I’ve had to put up with this for such a long time but it’s getting to the point that it makes my processes substantially longer when trying to use the material editor or even the modifiers on objects.
I can be inside a Vray bitmap on a vraymaterial and hit back to get to the top level and it can take between 10-15 seconds to complete the task.
Does anyone else suffer from these issues and is there a fix for it? It’s becoming very frustrating.
Same here. I have always wondered if it was a MAX thing or a VRAY thing. It literally makes me scream sometimes.
Not happening to me, even with heavy scenes.
Plugins of *any* sort can add to the messages passed around in Max (say, f.e., forest pro, particle systems, and so on).
Also, using OSL means there will be jit recompiles here and there without the user initiating one manually.
It could also be something specific to your hardware which isn’t playing nice with us (or the aforementioned plugins).
Do you have more info on what is involved?
yep same here, seems to get better if a restart max but only for a bit
i did a windows reinstall recently to a fresh win10 enterprise and still happens, have posted about material editor a bit. now use the new option to go back to the old one. adding modifiers in insanely slow
win 10, 2990wx, 128gb ram (have triend with 64) 2 x 2080 (have tried with one as well)
current vray, phx, max 2019
i have read it might be worth going to 2021 but seems system dependent
While Slate is no speed demon, it is at least tolerable. I can’t abide by the old school material editor anyway. I like to see all my nodes and link and unlink thinks all the time
I will sometimes turn off the previews in Slate, but even then switching nodes is not lightning fast, even on the newest hardware.
This really does need optimization from AD.
This was what i was trying to figure out, by asking for more feedback.
If you write here, it’s because you assume it’s us, but i was wondering if it really was.
As stated, i have seen absolutely no evidence of this, under identical load, between Arnold, Corona, and us (this, freshly so, with 100 4k textures loaded and displayed in viewport.).
It doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist, it only means it’s not something immediately obvious.
If you have shareable, actionable evidence (ideally a scene to profile while this happens), we’d be very grateful.
At least with Slate, the speed seems about the same no matter which renderer is selected. More complex nodes with more controls take longer to display than simpler nodes. I get the feeling whatever Max used to instantiate and draw all the little GUI controls is horribly inefficient.
The same applies to objects with large amounts of controls in the Command Panel, like Forest or Phoenix. It takes way too long to select them and draw their controls. Interestingly with the command panel making it smaller (one vertical pane) is tons faster than when you expand it out to five or six vertical panes on a second monitor.
I don’t know what AD is doing that is so sluggish, but on modern hardware it draws more slowly than MacPaint on an original Mac in 1984!
I bet if someone competent at AD spent one or two days reviewing the control drawing code it could easily be optimized. There is some really stupid mistake going on there that takes something that should be like O(n) and makes it O(n^2) or worse.
You talk about this in the AD forum and they point to Chaos and visa versa. I think we just want it fixed. AD claimed in MAX 2020 that they would work closely with 3rd party people to get codes to work. From what I have been reading from several 3rd party developers is Chaos is breaking their own SDSK and to tell you the truth, I have no clue what that means.
Bobby,
On your machine if you switch to Arnold, for instance, does it speed up? I just tried, and it MIGHT be less than 5% faster in Slate, but there is a good chance it is the same. Now I was still using VRayMtl nodes.
Either way we know Max is slow as molasses, and in desperate need of optimization. Dunno if VRay is having some issues too.
Don’t worry about “breaking SDKs”, Bobby: it only means stuff will need some adjustment, and a recompile to work.
You’ve seen it for every Max version before, it’s truly not a biggie, most of the time.
We would love to see this problem go, but despite the claims of the contrary by the third parties you’ve read, we have *no evidence* of it being a problem on our side.
Whenever this should become an intractable issue on your side, please pack us a scene so we could try and see what is doing what.
Material Editor sucks from 3dsmax 2020 update 2.
Basically they’ve enabled ‘show shaded in viewport’ for every new created material. This takes ages once you go beyond 1 composite layer just in diffuse.
I had this reported here, but found out that it’s AD isssue “new feature”: - Chaos Forums
Besides that also notice that new material swatched in vray5 are cooler looking, but taking too much cpu power as well. So I switched back to old one.
Another problem you mind notice is 3ds max 2021, is physical materials instead of old standard one. I’ve changed it back to standard one, as I’m not seeing any usefull info in those fancy material swatches anyway. What’s the point of waisting cpu power, especially when IPR.
