Opening V-Ray Scenes are slow because

[PdZ]

...of the implementation of Maps.
I discovered this just recently. I was curious why It does take so freaking long to open V-Ray Scenes in Cinema 4D. I discovered that it depends on how many Materials you have in the scene. Opening the SAME Vrayscene with Cinema without having Vray installed its opening almost instantly.

It seems that there is an extreme slowdown by translating Vray Materials in Cinema 4D.

And with other renderingengines this phenomenon is NOT HAPPENING. When opening Redshift- or Cinemascenes with their corresponding Materials they open fast.

I suspect that because Redshift has a "better" implementation because its now owned by Maxon and V-Ray has more hurdles because not having all C4D-SDKinformations. You can clearly see that just by watching Viewport-Performance and Loading Textures by C4D or Redshift in comparison to Vray. In Vray its so slow that you can go ordering 10 coffees while Redshift and C4D handle viewport and opening scenes as fast as Thunderstrike.

It seems this didnt change with V-Ray 5 neither. That is so time consuming and do cost me a lot of money when watching my employees opening a Vrayscene in 10-15 minutes. I will prove what I mean later by posting a video.


Its enormously slow.

PdZ

[PdZ]

I think its also worsening when using <VR> (DR-compatible)-Materials in 3.7. Dont know whats happening on V-Ray 5 Front. Have to check that in future.
In the video you see a "normal" scene. Its not toooo big but its big. Even so it takes horrible long to load the Maps. You can clearly see that Scene is loaded and after that V-Ray is trying to load the Maps or C4D is trying to load the V-Ray Materials, I dont know. Opening the big scene takes long, yes. But after that it takes substantial amount LONGER to open when V-Ray Materials are in the scene.

Using V-Ray 3.7 and C4D R21

Video below:

https://we.tl/t-iuhWA8olSB

[markTAVF]

PdZ

Hi,

I've had the same problems before and some of it was linked to texture locations and set paths in C4d. If there are a lot of files in any paths set in file assets it seems to search for a long time. Don't know if this helps?

Thanks

[Makushimu]

I have the same with vray 5.
Some scenes may take several minutes to load sometimes. And it's not big scenes, 200-300 MB. With approximately 50-200MB of textures.
I load all textures from one place, so searching it shouldn't have any effect, especially if I have the path set in cinema settings. Later, when the scene opens, opening the material can also take a long time.
The same scene, with the same textures, but in redshift or native materials it loads very quickly.

[shaio]

Hi PdZ ,
could you please share such a scene so we can take a look at and see what is causing the slowdown and try to look for a solution? As you can imagine most of those reports are difficult to reproduce on our side no matter how bigger and complex our scenes are.

[PdZ]

Iam using absolute paths. There is nothing to search for. There are no general Path-Locations set in the Settings.
I dont know exactly what you mean...

When using absolut paths in other renderengines or C4D itself theres no problem and it seems weird anyway because the path is "absolutely set". There mustnt be searched for something.

But I will try the following: "Save File with assets" to make everything relative and in one tex-folder. I try that now.


shaio :

The scene rely a lot on absolute paths. If the problem persists as Makushimu said even when using relative paths, I will send you the scene in a few minutes privately.

greets,
PdZ

[Makushimu]

I can't share any scenes yet, but did a little test with:

With textures loaded from a set path in c4d preferences, it took ... to load the scene:
c4d file - 428mb -> 10 second
textures - 462mb -> 1min 38 sec (to make textures visible in the viewport)

After saving scene with assets there was minimal improvement:
c4d file - 428mb -> 8 second
textures - 462mb -> 1min 9 sec (to make textures visible in the viewport)

With scenes that weigh more, loading times can be much longer.
The same scene with redshift or c4d materials takes about 15-20 seconds to fully load.

[PdZ]

Jo. Unfortunately (or fortunately because I dont want to use relative paths) its the same here. Scene opens slow as hell.
.

These are my tests and results:

• Opening scene which has all absolute paths = Slow opening the scene
• Saving scene with assets (making all paths relative, no more absolute) = Slow opening the scene like before. Dont see any difference.
• Deleting all Objects but leaving Materials in Materialmanager ALONE = AS EXPECTED! Slow! THERES NOT EVEN ONE OBJECT IN THE SCENE!
• Deleting all Materials, saving with no Materials, Opening scene which has no materials = Fast opening but NO MATERIALS

First
Consensus:

It has DEFINITELY to do with V-Ray Materials.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now further tests are required:

Scene has NO OBJECTS except V-Ray Standard Materials - paths are relative:

• Delete all V-Ray Advanced Materials and leave only V-Ray Standard Materials in the scene = Faster but only in relation to the deleted material quantity. So its the same. SLOW
• Just One Material in the scene, Standardmaterial, copied 100 times. Has relative textures, DR compatibility <VR> = FAST, I didnt expected that

Second
Consensus:

It must have something to do with either that there are a lot of texture informations in the scene or that V-Ray Materials have to register Texture-Path-Information to C4D via "Project Asset inspector" or I dont know.
Or it must be specific to some kind of Material. Or the problem is that this Material is all the same. I dont know.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now further tests are required:

Scene has NO OBJECTS except V-Ray Standard Materials - paths are relative:

• Scene has no objects. One Material 720 times copied. = Scene opens FAST. So it must have something to do as mentioned above. Maybe to many different textures.
• Scene has no objects. 215 different materials. Moved the "tex folder" to another folder. Only Standard Materials = Scene opens slow.
• Scene has no objects. A Lot of different materials. Moved the "tex folder" to another folder. ALL Materials and Types = Scene opens slow.
• Tried to delete all Texturepaths. Just have all the different Materials alone. NO TEXTURES ONLY MATERIALS. "Clear Assets"-Command in "Project Asset Inspector" Doesnt work = Cant test it because "Project Asset Inspector" seems broken in conjunction with V-Ray.

