SP3a & Max 2009 is way slow

[devin]

I just upgraded my system to SP3a from SP2 and something is horribly wrong, when I render Max is only using half of the available system processors. I've also got Max 2010 SP3a installed and the same thing is happening with it. Before I installed SP3a on Max 2009 I ran a test and it used all of my processors, 5 minutes later and I'm running at half speed. I don't know what could be going on , hyper-threading is turned on so that's not it, I'm at a total loss. Please help!!

[vlado]

Does it happen on all scenes (even a simple teapot)? Or just one particular scene?

Best regards,
Vlado

[devin]

It seems to be one particular scene that I use to test all of our plugins, it doesn't want to use more than 8 threads because I have a 16 core system and it wont go above 50% CPU usage.

[vlado]

There are two things to check:

(*) If this happens during the light cache phase, make sure the number of light cache passes is set to 16;
(*) Make sure that the number of rendering threads is not hard-coded to 8 - open the MaxScript editor (F11) and type:

renderers.current.system_numThreads

and make sure that it is 0 (automatic # of threads).

Best regards,
Vlado

[devin]

It is hard coded to 8, not sure how that happened but can you tell me how to change it back to 0?

[vlado]

Type the following in the MaxScript listener:

renderers.current.system_numThreads=0

- that should be all.

Best regards,
Vlado

[devin]

That explains what was happening in Max 2009, but in 2010 I think it's something different. I just tested a scene in 2009 that works perfectly, when I render it in 2010 I'm getting about 26% CUP usage. I checked the threads and that's not the problem, I tried turning the bitmap pager off running this script (ibitmappager.enabled = false) then saving the file closing Max and re-opening it but 26% is the most usage I get. I also have the latest hotfix installed for Max.

[vlado]

Which OS do you have? One user of 3ds Max 2010 had issues with XP without SP2; once Windows XP SP2 was installed, it was much better (although still slower than 3ds Max 2009).

Best regards,
Vlado

[devin]

I'm using XP64 with SP2 installed, it's a Boxx 8500 system.

[vlado]

Ok then; there is a known problem with slow rendering due to changes in the bitmap handling code for 3ds Max 2010, especially on multicore machines. This affects all renderers for 3ds Max (but not V-Ray RT ). So in that case you'll just have to wait for a fix from Autodesk. Otherwise, V-Ray code is nearly identical for 3ds Max 2009 and 2010 and there is no paricular reason for it to run with different speed. When things get to the 3ds Max code however, things are different.

Best regards,
Vlado

[devin]

Thankfully for all your help Vlado, I had a feeling it wasn't Vray's fault but now I have to wait for that slow moving blob known as Autodesk to fix their own mess.

[Tim in Hollywood]

3ds max 2009 and V-Ray 1.5 SP3a - HELP!

Type the following in the MaxScript listener:

renderers.current.system_numThreads=0

- that should be all.

Best regards,
Vlado

Hi Vlado,

I'm having trouble with the Light Cache and prepass stages of rendering. It sounds very similar to the problems mentioned at the beginning of this thread.

Windows XP Pro x64 (with all of the latest patches via Windows Update)
Dual quad-core Nehalem (8 cores), 12GB RAM
3ds max 2009 SP1
V-Ray 1.5 SP3a

I have a relatively small file with no displacement or anything that should cause high render times. In fact, a super-slow five year old computer will render the scene in 15 minutes. It consumes only 2.14MB RAM (as seen in the V-Ray messages dialog).

When rendering, all 8 cores start at 100%, which gives an estimated Light Cache time of 32 seconds. At around 28 seconds, 7 of 8 cores drop to 0%. 1 core stays at 100% and the estimated time continues to escalate. After __ minutes, it finally moves on to the prepass stages. Same result when using the default material (all white). No discernible difference at all.

After the Light Cache stage finishes, the same happens in each of the prepass stages. All 8 cores race toward completion, but 7 of 8 stop at the 95% of estimated time. It then takes an excessive amount of time to complete.

I've tried several settings suggested in various places on this forum, even if they didn't really pertain to my version, with no positive success.

renderers.current.system_numThreads=0
Light Cache passes = 16 I've also tried 8.

Is there anything I can do to correct this? This is now a major problem that is holding up work here. I never thought that the new system which should be 25x faster would be causing so many problems.

If this is not the place for "official" support, please let me know!

[jacksc02]

Tim, we are using max 2009 x64 and VRay 1.5sp3a in production and have no issues with LC drop outs like you have described.
All I can suggest is stripping out a scene and sending it to Vlado to have a look at.

By any chance are you using Dynamic Memory?