Vray HDRI rotation lag

[DanSHP]

This issue has been brought up before, but I just thought if anyone had come up with a solution. We upgraded to 2018 and now 2019, yet the issue still persists.

The problem occurs when rotating a vrayHDRI material that is displayed in the view port background. Max locks up for 10-15 seconds every time you adjust. This even occurs when a HDRI's rotation is linked to that of a VrayDome light. Rotating the light gizmo produces the same lag.

3ds max 2016, had no problems at all with the same set of HDRI files.

We've upgraded Vray and Max the past few months, so I'm not sure which one is causing the issue. We also have monster desktop machines (but that shouldn't matter given all was good in Max 2016).

Any ideas?

[DanSHP]

Someone from Chaos Group must of noticed this problem given that it's a fundamental part of setting up HDRI lighting in Vray/3ds Max.

[glorybound]

Yeah, it has been that way for a while. You mention it on the Autodesk forum and they act like you are alone. My workaround is using IPR.

[DanSHP]

Yeah, it has been that way for a while. You mention it on the Autodesk forum and they act like you are alone. My workaround is using IPR.

I can't understand why it hasn't had more exposure.

Can someone from Chaos group try and replicate this(?) all it requires is a simple scene with a vray dome light. Just simply rotate a VrayHDRI via the horizontal/vertical material spinners, whilst it's instanced into the max background. Sometimes the HDRI doesn't even show, and appears black.

It's a real issue especially with high quality HDRI's. I'll sometimes spend hours tweaking the HDRI's rotation value for the best lighting solution, this lag makes it slow and painful.

Glorybound, I'm wondering how IPR enables you to get around this issue? Cheers.

[DanSHP]

I've just tried using a jpeg instead of a HDR file, and whilst the lag is reduced, there is clearly still some lag present when rotating. Yes, even with a jpeg!

I could test lighting my scene with the jpeg HDR preview image and then replace it with the full HDR version once I'm happy with the rotation, but it's not ideal testing lighting in a scene with a low quality image file for obvious reasons. It would also then mean, reloading the HDRI every time I made a rotation adjustment, which, given the amount of time I spend tweaking this value isn't a feasible option.

[kosso_olli]

This is not an issue from V-Ray, but from 3dsMax. They changed the behaviour of how the background image is displayed in Max 2017. This is not unique to VrayHDRI, it also happens with standard bitmap and high resolution files in the environment slot.

I also use IPR to see the changes faster, if that is not an option you have to reduce the resolution of the HDR to around 2k to make it reasonably fast.
So, maybe we should raise awareness for this over at the autodesk forums.

[DanSHP]

This is not an issue from V-Ray, but from 3dsMax. They changed the behaviour of how the background image is displayed in Max 2017. This is not unique to VrayHDRI, it also happens with standard bitmap and high resolution files in the environment slot.

I also use IPR to see the changes faster, if that is not an option you have to reduce the resolution of the HDR to around 2k to make it reasonably fast.
So, maybe we should raise awareness for this over at the autodesk forums.

Thanks for clarifying. I assumed it was something to do with Max, any idea what it is that they changed?

I've started a thread, attached.

[DanSHP]

This is not an issue from V-Ray, but from 3dsMax. They changed the behaviour of how the background image is displayed in Max 2017. This is not unique to VrayHDRI, it also happens with standard bitmap and high resolution files in the environment slot.

I also use IPR to see the changes faster, if that is not an option you have to reduce the resolution of the HDR to around 2k to make it reasonably fast.
So, maybe we should raise awareness for this over at the autodesk forums.

Reducing the pixel size of the HDRI to around 2k, does make it much smoother, just a pain that you have to reduce your HDRI down to 2k for testing purposes then revert to the high res version when you're ready to render. We have around 40 -50 HDRI's.

Is there anyway to temporarily downsample the HDRI in Max rather than doing this in PS?

[DanSHP]

Using the IPR workaround, how are you both going about this? I've tried this myself, if I change any of the spinners in the HDRI map, max lags and locks up and I don't see any change in the VFB untill the lag passes.I've attached a video highlighting my issues.

[kosso_olli]

That lag should not be there. Never had this happening on my side. There's nothing else in there except the cube and the domelight? If so, send it to Chaos, looks like a bug.

[DanSHP]

That lag should not be there. Never had this happening on my side. There's nothing else in there except the cube and the domelight? If so, send it to Chaos, looks like a bug.

Yes, just a box, camera and domelight. The HDRI is pretty massive at 24k, reducing it down to 2k speeds things up to Max 2016 levels, but Max 2016 had no problems dealing with the same 24k HDRI's, this issue was also prevalent in 2017, 2018 too. We installed Max 2019 on brand new machines, so i can't see it being computer specific either.

When you're using IPR, what is different to my experience posted above? No lag in the VFB updating? are you able to change values easily with no lock up?

[DanSHP]

Ok, so after some testing.

The HDRI rotation started working as intended in IPR, exactly the same scene i posted in the video above completely out of the blue. I made no changes to my system or to any of the settings in max, I just reopened the max file and boom it worked. This was using the 24k HDRI.

But, tweaking any of the values over say a period of 10 minutes will cause my machine to bluescreen, every time.

I really am at a loss!

[Martin.Minev]

Hi, I have made some tests replicating your scenario and the issue is also reproducible without V-Ray. There is something to do with Autodesk. I will report the bug to Autodesk and hope they will figure it out.

[DanSHP]

Hi, I have made some tests replicating your scenario and the issue is also reproducible without V-Ray. There is something to do with Autodesk. I will report the bug to Autodesk and hope they will figure it out.

Thanks for looking into it. It's really odd, I can now alter the rotation of the HDRI in the scene I posted above with no issues. As soon as try and do this with a larger more complex scene, any tweaking of the rotation causes max to lock up. I don't even need to be rendering IPR, just in the viewport.

Considering this has been an issue for the last three revisions of 3ds max I won't get my hopes up. The Autodesk forums doesn't seem to care either.

[DanSHP]

I finally managed to get it working. You can switch to Directx Legacy mode in preferences and all is good.