Slate works 50\50 to me. As I found another issue in vray5 with the ability to connect some nodes. Happens quite random, but sometime if material is applied to multiple objects and you have selected just one, it doesn’t allow you to connect anything to this material.
Reported here: - Chaos Forums
This is not vray related, but corona. I’ve got 2990wx with 128gb ram, and corona performs like i’ve got a pumpkin instead of 32-core cpu. Once I run IPR even with 70-80% of cores used the material editor is sooooo lugish! I don’t have this problem on old intel i7 though.
So this is more of hardware related question I guess. Recorded the video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/i482t4tc0jpv6dv/Local\_workstation.mp4?dl=0
another poor performing 2990wx - i blame my CPU for my mat editor isses as well, basically good for NOTHING except pure rendering.
anyone know if 3990x is also awful outside of pure CPU render?
Ensure, where possible, that you’re using the processor without NUMA active.
That’s great for some things, but truly not very good for interactivity of any sort (gaming, too, f.e.).
Granted, you may see half of your ram available, that way, but perhaps it’ll be enough to do those interactive, single-core action tasks.
I have a 1900X and it runs smooth as butter with NUMA deactivated, while it’s all hiccupy with it on.
For what it is worth, I have a 3950x, 64 ram, rtx 2080ti, win 10 home (no idea if that makes any difference) - Max 21, Vray 5 latest
Honestly, I am having none of these issues with regular mat ed - I rarely use slate.
Generally Max is responsive even with pretty heavy scenes with all the textures on and basically everything in ‘lazy mode’, i.e. really not optimising anything much.
Vray swatches are slow for sure, though haven’t got round to switching as they definitely look better.
Now of course I have jinxed it 
For the 2990 try Core Prio. But leave the threads setting at 32 (which is what they recommend).
It could be a lot of things as Lele mentioned.
Slate UI performance has some update on 2021.1 or 2. So, if you have 4k monitor, Slate UI drawing speed is a lot better.
There is also generic notification handling improvement in 2021. So, that might help, too.
Then, closing rollouts in material browser like scene material or change to text helps;.
Then, yes, vray new swatch is slower.
If you don’t like new default physical materials and fills with whatever material you want.
Either you can switch to VRay preset or modify this material library file.
“C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2021\en-US\defaults\MAX\FactoryDefaults\medit.mat”
For show material by default on issue. you can change default with this. It need 2021.1
setIniSetting (getMAXIniFile() ) “Materials” “DefaultMaterialViewportMode” “0”
IN the end, the key to solve issue is knowing there the problems are. So, if any one can isolate issue or generate simple scene file.
That would be helpful to solve the issue.
Thanks Joe - I will try this today not seen it before.
Lele - I am retiring this WS for a 3950x as my main machine. Ill be leaving it to CPU render in the basement on deadline until it dies.I dont know what NUMAs are except they make Phoenix slow as well.
Im on max 2019 still as I dont see a reason to upgrade yet if the materials and general operation is slow. I didnt have these issues on Max 2017 running a Dual 22 core Xeon.
Im on 2019 still and have reverted to the old material editor in Vray which is better but still way too slow compared to other software. I dont have 4K monitors due to the UI being messed up in 2019 with them. I will get 4K when the UI supports it fully,
@Joelaff wow reading the coreprio page it really seems like the 2990wx was a terribly designed and implemented chip! What a piece of AMD shite lol…
Anyone know if the 3990x has similar isses being reported? Have some specced as render nodes but will go with the slower Intels if its gonna be the same.
NUMA
It’s very OK a method, f.e., for virtual machines: each has a piece of the CPU and a piece of the Memory, the one *physically* closest to the CPU being used.
Renderers, and other memory intensive applications like Phoenix, will make no such evaluation, and will want to use all the CPU and all the memory locations at all times.
The more memory-intensive the application is (imagine Phoenix pushing and pulling those cells in and out of memory, or V-Ray dealing with proxies and textures loaded and unloaded while rendering), the worse the penalty for accessing physically far locations will be.
It could be that if you set up the machine as a dual VM with single CPU and single NUMA node it would perform really well with Deadline as two nodes.
Worth giving it a whirl, given it’s truly a beast of a processor, and it’d be a pity to let it go to waste.
I’m grossly simplifying here, btw, don’t shoot me. 