Frozen screen

Whenever I forget to change MAX’s priority my screen will freeze for about 10 minutes when I hit render. It’s really an issue. Is there any way to get around this, other than not forgetting to change MAX to low priority? I can’t image that this is a normal behavior of software. When I say freeze, I mean my mouse will not even move. Even when MAX starts to come to life I try to get my mouse over to the cancel button, but it usually takes a few more minutes before I can inch the cursor there.

you can make a .cmd file where you use it to launch 3ds max instead of 3dsmax.exe, there you specify following command:

cmd.exe /c start “3Dsmax” /belownormal “c:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2018\3dsmax.exe” %*

if you use that cmd to launch max, it will automatically set it to below normal i’ve used it for years. However I think vray is just way too aggressive with the threads especially under hyperthreaded system these days. I think its due to some perfomance issues. I always have to set my maya to be with 2 cores less (cpu affinity) or else I can’t work.