UI drawing speed of VRayMtl

[kosso_olli]

Keep the max sessions as short as you can, and reboot max often is all i can suggest for this.

This is good advice in general. With Max 2021, we noticed a massive degradation in viewport performance. It is getting worse and worse the longer a scene is opened. Save it, restart Max and the performance is good again. No idea what is causing the issue, but there are many threads regarding this issue over at the area.

[AbeTJH]

lele

Is there any downsides for setting those environment variables? Everything seems super fast right now. Just wondering if there is anything I'm missing.

Thanks!

[^Lele^]

I have no actual data on it, i noticed nothing at all, personally, but that means nothing at all, either.
It could be assumed perhaps that the d3d11 features may go amiss in some application?

Keep an eye out, if some other app, or part of Max, misbehaves, you'll know where to go fiddle. :P

[kosso_olli]

There is a discussion over at the Max beta forums suggesting the VrayMtl interface needs to be rewritten in QT. They give the Autodesk Physical Material as an example, which is written in Qt. And I have to admit: There is a noticable difference in drawing speed between the two. So it might be worth a look for Chaos.

[^Lele^]

All this said, the Qt physical material opens ten times quicker, at less than 100ms, in *any* driver mode.
It's all down to the AD's translator, and its vagaries, i'd think.
We will have to go Qt, there is no shaving time from the translator.

It's ongoing. Early tests look *very* promising, but it'll take a wee bit of time still.

[kosso_olli]

Great, that's good to hear.

[^Lele^]

Attached, an image of the new Qt UI for ALSurface.
We chose this as a test because of the amount of controls it's got, we're continuing work on maps and materials as i write here.
I am at liberty to share some of the timings we detected.

ALSurface now creates the controls, and draws them, in around a fourth of the previous time: It takes 129ms instead of the 574ms it used to take (these are averages over many runs.).
Variability between creations is all but gone as well, so the timings are always very close between each other (+-5ms.).
We also test-converted the VrayColor map (23ms instead of 43ms) and the vray2SidedMtl (37ms vs. 62ms), which goes to show the benefits are still very sizeable even when little UI is at play.

Overall, we feel the issues should be resolved with this change, and the experience should become very similar to that of the other Qt-written UIs in Max.
Now for the bulk of the work.

[olly]

Great news - thanks for sharing the progress ^Lele^

[flat]

Thank you for your hard work to improve the UI.

At the link below, Mr. Peter says he will also provide updates (no tests ver) for 3ds Max 2016-2017 in the future, but will Chaos manage both QT and non-QT versions?

https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...93#post1109393

[matanov]

In this aspect non-QT Max versions will stay as before. Only newer ones will benefit from future improvements.

[AbeTJH]

Exciting! Can't wait to try it out!

[3d-laboratory]

Hello Lele,
I used the system variables with success with my old machine (i7-3930k from 2012) , but it was far too slow for me still. So I bought a new machine (Ryzen 9 5900x) which has a over all doubled perforemance and in rendering it is 7 times faster than my old one. But the drawing speed of the CME was again too slow. So I used the system variables mentioned above also for this machine and noted no increase in speed. I used Qt_OPENGL=Angle as written in the post. In other internet sources I found in other contexts, that they use Qt_OPENGL=angle. It is possible, that the worth is case sensitive? The speed was higher with the new entry...

[^Lele^]

It could well be the case, i haven't actually verified it.
I may have capitalised the option out of force of habit when writing here.

[DanSHP]

Sure thing.
There are the two system variables and their respective values.
You can set these in windows.
Press the windows key + R, type "SystemPropertiesAdvanced" and press enter.
At the bottom, Click "Environment Variables".
Below the "System Variables" window, click "New..."
Put QT_OPENGL as variable name, and Angle as variable value.
Press Ok to save it.
Press "New..." Again, and this time use QT_ANGLE_PLATFORM for name and d3d9 for value.
Press OK 3 times to save and close the windows, and reboot.

To revert to Max's own defaults, delete the system variables you just set, and reboot.

My experience with this variable is not a good one. I'd forgotten I'd made this change.

I've spent the past 3 weeks tearing my hair out with awful performance in Max 2022 and all along it, it was this.

[^Lele^]

I have no actual data on it, i noticed nothing at all, personally, but that means nothing at all, either.
It could be assumed perhaps that the d3d11 features may go amiss in some application?

Keep an eye out, if some other app, or part of Max, misbehaves, you'll know where to go fiddle. :P

Eh, i'm sorry you had issues.
My tests were indeed in max 2021, and i never quite got to redoing them in max 2022.
I had noticed no adverse effect, and knowing we were anyway rewriting the controls, i never tested again.
What exactly did you run into?