Anyone using 4K displays for 3d?

[malexander]

Also, I wouldn't recommend running a 4K monitor with Houdini on a graphics card with less than 3GB of VRAM. Just the framebuffers for the interface take ~650MB (no AA, 800MB for 4x AA), and Windows itself idles at 235MB of GPU memory use (according to GPU-z). 8.3 million pixels takes its toll

 

I'm hoping that anyone that drops over $1G on a cutting-edge monitor probably isn't going to buy a $200 graphics card, but a warning just in case.

[magneto]

Ok I didn't know you got 24" on purpose

 

In that case does Houdini distinguish the size of the display you are using? Because if you are using 4K on 24" vs 32" for instance, the UI would compensate? I don't know if there is any info on a system about display size. Resolution, I understand, but the display size should also come into effect I think.

 

Before I didn't understand how the UI could look more detailed, but after seeing the image, I think I get it now. So this in essence like rendering the UI in a very high res image and then downscaling it to show on a smaller device? Because that image you posted looked very good on my phone

 

Also, I wouldn't recommend running a 4K monitor with Houdini on a graphics card with less than 3GB of VRAM. Just the framebuffers for the interface take ~650MB (no AA, 800MB for 4x AA), and Windows itself idles at 235MB of GPU memory use (according to GPU-z). 8.3 million pixels takes its toll

 

I'm hoping that anyone that drops over $1G on a cutting-edge monitor probably isn't going to buy a $200 graphics card, but a warning just in case.

 

So GTX 780 should be fine? Don't be surprised though as someone can only replace their monitor without changing their gfx card and not realize 4K requires massive GPU power.

 

 

Lastly would you recommend someone to replace a regular 30" lcd (2560x1600) for a 30" 4K lcd monitor? Apart from looking nice, can you emulate the same thing on non-4K to make things smaller? I don't know if it would be less legible to be used though.

[malexander]

In that case does Houdini distinguish the size of the display you are using? Because if you are using 4K on 24" vs 32" for instance, the UI would compensate?

 

System-specific API calls to grab the DPI are needed to set up a good, initial UI size.

 

So GTX 780 should be fine? Don't be surprised though as someone can only replace their monitor without changing their gfx card and not realize 4K requires massive GPU power.

 

I'd think so. There's also some mid-to-high end cards that pack extra VRAM that some manufacturers release.

 

Lastly would you recommend someone to replace a regular 30" lcd (2560x1600) for a 30" 4K lcd monitor?

 

I wouldn't, that's still a pretty nice monitor. But I'd switch to a single 4K before purchasing another 30" LCD to do dual-monitors. Incidentally, the 4K has more pixels than two 2560x1600 monitors. The only thing I'm not a huge fan of is the 16:9 ratio vs. 16:10. I prefer the extra few vertical lines, since I never watch movies on a computer monitor.

 

You could shrink the UI (say, Small UI size) on a 2560x1600 monitor, but what 4K brings to the table is the ability to effectively shrink the UI. On the QHD monitor, the smaller text will definitely be harder to read than the same physically-sized text on 4K, and that slightly fuzzy text will increase eyestrain. Since eyesight is pretty important to any visual effects artist, I think it'd be better to go with a slightly larger UI footprint than do something that'd damage eyesight. But everyone has their own level of comfort

[magneto]

Thanks Mark, that makes sense. I have 2 30"s though, so not gonna add another one for the time being It's astonishing to see 4K has more pixels than dual 30". I also prefer 16:10 like you, but they seem to favor wide displays for some reason.

[freaq]

16:9 cheaper to produce (has to do with how the panels get "cut" from a substrate apparantly)
I personally would rather have 2 monitors at lower res then 1 big one, just because it's so easy to dock things and use multiple windows.
I now have 3 screens one crappy 1024-1280 a 1920-1200 and the 4K screen, and the smaller screens are still super usefull.

(for example when making a .otl UI or for windows like the performance monitor etc.)

Edited May 8, 2014 by freaq

[malexander]

I've notice some issues waking from sleep with the Dell 24" and the FirePro W8000 (w/latest driver). It either:

• wakes from sleep just fine (50%)
• never gets a signal (40%)
• wakes begrudgingly but all windows are sized very small in the upper right, as if the res was changed to 1280x1024 or something like that.

