Max 2018 DR Bucket Display

[Bruce Hart]

I've just "upgraded" to Max 2018 and I'm finding that the render buckets in the VFB don't seem to update in the display. The render carries on fine, but the bucket progress display just becomes static for some reason. If you mouse zoom in the VFB and back out again it will refresh the progress. I'm using Vray 3.6.02 with a GTX 980Ti on Windows 10. Any suggestions? I've updated the display drivers but the problem remains. Max 2016 & 17 worked as expected.

[tashko.zashev]

I'm testing on a simple scene and there is a little bit of lag indeed due to the CPU utilization. At this time 3ds max and mouse freezes for about a second or two.
Can you try to change the 3DSMax process affinity from the Win Task manager > Details > Right click on the 3dsmax.exe > set affinity ; and turn off 2 CPU threads ? Do you get this problem now?

[Bruce Hart]

Hi Tashko
Thanks for your help. I've done tests on 2018 on my home machine with a 4Gb GTX980 card on two 4K monitors and there's no problem with the VFB display. I'll try what you suggest on my work PC and see how it goes.

[INOVALIA]

Hi Mr HART,

I have a similar problem at the office, did you get a solution ?
I use Max 2018 with Vray 3.60.02

[Bruce Hart]

Hi Inovalia
No Solution so far. As I say - the rendering itself goes fine - it's just the bucket display that does not update unless you zoom in and out of the VFB. What video card do you use INOVALIA?

[Bruce Hart]

Just as an update - I tried switching to my office Windows Administrator login and everything worked fine with the bucket display, so there would seem to be an issue with my usual Windows profile. I had installed several beta versions of Max 2018 (imoogi) in the past so perhaps there is some residual gunk in my machine.

[INOVALIA]

Hi Mr HART,

Thanks for your reply, my Graphic card is a NVIDIA Quadro K4000, the problem is the same for me, the final render is OK but only the display of the bucket during the prepass and during the render dosn't work.
I will try to log my office PC with the administrator account and i will tell you back if it works.
Thanks for your help.

[tashko.zashev]

Are you working on something else while rendering ? For an example internet browser or another application/window. Or the issue happens even if you aren't touching anything ?
While testing this on max 2018 we came across a wired issue. 3DS Max freezes for a while when the window focus changes during the render. Not sure if this is what you get in your renders.

[joelly3d]

I have same issue. It refreshes when you zoom in or out, but it looks like the "redraw" call at buckets end is not firing. 2018 + 3.60.03

(even with Affinity set to free up cores) Just looks like redraw is not being fired. They did change the UI quite a bit, and probably recreated, or renamed the UI refresh commands.

Additional info.... Does not do it if Frame Buffer is off. So it is a VRay Frame Buffer issue in 2018.

[joelly3d]

I noticed I was having viewport update issues in general and downloaded the latest NVidia Display driver. I am using an M4000M and installed Quadro driver 385.08 and it seems to have fixed it. Perhaps it was a due to a newer DirectX 11 call or something? Curious to see if this also fixes it for others that have had display refresh issues in 2018.

[Bruce Hart]

Are you working on something else while rendering ? For an example internet browser or another application/window. Or the issue happens even if you aren't touching anything ?
While testing this on max 2018 we came across a wired issue. 3DS Max freezes for a while when the window focus changes during the render. Not sure if this is what you get in your renders.

Hi Tashko
This occurs with nothing else running. 3DS Max does not freeze for me as such, it's simply the VFB bucket display that does not update. The render progress bar at the bottom keeps going and I watch that to see when the render is finished. It's not a huge problem, but it would be nice to be able to see the bucket progress again. As i said above - everything works fine using another Windows Admin profile (which is strange)

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

I tried to reproduce the problem with and without Administrator account. I did a few fast and slow rendering test but I didn't manage to reproduce the issue. Does it occur on every scene and every render or its random? Does it help if you update your graphic card drivers to the latest one?

[Bruce Hart]

I tried to reproduce the problem with and without Administrator account. I did a few fast and slow rendering test but I didn't manage to reproduce the issue. Does it occur on every scene and every render or its random? Does it help if you update your graphic card drivers to the latest one?

Hi - it happens on every render, and yes I have updated my graphics drivers. I guess the fact that it can run perfectly fine on an administrator account shows that the graphics card/drivers are OK. Thanks for doing some tests - I'm sorry to waste your time with it. It's only a minor issue that does not seem to affect many others.

So just to recap - I have three versions of Max installed: 2016, 17 and 2018. 2016 & 2017 have no problems with the VFB bucket display updating. Only 2018 has this issue (using the same Windows login). My home system is quite similar and uses a GTX980 card, and has no issues.

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Alright then we'll continue testing. There is one issue that might be related somehow, hopefully its fix will resolve the problem.

[Bruce Hart]

Alright then we'll continue testing. There is one issue that might be related somehow, hopefully its fix will resolve the problem.

Ok thnaks. And in a strange twist - the bucket display is now working for me today. I have no idea why or what's changed, but it seems to be OK for now