Multiple Progressive IPR issues in Max 6 Update 1

[RobH22]

I'm seeing a number of issues when trying to do an IPR Progressive render. My scene is a piece of machinery and it's kind of heavy, 3.5M polys, but in the past I'd scenes twice that size with no issues.

Not sure if these are bugs or just localized on my machine. I'm posting for two reasons, 1. to see if anyone else is having the same, and 2. to alert you guys at Chaos about my current problems.

1. IPR is super slow and kind of useless now. It didn't used to be. We have a long discussion at AreaMAX about it. It seems to affect AMD processors like Threadrippers and Ryzens. Regardless, it makes our fast machines with expensive RTX cards not so fast anymore. https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-m...709595#M205489

2. If I have an IPR scene thats rendering and I stop it and rotate the model to a different view, it won't render. I click 'Start IPR' and it never renders, it's just sits on the stopped view. I save and restart Max and no go. If I reset V-Ray by changing to 'Scanline' renderer and come back and don't touch anything, I can then get IPR to render my view. If I change anything, say the 'Noise threshold' from '0.01' to '0.015' as soon as the status bar in IPR finishes 'Compiling Geometry' and 'Embree', the IPR just stops. No error message, no crash, just like if I hit the stop icon and the 'Go' icon reverts to the green triangle. If I now change the renderer back to 'Scanline' and then back to 'V-Ray 6 Update 1' and hit IPR, it works and starts showing and rendering my scene.

[RobH22]

I'm coming back to add some info. The main purpose is not to complain, but to help illuminate that there is still some odd anamoly that may be something that can be chased down in V-Ray, or, like most of these things, maybe not...!

Here's what I've found.

I reverted V-Ray back to V5 and tried all of the V6 updates. All acted the same way on my problematic file of 3.5M polys. I opened an Archviz exterior scene that I own and it has 8.5M polys. It behaved normally, ran at 60fps and IPR did not misbehave.

So, that means that the file I have, is somehow screwing V-Ray up. It's a STEP model from Solidworks. A lot of us get these files in our jobs. I think there is some sort of conflict still. We need to be able to import Solidworks files and if it freaks V-Ray out, I think it would be good to know why. I'll keep trying things and will report back if I find out anything else.

At worst, I hope this tread gets a few posts from other users about anamolys or using STEP models from Solidworks in Max with V-Ray. Maybe something will come of it.

[Vizioen]

You'd be better of sending the scene to chaos to investigate. Also posting in the appropriate subforum because this isn't really the correct one.

[fixeighted]

STP files can often cause problems, as can other CAD data, in my experience.
I might guess that it's not been correctly exported from Solidworks, so there maybe all sorts going on...coplanar stuff, unjoined volumes etc. etc., though
that is just a guess. Most stuff I ever got from people was rarely anything but unusable on loading and had to be fixed.

Here is one example solution from A'desk https://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...ile%20unusable.

[^Lele^]

You're posting here, but this is exquisitely an Autodesk problem, as the thread you linked quite clearly suggests.

None of what you report is currently reproducible on our side, so we're currently inclined to think it isn't something we can fix.
This may well change if we were provided a scene and we were able to reproduce the issue you're having, and further find out it's ours to solve.

You can file bug reports directly from inside max, under the v-ray -> help menu.

[RobH22]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I'm currently diagnosing. A lot of people are having this issue as I see can in other posts I've found here.

I'm curious Lele, why you suggest it's "exquisitely an Autodesk problem", not to challenge you but to try to understand. For me it began with V-Ray 6, so on some level, that indicated to me it has at least some tangential connection to Chaos Group code. I'm not a programmer so I don't know. My intent here was to start a dialog and see what transpired. That was successful to some extent as I see and will weigh all the posts and answers above as I continue to try to figure out why this is happening. I had already posted about this a Autodesk but will go check on that to see what's ocurred recently.

[^Lele^]

What began with V-Ray 6 may have also had its source in a new max version: see what happened with the win32 UIs when the Qt transition started.
Looking at the forum thread you linked, there are multiple instances where the Max slowdowns aren't tied to V-Ray at all, and involve the Max UI itself.

This is a slowdown that we have never been able to repro on our side, and not for lack of trying.
And considering the minute share of people experiencing it on the AD forums, perhaps it is down to specific hardware configurations and driver versions.
You'd be surprised at the havoc a badly written *sound* driver can wreck on an OS.
Nvidia just hotfixed their latest drivers because they induced very high CPU usage, for example, and in the process made the audio coming through the HDMI cable an hit-and-miss affair.

[RobH22]

Thanks for the additional info. I'll keep looking for the culprit. I understand how difficult it is to diagnose these kinds of things. Sooner or later someone will likely identify what the root cause is. Or, another year rolls around and multiple releases of new versions of everything magically erases the issue.

[^Lele^]

Or, another year rolls around and multiple releases of new versions of everything magically erases the issue.

Ahah, well, if you tried v-ray 6.0 and 6.1, the latter would feel much quicker to work with by virtue of the Qt UIs having been essentially completed.
So hey, maybe for real the pieces of the puzzle will fit together, or maybe we'll gleam what it was causing so much trouble.