If you're on Windows 7 and don't get a signal, you can shutdown the machine safely (and blindly) by pressing: Ctrl+Alt+Del, 6x Down arrow, Right Arrow, Enter. I'm hoping this is just an AMD issue, but I'll try an Nvidia card shortly.

[magneto]

Thanks for updating us Mark. The avid and 4K-display-wannabes are using Houdini vicariously though your updates

[freaq]

I'm on a gtx 660 on windows 7 x64 and I don't seem to have this issue.
not sure if it's the monitor or the videocard though.

[Guest tar]

Is anyone running Nuke on a 4K monitor too?

[Guest tar]

OsX 10.9.3 released with proper 4K support

 

leases-os-x-10-9-3-software-update-with-improved-4k-display-support-contacts-and-calendar-syncing-improvements-more/

[edward]

wakes begrudgingly but all windows are sized very small in the upper right, as if the res was changed to 1280x1024 or something like that.

 

I get this with the 30" monitor using DisplayPort. I forget what the actual resolution is but it's actually just in the registry because there's a predefined maximum resolution that it goes into when sleeping. When I first got my monitor, it really annoyed me too. As far I as recall, what fixed it was looking for magic numbers in the registry and changing them all into my actual display resolution.

[Neil78]

I feel woefully inadequate; with my 24 inches.

[malexander]

I've switched the monitor over to my Linux system now (Linux Mint 16, Cinnamon, GEForce GTX690). Some things weren't quite as nice as Windows, but it works fairly well.

• Instead of setting a "global font size", you can set a font scale, plus basic font sizes for various font types (document, system, monospace, etc). Apps are completely hit or miss as to whether they obey these sizes or not (firefox didn't scale the tab, bookmark and URL text well, for example). The panel sizes were easy enough to change and worked well. At least for apps that don't scale well, the small text is clear enough that it's still very easily read

• The mouse cursor size isn't exposed in the GUI for the prefs. Instead, you need to do "gsettings set org.cinnamon.desktop.interface cursor-size 40" in order to get a reasonable visible cursor (24 is the default; 40 worked for me).
• The big kicker is that X sees a DP1.2 MST display as 2 X screens, as if you're working on dual monitors. So, unfortunately you get multi-monitor issues using a single monitor. Not cool. For example, Houdini will not start at 3800x2100 -- it is restricted to 1900x2100. It also started up with the "primary" monitor being the right half of the screen, and the secondary being the left, so there was an invisible mouse cursor barrier in the middle of the screen which it could not pass (moving off the right edge of the monitor warped the cursor to the left edge). Easy enough to fix by editing the monitor layout in the Displays section, but a bit off-putting when you first boot up.
• Because it sees the monitor as two screens, the panel is only half-width. Still working on figuring out this one, but it's not a dealbreaker (Houdini starting up 1/2 width is, IMO).

So, overall, my experience is a little worse on Linux than Win7. I think that if you're on Linux and interested in a 4K display, you may want to pick up a single-scaler 4K display (the Dell 24" uses 2 scalers, as does the 32" and the ASUS 32") so X sees the monitor as a single screen.

[magneto]

I would have thought linux would be better than win7 for this but guess not

 

How are you gonna configure Houdini so it looks the same across multiple platforms? Will you need to detect the OS name and use hand-tweaked settings on startup? Because I can see that being a nightmare for multiple linux flavors, not sure if the DPI settings change from one to another though.

 

Also for ultimate 4K experience, would you please consider adding an option to hide the main window title bar? Hiding the start taskbar is easy in Windows, but the title bar still shines when you have a dark theme. It would be really cool if we could hide this. Max has an option to do so, and I believe some compositing apps too.

 

Then you would see a complete Houdini desktop on your display effectively

[Guest tar]

 

 

Then you would see a complete Houdini desktop on your display effectively

 

 

Try 

 

Cntrl-C to tear off a copy of the viewport/pane then make the Floating Panel 'Fullscreen Panel' from the top right circle-arrow

 

works on mac to get rid of the menu bar.

