3ds Max - Preparing save takes forever

[rusteberg]

Has anyone run into this issue? Max 2023. Scene saved locally. No compression on save. I've run a reduce file size script. Scene isn't that big. Takes forever to save while stuck on 3% "Preparing Save"..... Driving me nuts. If anyone has a solution or two that would be much appreciated. Thanks -T

[arturo_centenero]

Hi rusteberg

Did you figure out a solution for this? I ran into the same issue, and the scene just crashes. So I can't save any new changes. Autoback crashes too...

[Pixelcon]

I think it miiiight be max saving a thumbnail which you can turn off in preferences.

[rusteberg]

No never did on that one, haven’t really run into since then. Maybe try what James recommended above and see if that helps. That way there’s a record of solution?

[glorybound]

I had the same issue yesterday. I killed MAX, and it hasn't happened again. BTW, I have to kill MAx often .

[glorybound]

Yep! Happened again.

[SnipeyX]

We've definitely been struggling with this one. I think in our case it is related to RPManager use, with lots of visibility sets on lots of objects (10k-60k object count ballparks). Initial tests removing all RPMdata scene saves pretty quick, which is not a problem we've had before, been using RPM heavily for years. I also wonder if it is something else along those lines, for any non RPM users out there, like lots of custom attributes being imported from Revit FBXs or whatever the 'day1ref' lists are in track view, animation layers and those sort of things. Currently using 2023.3. I wasn't sure if it's actually taking longer, or just feels like it now having the different saving stages being displayed in status bar, versus prior to when we had that and it was just a general 'save takes a long time'.

[glorybound]

I don't use RPManager.

[glorybound]

Any resolution? It's a new project and the same issue. It has been siting at 3% for over an hour.

[glorybound]

Any resolution? It's a new project and the same issue. It has been sitting at 3% for over an hour.

[JezUK]

Screw this, I've recently been moving to Blender, no problems, and then I come back and blow the dust off of 3DS Max to use for one project and straight away I hit this dinosaur.........

Still no solution?

**** UPDATE ****

After around 10 minutes, mine completed saving.

[liddil101]

I figured this out on my end. I had the exact same issue. Here is what i did (I'm in 3ds max 2024)
-Saved out each layer individually in max by doing a save selected. Can also be done by saving small sections of geometry at a time.
-Once I got about half way through my file while performing another "save selected" of a layer with some basic geometry on it (only 4 pieces of low poly geometry) my scene stopped at 3%
-I did a force quite, reopened my file, found those exact same pieces and noticed they had instanced modifiers on them (shell modifier).
-I converted the geometry to editable mesh which will obviously collapses everything.
-Entire scene saved perfectly after this within 10 seconds and it's a 320 mb scene (compressed).

There must be something from 2023 and up where max gets weird with saving when geometry has certain instanced modifiers.
The reason this might be the case is I did a separate test where I opened an old exact copy of my file in 3ds max 2021 (which was last saved in 3ds max 2021) and I re-saved the scene and had zero issues saving without touching any of the geometry like I did previously when I had to collapse the pieces.



3ds Max user since Kinetix version 2.5

[rusteberg]

Hmmm…. I have an associate who loves modifiers. Stacked deep and instanced…. Gonna have a talk with that boy. Thanks for the info -T

[LucienH]

I figured this out on my end. I had the exact same issue. Here is what i did (I'm in 3ds max 2024)
-Saved out each layer individually in max by doing a save selected. Can also be done by saving small sections of geometry at a time.
-Once I got about half way through my file while performing another "save selected" of a layer with some basic geometry on it (only 4 pieces of low poly geometry) my scene stopped at 3%
-I did a force quite, reopened my file, found those exact same pieces and noticed they had instanced modifiers on them (shell modifier).
-I converted the geometry to editable mesh which will obviously collapses everything.
-Entire scene saved perfectly after this within 10 seconds and it's a 320 mb scene (compressed).

There must be something from 2023 and up where max gets weird with saving when geometry has certain instanced modifiers.
The reason this might be the case is I did a separate test where I opened an old exact copy of my file in 3ds max 2021 (which was last saved in 3ds max 2021) and I re-saved the scene and had zero issues saving without touching any of the geometry like I did previously when I had to collapse the pieces.



3ds Max user since Kinetix version 2.5

This was the problem for me, thank you!