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Hello,

I have been using TVPaint for a few years now (32 bit TV Paint 10 Standard version, on a windows 7 with Intel Core 2 @ 2,4 GHZ with 8 GB RAM)
Today i often make drawings with the following characteristics: size A3, 600 dpi, sometimes up to 15 layers, but mostly single frame. And it is slow unfortunately; up to a point where it has become to slow to continue like this. I want to upgrade, buying a new computer and if necessary a new version of TVPaint also.

Can you kindly advise me on what is best
- do i need to upgrade to 64bit, is that the bottleneck?
- best to stay with Windows or move towards Apple? what type of Apple? iMac or powerbook?
- kindly advise me on OS, CPU and MEM also

Possibly also good to know: most of my drawings are around 100 MB size on disk (but as it's open it needs to handled in memory right?) some drawings reach up to 1 GB size on disk

Just giving information i hope helps you 'size' the system i need.

Thank you in advance

Griet Bertels wrote:Hello,

I have been using TVPaint for a few years now (32 bit TV Paint 10 Standard version, on a windows 7 with Intel Core 2 @ 2,4 GHZ with 8 GB RAM)
Today i often make drawings with the following characteristics: size A3, 600 dpi, sometimes up to 15 layers, but mostly single frame. And it is slow unfortunately; up to a point where it has become to slow to continue like this. I want to upgrade, buying a new computer and if necessary a new version of TVPaint also.

Can you kindly advise me on what is best
- do i need to upgrade to 64bit, is that the bottleneck?
- best to stay with Windows or move towards Apple? what type of Apple? iMac or powerbook?
- kindly advise me on OS, CPU and MEM also

thank you in advance

You mention you have been using TVPaint standard for several years . Have you kept your TVPaint 10 Standard version upgraded so that it is the most recent iteration of TVPaint 10 ? (which is TVPaint 10.5.7 ) If yours is not at version 10.5.7 , the first thing to do would be to upgrade it to take advantage of the improved functions and stability .

Now, about your project, you mention : "I often make drawings with the following characteristics: size A3, 600 dpi, sometimes up to 15 layers, but mostly single frame."

Because there is no DPI in TVPaint projects I assume this means that you draw on paper and scan the drawings , then import the scans in to TVPaint.

A3 paper is 17" x 11" . If you are scanning full size 17" x 11" drawings at 600 DPI then your scan resolution in pixels is 10200 w x 6600 h . That resolution is quite LARGE , more than 4K film resolution , so I wonder if it is truly necessary to have such a large project size ? Even if you are scanning slightly smaller sized drawings on standard 12 Field animation paper (12.5" x 10.5") at 600 DPI the scan resolution in pixels is 7500 w x 6300 h which is still much larger than 4K film resolution. 15 layers of drawings at that large size exposed on 1's is going to tend to cause slow , laggy performance. The only advantage I can see to ever scanning at 600 DPI would be if you needed to have the very high resolution (7500 x 6300 or up to 10200 x 6600) to perform a long zoom-in from a very wide view to a very close view of a character , therefore you need the line resolution to remain very sharp for the duration of the long zoom-in . But this wouldn't be for every scene , so for a normal scene with no close zoom-ins you could scan at a lower resolution which would make your file sizes much smaller so TVPaint will run smoother. Otherwise I can't see the benefit of working at over 4K film resolution 4096 x 3112 (and in fact I'd say for most kind of projects you could work at 2K film resolution of 2048 x 1556 or HDTV resolution of 1920 x 1080 ... in most cases 4K is overkill). TVPaint will run smoother when you use standard pre-set resolutions such as HDTV 1920 x 1080 or 2K Film 2048 x 1556 or 4K Film 4096 x 3112 which are preset project resolutions available in the New Project menu . Even if you feel you need to scan your original A3 size drawings at 600 DPI (resulting in image files that are 10200 x 6600 pixels ) I think you could safely downscale those images by importing them into a smaller TVPaint project size .






I don't have any specific advice on which kind of new computer you should get , except to say I have always preferred to work on Mac OS , so I would recommend Apple computers , but I know others will have a different point of view in favor of Windows (to me the only advantage of Windows is the lower cost of the hardware ; Apple still charges premium prices for their hardware ... which I'm not sure is really justified these days ; older Mac hardware was built very solid and would last for years , but nowadays they seem to use cheaper parts than in the past ) .

As a general rule when upgrading your hardware you should buy a computer with the fastest processor and the most RAM that you can afford .

.

Hello Griet,

I think it is always difficult to advice what kind of computer people should buy. The simplest answer would be "the best you can afford".
I can give you my opinion but of course it is only my point of view.

It definitely would be better to upgrade to the 64bit version of TVPaint because it can handle large files better and faster -I think.

It is up to you if you use Windows or Mac, TVPaint works fine on both of them. I am using MacOS because I cannot stand Windows but everyone has a different opinion on this topic.

If you ask yourself whether to buy iMac or powerbook, well it depends if you have to work "on the go" or always in one place. I would just say the bigger the screen the better.

