Interactive Render (IPR) + Compact Material Editor + AMD? = Slow UI

[Horizon]

When I use the VFB interactive render the whole 3ds Max UI becomes frustratingly sluggish. I've been dealing with it for the past 6 months ever since I switched from Intel to a significantly faster AMD. I've seen similar posts about this issue in the past and the common theme always seems to be AMD (see my specs below). Has this been verified and has there been any movement on this issue? I basically have to stop the IPR every time I want to do anything major which defeats the whole purpose. Just changing material colors can be tedious.

Out of frustration, I spent a few hours today troubleshooting. I've done all the obvious stuff. Reset 3ds Max, disable processor cores, closed all background apps I can. However, I *think* I've narrowed it down to the Compact Material Editor being open WITH a material that is being used inside the IPR....which is weird. I never made the connection before because I always have the Material Editor open on another screen and so it's always been slow for me.

Anyway, I tried making a video showing the lag. I'm not sure how well it comes across because I've shrunk the UI down to make the video smaller and so the lag is less. Just know the lag is usually a lot worse than what I'm showing. I'm also using a basic scene for this example.

In the video I start off showing how silky smooth the viewport and UI is with default materials in the Material Editor (ME) and IPR going. As soon as I add the basic blue material (that's applied to all objects) to the ME, the UI (and especially viewports) get sluggish. Simply dragging things around is laggy. If I close the ME and start IPR, everything is fast again. When I open the ME with a used material it's slow again. If I reset the ME to default materials and start the IPR the UI is fast again. At the end of the video I move the VFB window off screen and increase the window size to a "normal use" size and the lag becomes worse. Again, when I reset materials and everything is back to normal even with a larger IPR window.

To be clear, only 3ds Max UI is sluggish. The rest of Windows is fine while IPR is going. So my computer isn't getting bogged down. Also, I don't think the Slate Material Editor has this issue. However, I thought I saw it happen before....but now I can't reproduce it. So maybe I'll need to switch to the Slate ME for now on. I really prefer the compact one.

My Specs:
Windows 11
3ds Max 2024
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
64GB Memory
GeForce RTX 4090

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi, thanks for posting. Not reproducing in a simple scene on my setup (3ds Max 2024, V-Ray 6.10.08, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, RTX 4070ti). Is this issue happening in a new simple scene on your end? You could try a clean reinstall of your video driver if you haven't already.

[Horizon]

Thanks for responding.

Whenever I install new NVIDIA drivers I always choose the "Clean Install" option. But I tried your linked tool and still have the same issues. I really don't believe it's a video card issue. I've even disabled all monitors except one just to see if there would be a difference.

This happens even with a simple scene...like starting a blank scene and adding a box and plane. However, the lag is far less noticeable. You would have to know what to look for. Everything gets waaay more sluggish with just a slightly more complex scene.

I also learned something even weirder just now. All I have to do is change a color in a random material in the material editor while IPR is running and the UI starts to lag. It's not even a material used in the scene...just a default material in the editor. In the video below, I have the IPR window running the whole time off screen but you'll see how just changing the color of a material in the editor causes the lag immediately. Every time you see my cursor moving I'm just trying to pan and rotate. It get's so bad that sometimes it takes 5 to 10 seconds before I get movement. To be clear, it's not just the viewports. It's the whole UI. At the end of the video I tried showing me clicking on a drop down menu and it takes two or three seconds to respond. Not sure how well that shows in the video.

This has been happening ever since I got this new computer. Very frustrating.

[vladimir_krastev]

HI, if you'd like you could send us one of the more complex scenes that you have issues with for a test. You can do that here or trough the support contact form. Add a link to this thread in you message if you choose the contact form.

[Horizon]

I don't believe this issue is scene specific but I hope I'm wrong. I will try to send the scene from above through the contact form. I've stripped as much as I could while keeping enough in it to helpfully show the slow UI. I have a feeling you wont have the issues I am though. Ugh.

FYI, last night I installed the latest 3ds Max update released from Autodesk. I also completely disable antivirus. Still no luck.

Also, I've noticed the sluggishness happens even with the Slate Mat Editor. I can't get around this.

Edit: I also tried the "Qt Environment variable" options. No luck.

Thank you Vlad.

[Horizon]

New observation. When I open 3ds Max for the first time, and open a simple scene I don't have a slow UI even when interacting with the Mat Editor open. When I open a large scene and start IPR and interact with Mat Editor, everything is slow again. If I go back and open a simple scene and start IPR and interact with the Mat Editor the UI is STILL slow. If I close and restart 3ds Max and open a simple scene again, start IPR and interact with the Mat Editor, the UI is fine again.

It looks like when loading a larger scene with IPR 3ds Max becomes bloated and slows down the UI. It won't release whatever is going on until I close 3ds Max and start back up. It's just really weird that it's all still contingent on the Mat Editor being open vs. closed.

[JonasNöll]

Every time you see my cursor moving I'm just trying to pan and rotate. It get's so bad that sometimes it takes 5 to 10 seconds before I get movement.

Interesting, I'm having the same kind of issues since I switched to AMD (Threadripper 3990x). Having the same kind of UI freezes for a few seconds. There are these sporadic freezes and then everything runs smooth for a while like nothing happened until it comes again.
I'm also having issues that the VFB doesn't refresh when zooming in and out with the mouse wheel while rendering. Already tried installing new GPU drivers, changing GPUs and everything, no luck. Never had those issues before on any of my Intel based systems....

[Joelaff]

Same here. There are lots of threads about this already. It still has yet to be resolved.

Running multiple copies of Max (esp if you fire up IPR on both (not at the same time, but just do it at least once on each)) seems to make it far worse.

Load up a couple real, production level scenes into two copies of Max on a Threadripper. Start IPR on one, stop it, start it on the other... Have Slate open on both...

No run IPR and start trying to do things like changes textures and adjust materials. Link new bitmaps, etc. Eventually (often rather quickly) it will become exceedingly sluggish.

[Horizon]

I've never needed to run multiple copies of Max at the same time before. But after doing a quick test as you suggested, I can confirm both Max get bogged down significantly worse (with material editor open). I think having multiple copies open just compounds the sluggishness. For me, just a single open Max and material editor tweak on a production scene is enough for me to pull what little hair I have left out. But working with two copies open seems basically impossible.

[Vizioen]

Fact is Autodesk knows this but hasn't been solving this, we need people to report this officialy (not on the forums), like I already did twice. You can do this here: Contact Customer Support | Autodesk Support

The more people to put pressure on ADSK to resolve this, and the more information we give (this thread also has some valuable info) the faster it gets fixed hopefully, this has been an issue for over a year now and it's very annoying and slows down our work significantly. I'm on two AMD threadrippers and both have the same problem. It seems it's a problem with threadrippers but some intel systems also have this behaviour, that's what makes it kind of hard to pin down.

So please report this and this information to ADSK

[Horizon]

So it looks like iToo Software plugins were the culprit. The update to Forest Pack (8.2.5) and RailClone (6.1.4) seems to have helped. It's odd that even scenes that didn't use Forest Pack or RailClone were affected by this. But everything seems better...so far. However, there is still a performance hit with the material editor open. I notice mostly when navigating the viewports. It's not too terrible though.

On that note, is there a way in 3ds Max to enabled/disabled specific plugins on startup? It would really help for troubleshooting things like this in the future.