max 2011 design all good with VRay?

[Nickh]

Hi,

Just before we take the plunge, thought I'd check that things are generally good with the upgrades?

Had a search around and couldn't find lots of negative stuff, so sounds like it may be ok?

Many thanks

Nick

[z1pp3r]

no major problems here

[Donald2B]

Quick answer: I like it and I have not encountered a project threatening problem yet. Read on for a little bit different approach to this.

My general rule of thumb for this question is do your own research. Download the trial and install it and install the newest version of VRay. Then, I usually try to take a really small project and see what happens. It allows me to form my own opinions about VRay and all the new enhancements/changes in Max. For some odd reason, I don't seem to be having as much trouble as many of the individuals on another forum with Max. So I may be the odd person out.

I am currently in the same situation with Max and our upgrade cycle. I am in full eval mode until the two big projects are complete before we switch over. I am really glad I didn't listen to a LOT of the negative buzz going around about many new "features" and took the time to form my own opinion. I am really happy with the new release and look forward to using it more in production.

EDIT: I also forgot that the main reason to do some testing on your end is to verify that your current workflow/pipeline doesn't hit an unsuspecting snag. There are many different workflows and how I work may be very different than another person. Testing your workflow may uncover quirks/workflow issues, that I may never see.

Again, this is just my $0.02.

[glorybound]

100% good here.

[Nickh]

Thanks for the thumbs up, all.

Troy, I know it is always a case of suck it and see to some extent.

We are on subsrciption so I have downloaded it, but always good to get the general feeling before comitting time to installing it on every machine. And then we have some ongoing projects which is always daunting taking the plunge during these, and having different versions of max for different projects has its risks.

Inevitably it will always work fine on a small test, and then all hell will break loose when youre in the thick of a big project.

Basically its never easy...and, for my penny or $0.02 worth, the 12 months of the subsripction life cycle is way too quick. You only iron out all the issues with one, and then its upgarde time! I'd rather wait 2 or 3 years and get double or triple the features in a nice stable realease. Anwyay I will remain positive and give it a go!

Of course this is never an issue with Vray - I never question upgrading our trusty friend.

Cheers
Nick

[BBB3]

I get a lot of random crashes in 2011. There really is no pattern to them, which I hate. Every hour or so it kicks me out straight to the desktop for no apparent reason. It could be a plugin compatibility problem although I have far fewer of those installed than in 2010, or possibly it doesn't like my GTX 285 driver, which is quite old since the most recent do not like Max at all.
Mind you, 2010 was pretty crashy to for me, especially when undoing, which seems to crash my Max 50 per cent of the time.
This is on a 64bit Windows machine with 16Gigs of ram.

[Donald2B]

What OS are you running? Autobak turned on?

If running windows 7, I have found that turning off all of the "fancy pants" display/visual settings off really helps with general max performance.

I seem to be struggling with nVidia drivers also. I am running a new GTX 480 with the latest 257.21 WHQL drivers. Max2011 seems to like these drivers a little better than the previous version, while Max2009 prefers the previous driver version. I am chalking this on up to nVidia not really providing decent drivers that work well with Max. Now the Quadro cards in the office seem to be doing MUCH better overall. They have been cruising along with very little problems.

[3DMK]

What OS are you running? Autobak turned on?

If running windows 7, I have found that turning off all of the "fancy pants" display/visual settings off really helps with general max performance.

as a new user to Windows 7 professional, I am a bit lost as to what settings you should change to achieve this.
I also have a new GTX 480 and it's running terribly slow in Max 2008
[driver version is 197.75]

I would be grateful for any suggestions

kind regards

[Donald2B]

The appearance setting is Windows 7 Basic preset, then I just changed that background image to whatever I want. That basically turns off all of the "pretty" stuff. I have found that makes a pretty big difference in Max performance in general. Now I could set it up to look exactly like XP, but I really enjoy the new bottom bar/dock area.

As for the GTX480, I would definitely give the latest drivers a go, especially with this card. Any nVidia card in the 200 range I would probably recommend a MUCH older driver, but we don't have that advantage with the 480. I have had to learn a little patience because I know how well Max 2011 performs with the Quadro FX4500 cards and it is butter smooth! So I know that I am stuck waiting for drivers from nVidia.

If you use VRay proxies, there are some settings you can change to really increase their performance on a "gaming" card that you don't have to do with the Quadro cards. I will look at that when I get back to the office tomorrow.

[gagui]

It´s only me or the snaps seems to disappear sometimes when disable axis display?

[Donald2B]

I've had that little glitch for what seems like forever. I usually just have to pan the viewport just a little bit and then they come back and work just fine. I just assumed it was a video card issue.

[plastic_]

I had some quirks with 2011, luckily you can revert a scene back to 2010 now.

bugs:
-) snap...while the general handling is an improvement, sometimes it's unreliable, not sure why exactly, can't put my hands on it.
-) VERY ANNOYING changed behaviour in "hide by category". when you "select all" on a layer, hidden objects on the layer get selected too, but you don't notice it. I had quite some mess in my scene after putting "Edit Mesh" modifiers on hidden splines accidentaly. I had to use scripting to seperate them again.
Display categories/layer/splines are getting worse with each max version somehow.

[Donald2B]

@plastic_ I thought that the hide by category always worked like that? That has happened to me many times in Max2009. So I just got into a habit of putting splines on a separate layer to avoid this problem.

[BBB3]

Sorry Troy. I'm on Vista.

[Donald2B]

No worries...with Vista the same settings apply! XP is obviously a little different as far as the UI skinning system. Those settings were how I worked within Vista and then when moving to Win7 ended up back to those very similar settings. So they should still help you out quite a bit.