Max 2015 SP1 Slow layer system

[jneilon]

Has anyone else  find the new layering system slow even with the SP1? Anything with large amounts of geometry and layers will take 2mins to open. It was instant with an identical scene in Max 2012,13,14.   

It seems that layering system is based off the updated selection tool which has had the same issue since Max 2012.

Is there a workaround like switch to the old UI?

[spacefrog_]

There is a fix in SP1 which sped up the layermanager opening time tremendously. Are you sure you tested this after installing SP1 ?

I verified the speedup by myself - so i'm wondering about your post 😉

Could you post simple repro steps or even a scene where you see this slow layer manager opening ?

How many layyers / objects we are talking about here ?

[jneilon]

Yes I am using SP1. I heard there was a fix but it is still much slower then the previous setup.

We tested on two types of typical scenes.

First Type: Straight Revit Import 2-3 million poly's and about 50 layers. Takes 2mins to open and lags heavly when you add objects while it is open.

Second Type: Optmized scene 1.9 million poly's 60 layers. 15 secs to open. 1-5 sec lag when adding new objects while the layer manager is open.

These issues were not present until Max 2015 with and without SP1

[spacefrog_]

Polycount is most propably irrelevant - more important is the object count

Could you try to import the scene in Max 2014 - save it and reload in Max 2015, and compare layer manager performance on that scene in Max 2014 vs. Max 2015  ?

Maybe the importer in Max 2015 simply imports the data differently and generates different object counts etc...

That would mean general operations with the scene would be slower in Max 2015 than in Max 2014, not only the layer manager ...

[jneilon]

The imported Revit geometry has 84,000 objects.

Max 2014 layer manager is fast with zero lag with this scene. Opening the Max 2014 file in 2015 has the same results of being slow in Max 2015 SP1.

My optimized Geometry file has around the same amount of objects. It still has lag but not as bad as the unoptimized revit import.

I would send the file but they are current projects that I cannot share. If I get a chance I will recreate a scene to demonstrate this. It seems that heavier scenes with lots of objects are tallied slower in Max 2015's layer manager.

It is a similar issue with the newer selection dialog (2012) with lots of objects. The old dialog box was extremely fast but the new one is hard to use if your scene is heavy.

[jneilon]

I was goin to upload a test scene but it is too big. 

Here is how to test:

1) Open Max 2015

2) Make box

3) copy or instance box 20k

4) Open Layer Explorer

5) You should see a lag of 2 - 10 secs

6) Draw other objects in the scene while Layer Explorer is open.

7) You should a substantial lag of 5 - 30 secs

😎 Compare the same scene in Max 2012,13 or 14. There should be zero lag in the layer dialog box.

[aon.914858227]

Yes, indeed opening 2015 SceneExplorer in Layer mode is slower. However if i expand the Layer-Node in 2014 i almost get the same lag as in 2015.

Opening in Hierarchy mode or as select-by-name dialog is in both versions almost instantaneous.

[spacefrog_]

Regarding the old select by name dialog mentioned above:

The old dialog is in reallity SLOW as hell too with many objects: clicking,scrolling etc. take ages with many ( ten thousands ) objects. Opening might be quick, but working with it is slow

But 80k objects mentioned here are a problem for any 3d package ( CAD pages may be different), not only form the layer manager perspective, but in general. The internal data organization/managment is optimized for other things that those huge numbers of objects..

Just did a test with 120K boxes: of course Max gets slow in any means, even simply alt-tabbing the app to foreground/background becomes a waiting game...

[spacefrog_]

Just tested a 50K object scene with Max 2015

Indeed the Layermanager takes insanely long opening with this ammount of objects. So it looks like the performance fix in SP1 only targeted the layer number, but not the object count ( which is not so noticable at lets say 1k objects )

The Scene explorer itself is quite fast, same as with Max 2014 - So there is definitely still improvement required here for the Max 2015 Layermanager when dealing with large object counts

Please report that issue, as you are the one who actually discovered it .And be very clear that it occurs with high (>50k) OBJECT counts, and that layer count performance was fixed, otherwise QA might think you are talking about the layer count issue...

I'll try to keep this issue in the back of my head, and make the devs aware, when i get the chance to do so...

[jneilon]

Thanks, Yes I will submit a bug report.

I have to disagree about the old select by name especially in Max 2012. The old one is noticably faster with large amounts of objects. I have reverted back to the old one for a long time now. I would love to use the new one since it has better filtering but it is slow.

I am using this in the CurrentDefaults.ini as a workaround

[Scene Explorer]
SelectByNameUsesSceneExplorer=0

[spacefrog_]

I use the same ini tweak

But scrolling down in a list of 50k objects is'nt fun in the old select by name dialog too. Mabye it's still a bit faster than the Scene explorer though...

But i really think that Max is not made for object counts that large. Those scenes cry for optimization, or maybe even just a small flip in a importer option would just give you a workable scene by merging specific objects during import ... which in turn would reduce the object count down to some sane number ...

[cheerioboy]

I came to reply about the same issue. Having come from 2012

One particular scene had 20k objects hidding in a layer, making up about 56 million poly.

The viewport was only showing the other 14 million poly.

The Scene Explorer takes 25 seconds to finally open. And it takes that same amount of time every time it's closed and opened again.

This was never an issue in 2012. Although the viewport did get laggy with the full 70million in the viewport. But with those objects hidden everything was snappy...

boo.

[jonathan.matthews]

Hello-

Did you submit a bug report for the slow layer system?  If so please let me know what the reference number is so that I can track it here internally at Autodesk.  

Thank you

Jonathan

[jonathan.matthews]

Hello.  This thread about the slow layer system in 3ds Max 2015 has been reported to our development team.

[cheerioboy]

Thanks Jonathan