Why do I have a low frame rate?

There are several reasons why your frame rate (fps) might be low, resulting in single frames being strongly noticeable when moving in Enscape. Ray-traced sun shadows are also a GPU-memory intensive feature. When there is not enough available GPU memory left, the feature will be disabled automatically. It can be re-enabled after restarting the renderer. However, you should make sure to free up some GPU memory before trying to enable it again. Let’s look at some suggestions you could try apart from upgrading the GPU to a model with more VRAM.

Your computer’s system specifications are too low


Optimize your scene

The memory requirement depends on the amount of geometry in the scene. You could try to simplify the scene by (temporarily) removing some geometry not required for the export (video/still image) you want to create.

  • This is especially true for highly tessellated models imported into the scene, i.e. models with a large number of triangles. The Enscape assets are designed to be of high quality with an optimized number of triangles.
  • When we receive some of your projects that have problems with reflections/shadows not showing up, most of the time we find some pretty triangle-heavy objects that are too small to even notice their geometric quality. These objects would offer the same visual quality if their triangulations were halved and they would free up space for other objects to be used.
  • One way to do this is to hide most of your scene’s objects and show them one by one or group by group based on what is actually needed for the shots until the memory error appears. This can be an implicit way to find which objects have the heaviest impact on the scene.
  • Another consumer of video memory are textures. While Enscape tries to optimize texture resolution depending on the use of the texture within the project, you can gain a lot of video memory by:

    • reducing the number of textures in the scene, e.g. by reusing the same texture (maybe with a tint color or with a different mapping) on multiple objects. If the same texture is used on multiple objects that texture will only consume video memory once.
    • reducing the resolution of textures. In some cases the resolution of a texture can be reduced without visual impact, i.e. if the textured geometry is never viewed in a close-up. Also, tiling textures can be used instead of large un-tiled textures in some cases.

 

Lower the quality level


Higher quality levels have a greater demand on GPU memory. Depending on your needs, you can reduce the quality level in Enscape. Ray traced sun shadows are available in all quality levels, so it might be an option to switch to a lower quality level to free GPU memory for ray traced sun shadows.


Rendering Quality slider within the Main settings tab


Your screen resolution is too high

You can increase your real-time performance by simply adjusting the size of the Enscape window. However, when you are wanting to render an image out, make sure that the Resolution is set to the desired resolution for the final render, and not set to Window. Here you can see that the Capture Resolution is set to FullHD, which is the equivalent of ‘1080p’. Higher resolutions also increase the GPU usage. When the resolution is changed we not only scale the image that we are generating but also a lot of secondary resources stored on the GPU. These resources help with the lighting calculations or transparency, etc.


Resolution settings within the Output tab


Further Performance Settings

Under the General Settings – Rendering tab, Enscape provides further options to enhance performance:

Image Quality Options

Ray-Traced Sun Shadows – Enabling this will enable ray-tracing for sun shadows instead of using shadow maps and will provide a higher level of shadow detail. Semi-transparent geometry will cast shadows with the opacity and tint color, or base color and texture of a glass material, contributing to the appearance of the shadows.

NOTE: this feature may result in a significant increase of the GPU’s VRAM. It’s recommended to disable this feature to resolve issues rendering super high resolution / panoramas / video.

NVIDIA Shadow Denoiser – Reduces the noise in soft shadows along the edges, particularly during camera movement, at the expense of rendering time. The denoiser will not be used in rest mode and for captures. Activate both Ray-Traced Sun Shadows and the NVIDIA Shadow Denoiser for optimal rendering outcomes.

Grass/Carpet Rendering – When disabled, a slight performance increase can be had, but carpet and grass geometry will not be rendered.


Hardware Features

Hardware-accelerated Ray-Tracing – In cases where RTX is causing memory issues. RTX is enabled by default and a restart of Enscape will be required when toggling this feature.

