Category:Troubleshooting

Problems with Performance

At this point in Moviestorm’s development, the majority of it’s performance issues come from either an overload on it’s resources or outdated graphic cards or graphic card drivers.

Performance Tips

Extreme slowdown - Like any visual software, Moviestorm has a limit on how much it can handle. Huge detailed sets, models with high resolution textures, and too many characters and animations will hit Moviestorm’s performance pretty hard. A few things to help manage this-

1) Disable fancy effects - When building a movie, go to Settings>Graphics and turn off Shaders. This will decrease the visual quality but will also drastically reduce the strain on Moviestorm. When everything is ready, turn Shaders back on and render the movie.

2) Disable unused assets - When building a movie, go to Settings>Addons and disable any addons that you are definitely not going to use. This keeps Moviestorm from loading files, and using RAM, for items that aren’t needed.

3) Lighten Moviestorm’s Load - Large detailed sets, long scenes, multiple characters, and multiple scenes within a movie will put a strain on Moviestorm’s performance. If your project is likely to cause performance issues, it may be better to plan accordingly and create multiple movies (without multiple scenes in them) and piece the renders together in an outside video editor.

4) Upgrade your RAM - Even 2GB of ram is probably the low end for running Moviestorm and any other intensive program simultaneously. Ram is cheap. Upgrade.

5) Increase the memory available to Moviestorm - Link - If your computer is above the minimum spec, you may want to increase the memory available to Moviestorm, so that it is less likely to run out of memory.

Outdated Graphics Cards or Drivers

Placed characters appear in the wrong place
Cannot select objects/characters/icons
Can’t place items on top of other items in Set Workshop
Constant crashing of Moviestorm

How to find out what graphics card you have (PC)
How to find out what graphics driver version you have (PC)

Distorted Screen - You can’t even navigate through the menus because Moviestorm’s screen is too big. Moviestorm requires a resolution of at least 1024x768, change your monitor settings.

Black Screen where the set should be - Either your graphics card will not run Moviestorm or you have extremely outdated drivers for it.

Tutorial Crashes - If your drivers are updated this could mean that your graphics card does not support the proper version of shaders. Turn off Shaders in the Settings>Graphics menu.

Crashes when trying to create a new movie - If your drivers are updated this could mean that your graphics card does not support the proper version of shaders. Turn off Shaders in the Settings>Graphics menu.

Character Shop crashes - If your drivers are updated this could mean that your graphics card does not support the proper version of shaders. Turn off “shaders” in the Settings>Graphics menu.

Crashing during set navigation - If your drivers are updated this could mean that your graphics card does not support the proper version of shaders. Turn off Shaders in the Settings>Graphics menu.

Applying a texture to a wall/door/floor doesn’t work correctly - If your drivers are updated this could mean that your graphics card does not support the proper version of shaders. Turn off Shaders in the Settings>Graphics menu.

Downloaded Addons don’t appear for you to install or once installed the assets do not appear within Moviestorm - Go to C:\Program Files\Moviestorm Release and you should see a link on the top bar of the File Explorer labeled Compatibility Files. Click on this. Anything in this file is not actually installed in Moviestorm. Delete these files. Restart Moviestorm and then re-install your addons.

Video does not play on a backdrop - Turn on Shaders in the Settings>Graphics menu. Update your graphics card drivers.