Last
Consensus:

I dont know really what causes this. But what is clear: A lot of different Materials even if they are Standardmaterials.
Maybe it has to do with DR-compatible materials (but that would not explain why Makushimu said this also happens in V-Ray 5. Because in V-Ray 5 arent "DR"-Materials (as far as I know).
I think it has something to do that there are a lot of Materials with textures. And They need to be "registered" in someway to the C4D-Engine or "Project Asset Inspector" or I dont know.

Its also weird that it seems that the "Project Asset Inspector" is not working correclty with V-Ray. Very noticeable. Also changing Paths in Project Asset Inspector doesnt work. Maybe heres the problem.
But iam no coder. In my Newbie-Opinion that must be it. "Clear Assets" doesnt work with V-Ray Materials. It is also very noticeable that V-Ray/C4D becomes VERY SLOW when there are a lot of Shaders in the scene or textures. Clicking on the "arrow" next to a shader takes a lot of time before something happens.

To clear all Texturepaths manualy is so much work. Iam not able to test this scenario. But iam pretty sure:





FINAL CONSENSUS:

The implementation of V-Ray related materials seem to be very broken. Cost a lot of time. Seems not to work with "Project Asset Inspector". Does MAYBE have those weird laggy and slow opening problems because of the "link" to the "Project Asset Inspector".


I send you the scene in a few minutes @shaio.

Greets PdZ

[Makushimu]

PdZ , great job !

I only use vray 5, scenes load faster than 3.7, but this slow materials problem is definitely there. Unfortunately.

[Doger]

I also noticed the long loading times in VRay 5. Especially when VRay materials are used.

I can imagine that it has something to do with the material preview in the viewport. Sometimes the scene becomes very laggy when a material preview is enabled in C4D. As soon as I switch off the preview, the scene runs smoothly again.

[PdZ]

Doger : Yes this takes additional time, too. But NOPE that is not the reason. But the V-Ray Viewport-implementation is catastrophic, too. I always have to use C4D Materials to use as temporary replacement to show the exact mapping in the viewport.

But to get back to your point: Nope! That has nothing to do with my point mentioned because I always have Materials to show in Viewport disabled. Its happening WHILE opening the scene. There must be some "translation"-Slowness while C4D opens the scene. Nothing to do with the viewport.
Especially when you consider: I tested this with NO OBJECTS in the scene. So theres nothing to load into the viewport.

greez
PdZ

Edit: But Doger you are right that its additional slower to show a texturemap via V-Ray Material than to do that with a Cinema Material. Also V-Ray Materialpreview is slower the higher you set up editor-resolution in the V-Ray Material and its also pixelated and not interpolated like C4D Matertial-Texture-Preview.

Iam pretty sure that the Chaosgroup-Coder are kinda limited due to limitations in the Cinema 4D Coding SDK. It really seems that Maxon is kinda blocking coderfriendlyness via bad interface.
When V-Ray was coded by the group of "Stefan Laub" they seem to have had the same problems. Even Chaosgroup seems to have those problems. This gives me the impression, that Maxons Plugin-Interface for external Renderers is especially bad when it comes to implement
Materials and Materialpreviews.

But thats all my guesses and assumptions. Iam not a coder.

Would be great if someone knows if this problem persists in other external renderengines (not owned by Maxon) like Corona, Arnold, Octane. Or is it a V-Ray-Specific Matter?
Because this is absolutely catastrophic. Waiting for a scene to open for weird reasons for Minutes and even many hours a week because of this bad interfaceproblem... If you calculate this into money while your employes waste time to just open a scene (half an hour a day)...
I think this is very serious.

greets
PdZ

[Makushimu]

(...) I always have to use C4D Materials to use as temporary replacement to show the exact mapping in the viewport.

Sad but true. I do that too.

(...) Waiting for a scene to open for weird reasons for Minutes and even many hours a week because of this bad interfaceproblem...

There is still time to open materials for editing. It often happens that it takes time for the material editing window to click into place and become responsive. And sometimes when I edit the material, this generates a new preview and everything hangs again for a few moments. There are many moments like this throughout the day, which together give you a fair amount of time waiting for the vray to stop choking and run smoothly.

A smooth viewport and materials are the basis of use and creative work. At least for me.
This should be fixed first and implementing the rest of the functions should wait.

[pardalis]

I've had the same problem since last night. I've been using Vray for about 10 weeks. The material was displayed immediately beforehand without any problems.

macOS Catalina 10.15.7, Radeon RX Vega 64, 64GB RAM DDR4

[Doger]

We started to disable the previews completly in the c4d preferences. C4D is way more responsive and opening Scene files take a few minutes instead of 1/2 hour. I hope they fix this issue soon.

[pardalis]

I only work with the preview deactivated. Otherwise it always takes 1-2 minutes for the material to react to a change.