Render setup window very slow to open

[dlparisi]

There recently was a tip by one of the Chaos-guys to delete a specific file for another renderer that is installed together with Max. This made switching between RT and Adv. a lot faster for me. Maybe it is a solution for that problem here as well?

Here's the thread...http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...9-Slow-to-Swap Unfortunately I've already deleted that so no luck.

[Vizioen]

Same here ...

Yep has been like this for me for ages....

Ditto

That sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you hit F10 to bring up the dialog box only to realize it was already open behind another window ...

Haha exactly + the delay = F10 spam; results in the windows popping up for a few times with lag, the horror :')

[^Lele^]

I wonder, how many other renderers are installed?
I test a wee bit, and the slowdowns become apparent (if there is no licensing issue) only when there are a few others installed.
Now, without going down the rMan route of blaming a direct competitor (try installing both rMan and Arnold on the same maya, and set rMan as renderer, and you'll know), are all these issues with a vanilla max and just vray as added renderer?
Otherwise we may as well be chasing ghosts.

[Vizioen]

I wonder, how many other renderers are installed?
I test a wee bit, and the slowdowns become apparent (if there is no licensing issue) only when there are a few others installed.
Now, without going down the rMan route of blaming a direct competitor (try installing both rMan and Arnold on the same maya, and set rMan as renderer, and you'll know), are all these issues with a vanilla max and just vray as added renderer?
Otherwise we may as well be chasing ghosts.

Here
Vanilla 3ds max 2014 + Vray + pre-installed renderers = 4 seconds
3dsmax 2016 + Corona demo + Octane demo + fStorm beta + preinstalled [Vue, iray, scanline, mental, iray (how many renderers can u add Autodesk srsly)] = also 4 seconds

[^Lele^]

I am getting a 900ms to open and 50 ms to close it, in max2017 sp2, with the Max-VRay ui preset as default.
However, if i install fStorm, probably due to cuda checks, my max takes a LOT longer to start (3 to 5 times longer, i haven't timed it precisely).
Dialog opening with just these two installed doesn't change, however.
I'll keep looking.

[Dave_Wortley]

It incrementally increases in opening time by the number of render elements you have in the scene. 100 elements will add an extra second or so on. Probably an Autodesk 3dsmax issue rather than anything to do with Vray.

D

[^Lele^]

Besides that, a fresh render dialog will check for a license before opening.
it takes less than half a second locally, but if the license is networked, and for whatever reason the network is slow, that's where you'll wait.
If that's the case, you can verify it by opening the material editor: it'll show a comparable performance degradation on open.

The attached script does nothing but open (and then close) the render dialog.
It will however print out the times (the first is open, the second is close) in the listener.
Ran with a local wibu key, ten times, i get around 1 to 3% variability in the timers, with 9 tenths of a second to open, and a half tenth of a second to close..
If you run it over a network which is busy, however, ten runs will display potentially variable timings, depending on the traffic at the operations' time, and that's a sign of a network problem, rather than an inherent V-Ray issue.
For example, if i turn off the license server, and vray's left waiting, it takes from 6 to 12 seconds to open, and from 6 to 12 seconds to close, with each run showing a different result.

rendDiag_timer.zip

[Dave_Wortley]

Scanline - time to open with 0 render elements 0.5 seconds
VRay - time to open with 0 render elements 2 seconds (network license)

Scanline time to open with 140 render elements 2 seconds
VRay - time to open with 140 render elements 4 seconds (network license)

[^Lele^]

How do we know the slowdown isn't a peak of network traffic?
Have you run the tests a few times over?

This said, V-Ray has callbacks which run on REs, to check for, and in case execute, auto-renaming (extratex, and such.), which max lacks.
2 seconds to process 140 REs seems more than legit to me, and not a show-stopper at all.
Considering i have never seen those many REs in any project of whatever scale i tackled (and some were on the large side of huge, either in 3d, or for post work, like configurators with a gazzillion MMs), i think it's fair to say the issue is more theoretical than practical, either way.
Or am i too long removed from production, and it's now the norm to create 140 REs to get a job done?

[Dave_Wortley]

And it takes longer to open if you are in Expert Mode vs Basic.

[Dave_Wortley]

How do we know the slowdown isn't a peak of network traffic?
Have you run the tests a few times over?

This said, V-Ray has callbacks which run on REs, to check for, and in case execute, auto-renaming (extratex, and such.), which max lacks.
2 seconds to process 140 REs seems more than legit to me, and not a show-stopper at all.
Considering i have never seen those many REs in any project of whatever scale i tackled (and some were on the large side of huge, either in 3d, or for post work, like configurators with a gazzillion MMs), i think it's fair to say the issue is more theoretical than practical, either way.
Or am i too long removed from production, and it's now the norm to create 140 REs to get a job done?

Ran the test a few times over, it's almost impossible to max out our network unless every blade is trying to access 1000 vrmesh files at the same time. Quickest I got was 3.5, slowest was 4.5

The thing that annoys me is that these checks should not take 2 seconds, seems slow to me, there's a notification system in max for a reason. There's nothing that should need to be checked when opening. My magic tool takes less than 2 seconds to open and its maxscript and opens a bunch of images, loads in external files, and pulls a list of files in certain folders on the network. Much more complicated than a render scene dialog.

I'd like to see the license check speed increased if that is holding things up.

[^Lele^]

Well, from the start of the thread when people had a "sick feeling to the pit of their stomach" for the length of time it takes to open the render dialog we're down to 2 to 4 seconds with 140 REs on a network license.
It's less than half a second on a usb dongle, if it gets sped up any further it'll check it before you open the render dialog.
Maybe local borrowing of licenses may help, and that's coming with the online licensing system (no idea how that'd work in a company environment, myself.).

Still, i'm curious to see what other people find out about their timings, and their exact configurations.
Numbers are actionable, feelings ain't.

[dlparisi]

Well, from the start of the thread when people had a "sick feeling to the pit of their stomach" for the length of time it takes to open the render dialog we're down to 2 to 4 seconds with 140 REs on a network license.
It's less than half a second on a usb dongle, if it gets sped up any further it'll check it before you open the render dialog.
Maybe local borrowing of licenses may help, and that's coming with the online licensing system (no idea how that'd work in a company environment, myself.).

Still, i'm curious to see what other people find out about their timings, and their exact configurations.
Numbers are actionable, feelings ain't.

We'll I get the sick feeling mainly due to the fact that the dialog was already open but buried, e.g., hitting F10 appears to do nothing after waiting a few seconds for the dialog to show up and then having to hit it again to actually open it. In all it can easily take 10 seconds just to adjust one small value, say adjusting the noise TH from .02 to .01.

My usb dongle/license is local and the scene actually had three RE's in place (they are in my maxstart file) but I just tried it with those removed with no change. I timed out several runs and got between 4.68 seconds to 6.12 seconds (that's with no RE). The scanline dialog takes 1.4-1.5 seconds to open.

[dlparisi]

What about a plugin affecting this? I've got a lot of plugins installed but the one that always worries me is RPManager due to the way it interacts with the render settings. Anyone out there having a slow dialog box and NOT have RPManager installed?

[dlparisi]

I did a system restart and got much better times: averaging 1.75 seconds to open Vray and .6 seconds to open Scanline (similar to AlexM's original post about restarting). I had a bunch of other stuff open at the time for my last test but memory was not maxed out at all.