When working with ray-traced 3D compositions, it is important to have the proper hardware installed in your computer to work smoothly. An NVIDIA video display card that has on-board CUDA technology is required for working with ray-traced 3D compositions with GPU acceleration.
The following GPU and OpenGL-based features in After Effects require that features be categorized based on the capabilities of your GPU:
- Ray-traced 3D renderer
- Rendering on the GPU
- Fast Draft previews mode
- Faster blitting to the screen (OpenGL SwapBuffer)
- Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels preference
OpenGL is a set of standards for high-performance processing of 2D and 3D graphics on the graphics processing unit (GPU) for a wide variety of applications. OpenGL provides fast rendering for previews (Fast Draft mode).
After Effects can take advantage of GPU (graphics processing unit) on your graphics card for some specific kinds of processing.
The GPU features in After Effects are of the following 3 categories:
- GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer (CUDA on specific graphics cards)
- Fast Draft mode and Hardware BlitPipe (OpenGL with somewhat stringent requirements)
- OpenGL swap buffer (OpenGL with looser requirements)
Note:
In general, After Effects does not require CUDA features of any specific set of Nvidia GPUs. Only the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer requires this. The other GPU features work on any GPU that meets certain basic requirements, including AMD and Intel GPUs.
OpenGL supports the drawing of interface items, such as, composition, footage, and layer panels. Other drawing functions like grids, guides, rulers, and bounding boxes are now operated by OpenGL, as well. This feature is also known as the Hardware BlitPipe.
To enable OpenGL support for drawing interface items, click the Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels checkbox in Edit > Preferences > Display (Windows), or After Effects > Preferences > Display (Mac OS).
To access the information about the current status of GPU in After Effects, use the following steps:
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In this dialog box, view information about the OpenGL capabilities for your installed GPU. The information helps you determine the feature support levels for your GPU.
Note:
To enable Fast Draft, click the Fast Previews button on the Composition panel, and choose Fast Draft. Fast Draft causes slight appearance differences in the Composition panel, best suited for quick previewing. Fast Draft is useful for setting up, and previewing a composition for later rendering in ray-traced 3D.
Note:
If your GPU is not supported or you have an old driver, ray-traced 3D compositions render on the CPU using all physical cores. If you have a GPU-supported configuration in a headless environment (for example, a render farm), you can force ray-traced 3D compositions to render on the CPU by setting the Ray-tracing option in the GPU Information dialog box. Renders done on the CPU match renders done on the GPU.
Video: Optimizing for high performance
- For OpenGL SwapBuffer: This level requires a GPU that can do OpenGL 1.5, or greater, with Shader Model 3.0, or greater. Most ATI and NVIDIA cards, and the Intel HD Graphics 3000 chipset (available in the MacBook Air, Mac Mini, various Windows machines, etc.) and 4000 (Windows only at this time) are supported. If your GPU does not support these requirements, software OS blitting like CS5.5 occurs, and there are improvements for software blitting in After Effects.
- For Fast Draft previews, Hardware BlitPipe, and Cartoon GPU acceleration: Includes Level 1 features. This level requires OpenGL 2.0, or greater (with Shader Model 4.0, or greater, on Windows), and 256 MB, or greater, of texture memory. Most ATI and NVIDIA cards released in the past five years, plus the Intel HD Graphics 3000/4000, support this level. If your GPU does not support these requirements, these following features are disabled:
- Fast Draft mode
- The Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage panels preference.
- The Cartoon effect's Use OpenGL When Available option (the Cartoon effect then runs on the CPU).
- For Ray-traced 3D rendering on the GPU: Includes Level 1 & 2 features (for machines with attached monitors). This level requires a supported NVIDIA GPU and 512 MB, or greater, of texture memory. For a list of supported GPUs, see the Adobe website.
Before working with After Effects and CUDA features, install the latest video driver for your NVIDIA GPU:
- Windows: Install the latest WHQL-certified driver for your GPU: http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html
- Mac OS: Install the NVIDIA CUDA driver (v4.0.50 or later): http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html
You can update the CUDA driver in the CUDA panel in System Preferences or by going to the NVIDIA website.
Note:
If your GPU is not supported or you have an old driver, ray-traced 3D compositions render on the CPU using all physical cores. If you have a GPU-supported configuration in a headless environment (for example, a render farm), you can force ray-traced 3D compositions to render on the CPU by setting the Ray-tracer option in the GPU Information dialog box (available from Previews preferences). Renders done on the CPU match renders done on the GPU.
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