Lag

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Hi all,

Apologies for my ignorance but what does the pause / play button in Vantage actually do behind the scenes with livelink and 3dsmax? When I'm working on large files it appears to lag very badly, even with pause on, it feels like it's not pausing behind the scenes....

Anyone share any tips when working on large scenes in Vantage ?

Thanks,

Jason

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting.
Live Link seems to start and stop without issues on my setup:

link to the video

I am using 3ds Max 2024.2 with Vantage 2.4.0 and V-Ray 6.20.06.
You could monitor your GPU usage in a similar manner as I am doing in the gif above and confirm if the Live Link was stopped properly.
If you don't have issues in a simple scene we might need to review your scene to figure out if there is a bug.

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Thanks for the help but that's not what I mean, apologies. The example is this, let's say we have a very large scene already linked into Vantage, all good, now you want to do something in 3dsmax such as move some 3d people that are now floating and you wish to correct them, good luck doing this quickly, it's painfully slow.

The scene you demonstrate on is not helpful, a single box will have no slow down in the system feedback, also hitting the Vantage livelink 3dsmax button will cause Vantage to lose it's link and it will need to re-import the whole scene again. There is a pause / play button in Vantage that seems to do half the job, maybe I'm confusing this function?



I've boxed it in red.

It would be really helpful for one of your guys to run through some everyday tips, similar to this fab video you guys produced 9 months ago.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmmA4gyrzt4

Cheers and thanks for the fab updates,

Jason

[npg]

It looks like V-Ray IPR/DR (Live link uses DR) being active is causing the slowdown in Max.

The pause in Vantage makes it stop sampling the scene, it doesn't affect the live link itself -- for example if you change the scene while this pause is set, the updates will arrive in Vantage and will be applied as soon as you unpause.
Sampling can be paused automatically too. There are two settings in Edit->Preferences. One causes the app to pause when you focus some other window. This only applies when you're not in live link (hopefully obvious why). The other setting works with live link - pause sampling when a specified level is reached. This helps reduce noise, heat, etc.

So when you use this pause the GPU should be basically idle, at least until some other process needs to use it - your DCC, web browser, whatever. But V-Ray DR and IPR is active for as long as the live link is active and as you said you can only fully stop it which requires full reload when you start it again. It isn't rendering but it is tracking scene state and sending updates over DR to the "remote server" which is Vantage.

[npg]

Do you observe the lag even when simply moving the camera? Do you know if you have view-dependent geometry in the scene? Such as camera culling for scattered instances for example? If there is something like that it would cause the geometry to re-export and this could explain the slowdown.

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Video attached showing the lag... https://youtu.be/CvGT_DMwvxc

Notice the lag when just moving a stock 3d model. No forest packs have camera clipping on, most objects have a max 2k jpg map at max, it's as streamlined as I can get..

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Hi guys, could you check this video showing a blank scene with only a Vray Physical Camera & Vray Sun. Please note the lag inbetween frames, is this normal to wait over 10 seconds before the next frame is started, what's Vantage Livelink doing here?

On previous animations I used to export as a standalone and this gave me no delay between frames..

Thanks,

Jason

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Just tested a blank scene in 2025 and no delay... must be a max 2024 thing..

[npg]

Strange... Have you changed the "frame timeout" setting from the Vantage toolbar settings button in Max? I think this is saved in a version specific Max folder and could explain the difference. The default value is 0.1

[luckett_jason@hotmail.com]

Thanks npg, yep I'vew fiddled with that setting as well, no luck there. Strange it works in 2025, maybe I need a Vray / Vantage reinstall for 2024, I will try that, although both have been updated since the problem has occurred.

Jason