[malexander]

Houdini itself looks the same between platforms, as long as you select the same UI size. Houdini has been able to scale its UI almost since version 1.0 (with varying degrees of success). It's the rest of the apps and system that's a bit of a hodge-podge of different font sizes and scales. The inability of an application to span multiple screens on startup has been a thorn in my side since H9; certain window managers on Linux simply will not allow you to do it. Starting via "houdini -geometry=3800x2100" will still clamp to a single "screen" - half of the width of the monitor.

 

As for hiding the titlebar, it could probably be done, but that's where most of the platform-specific coding would come in. We'd basically have to recreate window draging, minimize, maximize, close, etc. It's fairly straight-forward stuff, but very platform specific. The window title is a waste of space on widescreen displays where vertical resolution is at a premium, I agree.

[magneto]

Thanks alot guys.

 

@Marty: That option doesn't show in the main application window. Does it show on yours? Because the panes inside the main window are not considered floating. I do exactly what you are showing for a floating pane that shows the viewport on my second display though. So I have no title bar on my second display, only the first one.

 

I even tried stripping all panes from the main application window and hosting these in another floating window set to full screen, but the left over main application window created some problems. I think Houdini doesn't expect people to do this

 

@Mark: I also tried to start Houdini spanning multiple displays when I first started using H11, but couldn't do it because of Windows 7. From what I read, you needed the Nvidia option which was only available in XP? Or you needed SLI I think. But I might be way off.

 

Can you do this in Win 7 using H13 right now? Because you said only linux doesn't allow it.

 

For hiding the title bar, if you do it like Max, then you wouldn't have to worry about platform specific coding if I am not wrong Basically in Max you go into "Expert Mode" and everything is hidden including the title bar so then you can't move the window, only resize using the edge of the window. You can get out of the Expert Mode using the same hotkey. You can also close Max while in Expert Mode using Alt+F4 too. No minimize or maximize while in this mode though.

 

But I assume you want to make it in a way it's always hidden and the name of the app is in the same line as the menu bar? Because that would ultimately be the best way, just more work, which is why I didn't ask for it

 

So you dream something like this?:

 

Edited May 18, 2014 by magneto

[Guest tar]

Yep - it's only for floating panel - there's quite a few RFE for the 'full screen' mode of OsX Lion+

 

Re Os X 4k support docs; A whopping 24 Hz for 4k pixels but looks better for MST. on non-latest macs & only for the latest Macs? Hope that is just a setting we'll have to enable -

 

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht6008

 

Edited. - getting used to what is supported in 4k land

Edited May 18, 2014 by tar

[Guest tar]

I've switched the monitor over to my Linux system now (Linux Mint 16, Cinnamon, GEForce GTX690). Some things weren't quite as nice as Windows, but it works fairly well.3800x2100 -- it is restricted to 1900x2100. It also started up with the

 

 

Would Mint 17 change anything for Houdini?

 

"HiDPI/Retina Display support

Cinnamon 2.2 comes with HiDPI support.

A lot of work went into this but there isn’t much to say about it… it just works well in high-resolution"

 

http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_qiana_cinnamon_whatsnew.php

Edited May 18, 2014 by tar

[malexander]

A lot of work went into this but there isn’t much to say about it… it just works well in high-resolution"

 

Yeah, I know what they're talking about all too well The next version of Houdini is singificantly more streamlined for High DPI than H13.

 

Would Mint 17 change anything for Houdini?

 

Not really. Other than not being able to query things like cursor and DPI size (which means the user has to manually set the UI Size and Display Options; once they're set, Houdini's good to go), Houdini works well in Mint16. It's the rest of the system that would benefit from a Mint 17 upgrade. For example,  I can adjust the window titlebar font but the min/max/close button icons remain microscopic. The cursor changes size based on the app you're in, and is generally tiny. The bottom/top panels won't span the screen. Stuff like that.

 

The fact that Houdini won't span dual monitors is an Xorg or Window Manager issue, and this wouldn't really be a problem if I had a 4K monitor with a single scaler. AFAIK, there isn't anything that can be done in Houdini about this.