Performance Considerations
Performance Considerations
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.
Your computer’s system specifications are too low
- Enscape renders using only a dedicated GPU. A GPU such as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 series card or higher is recommended and the more VRAM there is on the GPU, the better Enscape will generally perform (although when using VR, the clock speed of the GPU processor is the more limiting factor on the higher end GPU’s required for VR). It’s worth checking our System Requirements from time to time and on each release as these are subject to change.
Your project is too large
- Project size can be, but is not always, an issue. Projects containing a lot of fine tessellated geometry, such as pipes, cables, and furniture, or lots of high-res textures might overwhelm your computer. Hiding small but detailed elements in your project can help.
Performance issues can generally be improved by adjusting the Rendering Quality, under the Visual Settings window – Main tab, to a lower value. We recommend setting this to High if you find performance sub-optimal. This will boost performance by turning off some of the more expensive rendering features.
Setting the Rendering Quality to Draft will give you the best performance, but at the expense of losing reflections.
This will boost performance by turning off some of the more expensive rendering features.
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’.
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 will 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.
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 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.
NOTE: 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.
Further Perfomance Options
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.
The first option is to open the Windows Task Manager application which is included by default in all Windows installations. Just search for ‘Task Manager’ in the Windows search function.
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
Click 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 he 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.
