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orangemittens1's avatar
orangemittens1
9 years ago

Question about some animated objects

Hi @SimGuruModSquad, I have a question about 2 of the animated objects that came with the Get To Work expansion. The first is the Momentum Conserver and the second is the Hover Lamp. Both are rotating items and the animation for both seems to stutter. After noticing this in my game I asked a couple other people to test these items in their game and they noticed the same problem. This stuttering, or brief slowing/halting of the animation, occurs whether the items are placed singly or in groups but it is most noticeable when they are in groups because then they all stutter at the same time. I've taken a short in-game video at three different game speeds to illustrate what I mean:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=C8WfecxSwQE&feature=youtu.be

In this video you can see that the rotation of the items, whether at normal size or using the enlarge feature, is irregular and seems to hang up or stutter at certain points. When the stutter occurs it affects every instance of the objects at exactly the same time. The first time it occurs is just before the 0:13 second mark but it occurs throughout the video at all speeds. This video was taken with the mouse on a firm, stationary surface and the animation is not being affected by movement around, toward, or away from the objects.

If the clip resource for these items is exported to a 3D editor and looped this stutter does not occur so it doesn't seem to be a problem inherent to the animation itself. This is a Blender render of the Momentum Conserver clip on a loop and it does not have a stutter built in:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Afc-wJxtC5I

These two items are the only two I could find in Sims 4 that have a clip resource that is intended to provide the appearance of a smooth 360 degree revolution of the object in the game. Neither will animate properly in the game. I'm wondering what the cause of this animation problem is and if there is any way to fix it.
  • orangemittens1's avatar
    orangemittens1
    9 years ago
    This is a a txt of my computer specs: https://dropbox.com/s/55580dkf05wkg26/DxDiag.txt?dl=1

    This is a txt of my lower end test computer specs: https://dropbox.com/s/ifxvr95xpstv0mb/DxDiag_LowerEnd.txt?dl=1

    I ran the fps cheat using my computer with high graphics settings and my frame rate is consistently running over 110 fps except for the brief moment where it falls to about 50 fps and the objects stutter.

    I ran the fps cheat on a lower quality test computer with high graphics settings with an average fps of about 30. At that fps the object was spinning smoothly. That computer had a momentary decline in fps to about 20 that coincided with the stutter.

    I altered the graphics settings on my lower quality test computer and it can run both objects with minimal stutter (although stutter does rarely occur). At this setting I was also able to move the mouse without disturbing the animation which was not possible with my higher end computer on normal graphics settings or on the low end computer with normal settings. In general, moving the view around disturbs the rotation animation no matter which computer I use. Only lowering the settings caused an improvement to that problem.

    If there is any more information I can provide about this animation problem I'm happy to. It doesn't seem to be related to absolute fps as much as it's related to relative fps. The only thing that seems to fix it is altering game settings to unacceptably low graphic quality but even that does not fix this problem completely.
  • orangemittens1's avatar
    orangemittens1
    9 years ago

    Thank you for answering. I tried locking the frame rate to 30 fps on my higher end computer first and I am still seeing the stutter. I ran it with the fps counter cheat on. The fps was generally 29-30 and the object's animations were running smoothly. Then the fps would drop to anywhere between 18-25 fps and these drops corresponded with a stutter. I could not see any pattern to the sudden decrease in fps. I can try this again on the lower end computer if you think there would be some information to be gained but since it didn't work on my better one it didn't seem like that would be helpful.

    I've run all these tests with Sims on the lot but locked out of the house so they wouldn't run through the room while I was trying to run the test. The next thing I tried tonight was removing autonomy from the Sims and sending them all off the lot. This didn't seem to have any effect positive or negative on the function of the spinning object.

    Is the issue that my computer is simply not high end enough to run the game properly? If so which specs might be too low to run the spinning items smoothly and how high should they be to be sure of having spinning animations work?
  • SimGuruModSquad's avatar
    SimGuruModSquad
    9 years ago
    Hi @_orangemittens_ ,

    Looks like what you are seeing is a performance spike causing a rendering hitch, basically a performance issue. These types of spikes could happen for any number of reasons and we try and reduce\eliminate them as much as possible, but on lower end machines in particular they are more prone to happen. If happening on a higher end machine then that is more of a concern.

    What FPS are you at when running these tests? (run the cheat "fps on" to see the FPS counter)

    To test the performance theory, you could try reducing your graphics quality settings and see if that improves the stuttering.

    -SGMS
  • SimGuruModSquad's avatar
    SimGuruModSquad
    9 years ago
    Thanks OM,

    On your higher end computer, is the drop to 50 fps (and corresponding stutter) happen regularly or is it random?

    Another thing to try would be to lock the fps on your lower end machine to say 30fps and see if that gives you smoothness. You can do this via the file Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Options.ini setting frameratelimit. It defaults to 200fps, just change that number and restart the game.

    So yeah this lack of smoothness is due to a performance spike, these can be tricky to address because sometimes the game just needs to do extra work on a particular frame. I'll do some profiling to see if there is something unexpected going on though.

    -SGMS
  • orangemittens1's avatar
    orangemittens1
    9 years ago

    Hey @SimGuruModSquad, sorry for the bump but I'm wondering where you are on looking into the performance spike you mentioned and what computer specs are necessary to have the GTW spinning items function properly in the game.
  • orangemittens1's avatar
    orangemittens1
    9 years ago

    Hey @SimGuruModSquad , sorry to bump this yet again, but it's been several months and I'm wondering if you've had a chance to look into the performance spike issue.

    I was prompted to ask because of the recent release of the spinning flowers item in the new Stuff Pack. This object uses a shader to allow the spinning instead of clip animation but the shader spin is affected by the performance spike in the same way animated items are. This problem causes the flower item in my game to stutter to the point where it is visually distracting.

    Above it seemed as if you were suggesting that this stuttering/performance spiking is a problem with my computer, although my computer is within the specs for running Sims 4 and can run other games with animated items. If that is the case, though, I'm interested in knowing what I would need to have, spec-wise, to have the game's animations run as they're intended to run. I would like to know this, not only for my information but so that I know what to tell other people who are running into this same glitchy appearance with the Sims 4 animated and shader-animated objects.

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