[Bf-python] Deps Graph - lots of objects

[James Crowther]

Hi there, I am guessing this message is for Sergey, I was at the developer conference at the dev session and Sergey answered a question on this topic. 

So, my question is regarding optimisation of scenes for the viewport. I am working with the University of Sydney, they have a research group there that is using Blender to visualise data from an atom probe. The atom probe produces x.y.z. location data for atoms in a sample. The resulting data set is huge and there is a script that converts each x,z,y, vector into and object with a mesh to visually represent the atom (currently defaults to an ecosphere).

The issue is that the atom probe data is enormous, resulting in hundreds of thousands of objects. This can make using the resulting scene practically impossible since the viewport is running very slow. I was wondering if this is due to the depsgraph having to process all the objects for dependencies and if there is a way to disable it for these particular blend files?

Or there could be another workaround. Currently the team at the university converts all the objects to a single object which then has all the objects meshes combined into one mesh. This apparently has some undesirable side effects but I’m not 100% on what those are. 

There are some things I’d like to try which I haven’t yet such as using dupliverts to see if instancing would make the processing of the viewport run faster. But, I am open to suggestions at this stage! Any help would be appreciated!

Kind Regard

James Crowther