3ds Max 2017 w SP1 almost useable - but not quite.

[info_1]

So I of course waited until the service pack came out before installing R2017.

-Took it out of the box and tried some scenes- found some new bugs like select by material doesn't  work and the scene explorer and layer manager is acting  weird.

-Viewport display is supposed to be better but I guess I need to play with some settings or something, because sometimes yes and sometimes no.

-Art render looks kinda neat, but how long do I have to render a complex scene before it stops looking grainy? my guess is at this point is  2 or 3 hours for a scene that rendered in 2016 w Mental Ray in under an hour.

-Mental Ray has a new GI solution the runs on the GPU - 2 1/2 hours on a heavy scene that took 2016 45 minutes to render and very grainy. This new version of Mental Ray without the new GI, running with the old settings test scenes are rendering 25% - 50% slower than in R2016.

-and most of all there is no plugin for Piranesi that works with MAX 2017. Something to do with "Autodesk have changed the format of fbx files and provided no api to save in the old format. It may be a while before we get this to work" This one is probably on the Piranesi people, but I happen to like Piranesi a lot.

Anyways I've renamed the .exe so I don't accidentally open a project in 2017. I will give it another go after the next service or extension pack. Maybe even skip this release like I did with R 2009.

[Anonymous]

Even with SP1 it is largely unusable. I wouldn't know where to starts. It also freezes and crashes constantly on me. Maybe 20 times a day. Today, I ran out of patience and saved everything I was working for to Max 2016 and took all my projects back there. I'll check it again in a few months.

[WhitebirchStudios]

I am in the exact same place. Today, I decided to go back to 2016 because crashing every hour is bad for business.

[spacefrog_]

SP1 was kind of a quick fix with the majority of important fixes still waiting for the SP2 release ( eg.  groups still do not allow many major modifiers to be applied on in SP1 ). One serious issue that still exists though is the crashing of Max 2017 with multible sessions open, so multible sessions should'nt be used ATM. But i can't repro any of the system freeze issues people are reporting and somehow i doubt that it's really Max causing the troubles.

For example, i certainly and definitely turn everything off after installation that might cause my system to become bloated with unneeded software. I personally count some of the things that come with a 3ds Max installation to this category:

eg. the whole comm-center thing , which was a cause for problems in the past. Anyone of you with the freezes, tried to rename the WSCommCntr4.exe files somehwere in your Program Files/common directories and rechecked for the freezes ? I do not recommend to rename it, just turn it off for testing purposes 😉 . Additionally i have a startup script that closes the infocenter stuff, but thats another story ...

[dominique.bouthillette]

Hi Info,

I was reading through your post and just quickly wanted to let you know that the Select by Material issue has been logged within our defect database, and our developers are looking into possible solutions for it. In the meantime, you may consider looking into Neil Blevin's SoulburnScripts as a workaround. This Script Pack has a ton of great MaxScripts, which includes an "objectSelectorByMaterial" which can select all objects with the same material, isolate them, etc.

You can also post questions/requests on the 3ds Max Feedback Forums as well for any implementations you'd like to see (Piranesi) or just general product enhancements that could result in a better user experience.

Hope this helps. 🙂

[Swordslayer]

For me, it was even worse after the SP1 than before, where there were some random crashes, say once or twice a day, before, now it was multiple crashes per hour. Using placement tool was a no-go (filled my autoback folder with _recover_recover_recover_... files quite fast), viewport zoom worked most of the times but sometimes it was more like chasing the model on screen as it kept getting away, so many (random and non-reproducible) crashes when trying to chamfer some verts.. everytime I thought it's just something wrong with the scene and I saved it to 2016 and opened it there, there was no problem and everything worked flawlessly, I opened the same scene in 2017 and the issue was back. In my twelve years with max, 2017 SP is the most unstable of them all - for me, your mileage may vary. Well, at least now you can save to previous versions...

[Anonymous]

Good to know. So it's clear it's a pretty widespread problem. What are the main plugins you're using?

[Swordslayer]

Apart from v-ray, there's no other 3rdparty plugin in my 2017 install (and it didn't clean up after its installation, so with each startup it would add all the menus, quadmenus and stuff and re-save the UI configuration - but the same happens with 2016).

[Anonymous]

This could also be the graphic card. Mine's a Titan X. What's yours?

[Swordslayer]

Just an old 2GB GTX 650, no drivers update since two years ago, no issues in other graphic-card-problem-sensitive apps like VRED (and no big issues before SP1, I used to think this version is quite nice).

[WhitebirchStudios]

Have you tried a new scene in 2017? I had a ton of issues with a converted
scene, but fresh in 2017 went well.