Ray-Traced Artificial Light (Beta) – Enabling this Beta feature will apply Ray-Tracing to Artificial Light sources instead of using shadow maps and will provide a higher level of shadow detail. At High Rendering Quality or above, the effects of semi-transparent geometry are also visible.

This feature may result in a significant increase of the GPU’s VRAM. It’s recommended to disable this feature to resolve issues rendering super high resolution / panoramas / video.

NVIDIA DLSS – Deep Learning Super Sampling is an RTX technology that uses AI to boost frame rates, meaning high resolutions can be used whilst maintaining a solid frame rate.

Auto Exposure needs to be enabled in the Visual Settings when DLSS is activated.

Restmode – When enabled, animations will stop a few seconds after you cease movement in the Enscape viewport. Animated models potentially use a lot more GPU memory than non-animated ones. Switching off wind by reducing its intensity to zero in visual settings also allows Enscape to optimize that and handle animated vegetation the same way as non-animated models and potentially reducing the memory footprint.


If DLSS appears not to be functioning for you, please make sure you are running the very latest GPU drivers, as recommended here, and also make sure that Auto Exposure in the Visual Settings is enabled.

If you have a machine that has an NVIDIA RTX 30XX GPU as the dedicted GPU, but also has an iGPU (CPU) from the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H and AMD Ryzen 9 5900 range and DLSS is causing issues, then you will also need to additionally install the AMD Q21.6.2 driver to resolve the issue.

DLSS and Hardware Accelerated Ray Tracing is not supported on the NVIDIA GTX 1660 product line and although the GTX 1660 cards can run RTX features, you will likely experience many performance issues. Therefore, it will be disabled in version 4.0 and above. Users with previous versions of Enscape can still use it (performance issues may occur). The same applies to NVIDIA T1000 and T2000 graphics cards. In this scenario we highly recommend disabling RTX for these GPU’s.


Monitor your GPU's Performance

Although Enscape does not offer a way to natively monitor your GPU performance, it is possible via other methods to get some idea about the GPU performance whilst Enscape is running. The following suggestions may not give you totally accurate statistics but do go some way to monitor GPU performance in the first instance.

Check the Windows default Task Manager application or the Activity Monitor app on macOS. Shown here is the Process tab, which is the default tab on opening the Windows Task Manager, and you can see this machine is running SketchUp. Enscape is a treated as a slave to the CAD and is therefore not listed. Always look for the CAD you are running to get an idea of what is using the GPU.


Windows Task Manager Process Tab



GPU memory is a shared resource in a computer. All running applications share the same memory. If there are multiple applications running that use GPU memory, closing some of them might free up enough GPU memory.

Clicking on the Performance tab will give you a view on the hardware performance. For Enscape, the GPU is the main resource used, and are the areas you may want to observe.


Windows Task Manager Performance Tab



Of course, the Task Manager does not provide any kind of on-screen overlay, so will take up valuable screen space. Therefore, a better solution could be the native GPU software that AMD and NVIDIA make available to its users.

For NVIDIA its either the NVIDIA GeForce Experience package, or the Quadro Experience package (depending on which NVIDIA model you have installed).

For AMD either the Pro or Radeon software is available.

All of the above provide a Performance area that should also be available as an on-screen overlay that can help you monitor your GPU’s performance whilst Enscape is running and may assist you in troubleshooting issues yourself in the first instance.


Example of Overlay (NVIDIA shown here)


How can I decrease the loading time?

For some projects, Enscape’s initial loading time can take a few minutes whilst it loads all the information required.

Loading time is also determined by how quickly the CAD software can communicate the content of the project. The more complex your project is in the CAD software, the longer it may take for Enscape to load. To shorten loading times, try the following:

  • In Revit use the Section Box function which will reduce the amount of information being communicated.
  • Hide small yet detailed objects, such as cables, triggers, pipes, etc.
  • Use a dedicated SSD for your CAD installation and project files.
  • Upgrade your computer. Exporting time is limited by your CPU, RAM and hard disk speed.
  • Download the newest version of Enscape as we’re continuously working on improving the loading time.