I think you need at least 16GB of RAM nowadays. It depends on how many programs you are using at once. TVPaint itself uses up to 2GB of RAM on my computer but most of the time only 500MB - 800MB.

In regards to the CPU I would buy Intel i7, the fastest you can afford.

D.T. Nethery wrote:A3 paper is 17" x 11" . If you are scanning full size 17" x 11" drawings at 600 DPI then your scan resolution in pixels is 10200 w x 6600 h . That resolution is quite LARGE , more than 4K film resolution , so I wonder if it is truly necessary to have such a large project size ? Even if you are scanning slightly smaller sized drawings on standard 12 Field animation paper (12.5" x 10.5") at 600 DPI the scan resolution in pixels is 7500 w x 6300 h which is still much larger than 4K film resolution. 15 layers of drawings at that large size exposed on 1's is going to tend to cause slow , laggy performance.

D.T. Nethery wrote:TVPaint will run smoother when you use standard pre-set resolutions such as HDTV 1920 x 1080 or 2K Film 2048 x 1556 or 4K Film 4096 x 3112 which are preset project resolutions available in the New Project menu.

David's right.
Having a 10,200 x 6,600 px project is incredibly huge, and the 32-bits version can't correctly handle projects that size (the 64-bits Professional version could do it).

I'm curious, why do you need to have such dimensions ?

Thierry wrote:

D.T. Nethery wrote:A3 paper is 17" x 11" . If you are scanning full size 17" x 11" drawings at 600 DPI then your scan resolution in pixels is 10200 w x 6600 h . That resolution is quite LARGE , more than 4K film resolution , so I wonder if it is truly necessary to have such a large project size ? Even if you are scanning slightly smaller sized drawings on standard 12 Field animation paper (12.5" x 10.5") at 600 DPI the scan resolution in pixels is 7500 w x 6300 h which is still much larger than 4K film resolution. 15 layers of drawings at that large size exposed on 1's is going to tend to cause slow , laggy performance.

D.T. Nethery wrote:TVPaint will run smoother when you use standard pre-set resolutions such as HDTV 1920 x 1080 or 2K Film 2048 x 1556 or 4K Film 4096 x 3112 which are preset project resolutions available in the New Project menu.

David's right.
Having a 10,200 x 6,600 px project is incredibly huge, and the Standard Edition can't correctly handle projects that size (the Professional version could do it).

I'm curious, why do you need to have such dimensions ?

for animation it is not realistic but i have used resolutions in this order for billboard illustrations.

Peter Wassink wrote:for animation it is not realistic but i have used resolutions in this order for billboard illustrations.

I didn't think of that (rest of my post still stands, the 32-bits version can't correctly handle projects that size :p)

Hello All,

Thank your for your replies.
Something to clarify it seems: I draw mostly still drawings, not animated movies or cartoons. Mostly on order and the output is mostly a printed form, ranging from a postcard to a banner. So the eventual size matters and we calculate back from the size and dpi the customer is going to use or print it on in order to come to a project size. (so no scanning, just large canvasses

What i'm getting from this is:
- go pro
- buy the computer to go with it <= i'm gonna try putting this of, it seems you can just try the 64 bit version, i'll see if that makes a difference

and no i have not kept my version 10 up to date, that might also do some good

Thank you for the advise

Griet Bertels wrote:Hello All,

Thank your for your replies.
Something to clarify it seems: I draw mostly still drawings, not animated movies or cartoons. Mostly on order and the output is mostly a printed form, ranging from a postcard to a banner. So the eventual size matters and we calculate back from the size and dpi the customer is going to use or print it on in order to come to a project size. (so no scanning, just large canvasses

What i'm getting from this is:
- go pro
- buy the computer to go with it <= i'm gonna try putting this of, it seems you can just try the 64 bit version, i'll see if that makes a difference

and no i have not kept my version 10 up to date, that might also do some good

Thank you for the advise

Ok, I misunderstood your first post where you said "I often make drawings with the following characteristics: size A3, 600 dpi, sometimes up to 15 layers, but mostly single frame." I understood "mostly single frame" as referring to up to 15 layers of animation being exposed on single frames ("ON 1's") , not as you intended to mean a single image with up to 15 layers.

Well then, yes, for a single image that is intended to be printed on a large banner then the higher project resolution is necessary , but from what Thierry said it seems that Standard edition can not successfully handle projects as large as 10200 x 6600 .

You have to keep in mind that a 32 bit app can't use more than 4 Gb of memory, whatever the amount of memory you have in your computer.
(The extra memory will be used by the other apps, but that does not help TVPaint).
In fact, on windows it is only 3.5Gb.

One 10200*6600 image takes over 250Mb in memory (.tvp files are compressed (lossless!), and thus smaller).
Multiply that by the number of layers, add a few temporary images TVPaint needs to work, and you are really really close the limits of a 32bit app.

64bit apps can use all the memory you throw at it, even several thousand TERAbytes of RAM...

Clear, thank you