--

Thanks

[image: Whitebirch Studios]

Bobby Parker / Architectural Illustrator
whitebirchstudios@gmail.com / 2188206812

Whitebirch Studios
31566 Green Scene DrBreezy Point, MN 56472
http://www.bobby-parker.com

[image: Twitter] [image: Facebook]
[image: Google +]
[image: LinkedIn]


My current hardware setup: Dell Precision T7910 36-Core Dual E5-2696 v3 Max
3.8GHz 128GB RAM EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 06G-P4-4995-KR 6GB

[Swordslayer]

Well, I have to open and work with scenes older than a month all the time. And the scenes that are most troublesome for me are actually the ones created in 2017 prior the SP, scenes created in 2016 (or some that are saved to 2016, opened in 2016 and resaved there) work quite okay. When it starts crashing with every file I try to open, the only solution is to reboot the computer, after that it works happily for some time.

[WhitebirchStudios]

Well, I am sure sorry for your headaches. Hopefully, Autodesk gets some
fixes out right away. Like me, people are on subscriptions and are paying
for working software.

--

Thanks

[image: Whitebirch Studios]

Bobby Parker / Architectural Illustrator
whitebirchstudios@gmail.com / 2188206812

Whitebirch Studios
31566 Green Scene DrBreezy Point, MN 56472
http://www.bobby-parker.com

[image: Twitter] [image: Facebook]
[image: Google +]
[image: LinkedIn]


My current hardware setup: Dell Precision T7910 36-Core Dual E5-2696 v3 Max
3.8GHz 128GB RAM EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 06G-P4-4995-KR 6GB

[info_1]

Max is like a big old haunted house- there's a lot of neat-o stuff but you have to be very careful where you step. AutoCad is like an old pickup truck that  doesn't really work any better, but you have to keep making payments on forever.

This year I'm just not going to let myself get too worked up about it. when 2016 came out I spent a solid 40 hour week mucking around trying to get it working. also every upgrade takes up like, correct me if I'm wrong but, 15 GB of ssd space- so also last year buying a larger SSD and re installing EVERYTHING.  A dozen little problems with back burner and so on totally messed up my workflow. With that and sorta the same experience with AutoCAD I was so mad at Autodesk I was literally shaking.

I have a subscription to Adobe Creative cloud, 60 bucks a month I get almost every program Adobe makes. When there's a new PhotoShop or Illustrator or AE etc.  It IS a NEW version of Photohop, Illustrator or AE etc. It's not days of down time and then hours of wasted time complaining here.

If I wasn't so old I'd change brands.

[darawork]

I've had to go back to MAX 2016 too, 2017 SP1 is completely unusable.

I go to render an interior in iRay, the floor comes out black..... so, I isolate the floor and render again, the same floor comes out fine.

A&D Metals renders out like green paint, SigurShader A&D glass becomes translucent white, Environmental Exposure controls inconsistent between scenes, Program staying resident in memory after quitting out (with errors).. .etc... etc...  

That sort of infestation of bugs is intolerable when my boss is standing behind me wondering what the hell is going on, and where his money is going.

I know I didn't opt-in for the Beta testing of this product, but I can't help but wonder what went on with people who did Beta test it. Is this a pass level of software creation? Who decided that?

As for AutoCad 2017, I have not noticed one new thing between this version and last years offering. Obviously the redesigning team have run out of ways to mess the program up visually, and couldn't think of anything else to break. Even the loading splash screen is the same.

Wait, I think I see what they've done, they've changed the program icon thumbnail!

[PROH]

darawork wrote:

"Wait, I think I see what they've done, they've changed the program icon thumbnail!"

What more could you possible want in return for your Subscribtion fee?

- My biggest fear is that 3dsMax in the future will be developed in the same pace as AutoCAD has been the last decade. Why use money on developement when you can get the same income without doing anything?

[whitebirchstudios]

I think we are all a little miffed about getting herded into an insane subscription model. I am not sure how they are going to sustain this model. People will become outraged when they are literally renting a software. The software doesn't have to change, we just pay to use it. Mind you, I love the Adobe rental model because for $19 a month, it is a non-issue, at least for most. it is different to pay $225 a month for software that is broken.

[darawork]

I'm on Adobe CC too, works great. Slider on site for licence seats required per month, so if office is busy we slide up the number. No reseller mark ups. Nice software model. Almost completely wiped out their warez problems too, overnight.

[Anonymous]

All software subscription models are fundamentally not in the users' interest (they're in the shareholders' interests). But that's widely off-subject and that train has already left.
My main concern here is the instability of 2017. It's been a long time since we haven't had such an unstable, crash-prone update.

[darawork]

I get what you're saying. Last word, Netflix, billionaires.

AutoDesk, I've never had to rollback so quickly before today. Less than a weeks use proved enough. Honestly, scarily bad compatibility issues with previous versions. Made me look like a noob in front of management. Nice.