3DS Max excessive save times

[dean_dmoo]

We've been finding lately that saving, xreffing and opening files in 3ds max 2021 is taking ages. Of course it's relative, but as an example, I'm currently saving a building file, 344MB in size, on the server it saves up to 338MB in no time (what you would expect) and then it just stays there for minutes. 6min. in total just now.

My colleague saved a landscape file earlier, 3.8GB, again got to 3.75GB in no time, then stayed there for about 7-8 minutes. So we both end up waiting 10min or so for a save even thought the big difference in file size.

I'm not really sure where the issue is tbh, but its so inconsistent at times that it's hard to nail down an issue. At other moments its fine, even with big files. It's like max is trying to sort itself out or that there are too many railclones of Forestpacks...We've been cleaning up the files aswell (even moreso than usual) but it isn't fixing it.

Last week it was taking 24min to send a render in BB, yet a week earlier a project with bigger files and more xrefs was taking a couple of minutes...

Latest hotfixes, latest vray, latest RC/FP, AMD threadripper with 128GB ram.

Anyone else run into these issues?

[kosso_olli]

File saving and loading times have been significantly reduced in Max 2023.

[Vizioen]

Check your scenes for animation layers and tracknotes (remove if you don't use it), they can really slow down saving. Also check this thread I started:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-m...g/m-p/11470371

I opened a ticket at ADSK and they have now reported it as a bug, it has something to do with the SMT (hyperthreading) of the Threadrippers, they say, but I tested it with off and I experienced some lag still (only tested a little while though).

[fixeighted]

File saving and loading times have been significantly reduced in Max 2023.

I'm unsure what you're saying here Oliver...that it's not an issue for you or that it is an issue.....

For me personally, it does 'appear' to be very much slower,...always hanging at the the later stage.

[kosso_olli]

I'm unsure what you're saying here Oliver...that it's not an issue for you or that it is an issue.....

For me personally, it does 'appear' to be very much slower,...always hanging at the the later stage.

Just wanted to say that Autodesk fixed a lot of the file saving and loading issues and performance in Max 2023. So it might be good to upgrade to 2023.

[fixeighted]

Ah ok....and yes of course now when I read it again without the effects of a night out, I can see the OP said it was with Max 21
Silly me.
However I seem to think it's still a bit slower with 23...at least it appears so but it's hard to check.
Maybe the fact that it has the progress bar and that it still hangs a bit at around 73% (which I know was an issue at some point initially) is giving a false impression.

[dean_dmoo]

Ok,

I've been testing some stuff and it seems like max isn't cleaning out the ram when moving to a different file. Currently in a testing file and ram was at 55GB, from previous file, and slow to IPR. Restarted max and the same file works instantly in IPR, with ram at 2,5GB.

We've noticed that the slowing down (ipr, saves, xrefs) is more noticable at the end of the day so I think it might be a build up somewhere that is creating issues. Anyone else notice anything similar?

[glorybound]

It is funny you mentioned that. I posted on the AD forum and asked why MAX hates me and starts acting up more often at the end of the workday. The later I work, the more clumpy MAX gets. I run the Prune script often, which helps.

[dean_dmoo]

Yeah we recently bought that after reading similar issues in an older thread. It does help, but there still seems to be something slowing it down.

Railclone might also be an issue for us, the more railclone heavy the file the slower it seems to get. For example a 300mb building file with lots of railclones can take longer to xref than a 3gb file with just regular geometry. Same with saving and opening them.

This week I'm working on a project that was a nightmare to xref a couple of weeks ago so will do some cleaning and testing. Might just collapse all the railclones in the building file as a tester to see if it speeds it up. Last time it was taking 25min for backburner to submit a job, which was great when I had about 15 more jobs to go....ended up being quicker just rendering them on my ws for 15min in ipr and then saving the image as they were only 2k testshots.

[glorybound]

I have a Railclone roof, which might be the issue I currently have with a project. I'll delete it and see if that helps. Right now, everything is painfully slow.

[fixeighted]

Railclones/Forests have to be read and built each time you do stuff with them, so it does slow stuff down and it can be extremely painfully long.
I always collapse them as soon as I can, even if it means rebuilding them if they change. You can always have a backup.
Bobby, I'd put money on your roof being the culprit.
When I did the foliage growing thing in the desert recently, all those forest items were incredibly tedious to work with at times.
I had to really work on optimising things just to get some sort of interactability and then still, as you said in another post, it can be slow to cancel out.

[prateekvishwa]

check if you have multiple modifiers applied on any geometry? I was facing similar issue with one of my max file. I realized that i have used multiple modifiers like edit mesh over edit mesh ..and many others and same geometry was repeated as instance at atleast 50 places.. and that file was taking really long time to save or autosave.. i merged them at issue sorted!

[dean_dmoo]

Thanks Prateek,

That's a good one to check. I know my colleague uses far more modifyers then I generally do and has the slow loading issue more often aswell.

[zoranm]

Maybe you have turned ON Compress when saving files? It takes 2-5 times more to save if compressed, which is understandable. Same as with PS file as well

[dean_dmoo]

Hi Zoran,

We have that turned off, too many file corruptions years ago with it turned on.