I’m having some problem getting realtime preview in the Camera window.  My scene is too complex (3.5M polys) to realtime preview with any shading method.  On the other hand, if I use extents only, I get 200fps and EI screams through my animation in a fraction of a second.  Is there anyway to slow down extents preview to 1:1 time? (Using v6.5.2)

I think this is a long standing problem.
EIAS should “throttle” the preview to max-out at true real time. Even if it can run at 200fps, it should only play at 30fps (or whatever the project is set to in the time settings).

The only workarounds are to change the shading level (as you have already done), and to turn some groups on and off. Switching from openGL to “software” may also yield some performance difference.

You can always “render” a preview (at any shading level) by right (control) clicking on the preview icon and set it to save the preview out to a quicktime file. This should “render” very quickly, and play back properly.

Try turning on the Drop Frames checkbox in the preview options dialog box. That should throttle back the preview speed.

Thanks Matt-
I always assumed that “drop frames” only worked the other way- to speed up the preview.

Matt Hoffman - 30 April 2007 01:07 AM

Try turning on the Drop Frames checkbox in the preview options dialog box. That should throttle back the preview speed.

Super! It works! Thank you!  (But that’s completely counter-intuitive to how it *should* work) :/ Who would ever want to preview their animation at 200fps?