 1.0 and with recent releases have been on the box fulltime (Post 2007ext1). For the record, apart from doing classes at FXPHD in XP, I’m using linux64, which has historically been the most dependable.

I’ve had really good results so far, done a lot of projects (features, commercials, cinematics etc), and on setups that are larger than the screenshot you provided, so I can understand your disappointment, looks pretty basic. :rolleyes:

NOw some usefull info (I hope), I remember a comp a collegue of mine did a year ago on 2008 that had the same issue, so it’s not new, but it’s a rare thing. At the time, I took a look at it and, much like you, came to the conclusion that a chain of color corrects with masking input were to blame.

Here’s some toxik rules of thum I follow that you can try (you never know):

Whenever you use a garbage mask node, unless you have a reason not to, be sure to crop you garbage masks to the resolution you are working at. If you don’t, Toxik will process more info that it really needs to since the AUTO CROP uses adaptive frame sizing…

You can make this the default behavior by saving it as a preference in the output tab.

The same reasoning applies to 2dtransforms etc…

If that doesn’t work, please do send the setup through support so they can get this sucker fixed once and for all.:)

And to respond to the post title, yes people use Toxik for features with satisfaction, don’t let this one thing discourage you. 😀

Sebastien

[Filipp Lepalaan]

yeah dpx from the scan and exr from cg, both @ 2k. And I aggree this is not a complex comp, but the cc are killing me.

We are in contact with autodesk support but we still have the same issue. I will use my week-end to try to install centos of fedora on the machine to see if it is only related to windows.

Thanks for your feedback and help.

[Filipp Lepalaan]

yeah dpx from the scan and exr from cg, both @ 2k. And I aggree this is not a complex comp, but the cc are killing me.

We are in contact with autodesk support but we still have the same issue. I will use my week-end to try to install centos or fedora on the machine to see if it is only related to windows.

Thanks for your feedback and help.

[summerJ]

go with fedora. i had pretty good experience with it. i think 8 is recommended but take a look in the tec specs.
dpx and exr should be faster then any other format. 95% of the work i do is based on these files @2k and txk is flying with it. the things seb mention are really to be kept in mind!

nanuk

[Tanner Wickware]

@fantasio 27347 wrote:

See below link: the image is a print screen of one kind of typical comp that will low down performance like hell if not make toxik crach.

[

Hi Antoine,

I just wanted to let you know that the performance issue that you encountered with this composition has been reproduced and is now fixed. It was actually not related to the CC Basics tool itself but to the repeated use of the masking input, which might explain why other users have not encountered this issue. I will you with the details, but we will make sure this fix is included in an upcoming service pack.

Thanks for your feedback,

Charles Martin (Toxik development manager)

[Filipp Lepalaan]

Hi Seb,

Thanks for your input. I haven’t had the pleasure to meet you but had the one to listen to you in the 103 class. And I was kind of waiting your post, knowing you seemed very enthousiast about toxik on this course. And as I am already “adicted” to toxik UI, tools and workflow, yeah it helps that you jump and tell me “don’t let this one thing discourage you” 😉

About the tips, I have the GMask default to “absolute” crop and I set the same for 2D transform tool (BTW I would like to be able to save this preset like for the GMask tool, why is it not there?).

Charles, thanks as well for your input. Very good to know it is fixed. Is this service pack soon out?

Thanks a lot to everybody.

Have a nice one,
antoine.

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