Help

Messages

Updating in the legend: HeatmapPilot is working out the view. It starts once you stop moving the viewport.

could not draw it: not enough memory: hide objects, try again: the view needs more memory than Blender has left. Hide objects you do not need, or look at a smaller part of the scene. The view is drawn again as soon as the scene changes.

could not draw it with another reason: something went wrong. Use Report a Problem, below.

Pick a view to list the objects that cost the most in it. The viewport shows Normal. Pick a view in View Mode.

Working out the view… in Costliest Objects: the list comes a moment after the view.

Could not list the objects and a reason: the view drew, but the list did not. Use Report a Problem.

Switch to Object Mode to select an object from the list: the list’s buttons work in Object Mode.

… is hidden. Unhide it in the Outliner to select it. You hid the object after the list was made.

Could not read …: its file is gone or holds no targets. A preset’s file is missing. Pick another preset, or set the targets and save it again with +.

Could not save the preset or Could not remove the preset: Blender cannot write to its user scripts folder. The message says what to do.

Questions

Does HeatmapPilot change my scene? No. It draws over the viewport and keeps its views in memory. The budget is the only thing it saves in your file.

Why does a hidden fern count in Triangle Density? The graphics card draws it before it finds that a rock is in front. The engines’ views count it too.

Is Shader Complexity a timing? No. It is an estimate from the node trees, to compare materials with. Real times depend on the engine and the graphics card.

Does it work through the camera? Yes, and in any view, also in Quad View.

How large can a scene be? HeatmapPilot draws every view on 20 million triangles in view. Over 10 million, each update takes a few seconds.

Words

• Budget: the four targets green stands for.
• Draw call: one request from the engine to the graphics card. Each material on an object is one.
• Overdraw: shading the same pixel more than once, for see-through surfaces drawn on top of each other.
• Texel: one pixel of a texture.

Report a Problem

The ? menu in the View panel’s header and Blender’s Help menu have Report a Problem.

Say what happened and, if you like, your email address. Send sends your words, the versions of Blender, HeatmapPilot and your system, the budget, what each viewport shows with its last times, the Triangle Density look, your graphics card and its number of processor cores, and the last error. Nothing else. You get a report name, such as HM-7F3K, to quote.

Send needs Blender’s Allow Online Access (Preferences, System, Network). Without it, Save Report saves the same report as a zip for you to email.

Getting help

Write to the email address in the imprint. Quote your report name if you sent one.

Licence

HeatmapPilot is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later.