topic Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max in 3ds Max Forum

A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

coilbookmedia — Sat, 17 Nov 2018 19:19:24 GMT

Hi we have around 20 mil polys of instance copied cars, For some reason even when displayed as boxes or hidden time slider is very slow around 5 fps. Why hiding them does not improve performance. We use 2018.4 Does max still calculate something inside hidden layers? Thee are stationary cars

Thank you

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

Byteman — Sat, 17 Nov 2018 19:46:52 GMT

Probably something else that you don't expect is slowing things down. It may be some particles or objects with several consuming modifiers, booleans... Even those instances might be the problem. Instance doesn't mean solving vast number of objects as only one object; on the contrary it slows things down during selection and many other operations. It only helps modify all, from a single object.

If material editor or curve editor is open you'll also notice slowdowns as it means additional update.

I solve these type of problems by saving large object groups of the same kind (like your cars) into a separate file by the Save Selected command, then delete them to merge later.

Then check to see if it helps.

Go on doing the same until figuring out what is the culprit. If you find one, then your solution may be just converting it to base mesh, may be disabling an update.

I've also had instances when the problem was a combination of several properties. I've had particles used as a fountain. When I have disabled it I thought it would help but there were also, dense planar meshes used as pool surfaces, which had noise modifiers applied to a soft selection of vertices. Animations affect a lot. Check if you have any forgotten parameters that change by time. Merged objects are real pain. You can't know what's inside all those cars. Who knows how many iterations are there on a stupid Turbo Smooth modifier enabled without your consent.

Cars -and especially if from Evermotion's model sets- are unnecessarily tesselated.

It is a tough job to find out.

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

coilbookmedia — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 17:07:48 GMT

Thank you

I still could not find the problem. Do you know if 3ds max have profiler like maya has to find out where bottles becks come from? Thank you !

PS even deleting all objects make time slider run at 20 fps where brand new empty scene is 500 fps

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 18:11:09 GMT

@coilbookmedia wrote:
Thank you
I still could not find the problem. Do you know if 3ds max have profiler like maya has to find out where bottles becks come from? Thank you !

PS even deleting all objects make time slider run at 20 fps where brand new empty scene is 500 fps

Yep, you can:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2017/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-FD78224F-B245-4CB6-BBDB-7D60C42C5E89-htm.html

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

Byteman — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 12:35:43 GMT

Believe me when I say, I understand your situation very well as I face the exact same thing at almost all architectural projects. I sometimes want to give up trying to figure out what's wrong, as the search for the culprit steals from very valuable rendering time.

I just remembered one more thing. When your graphics card is out of memory, it affects scene navigation adversely. Try to view the scene without maps. There's an option to simply turn on/off the maps in viewport. Select the Shaded Material Without Maps option to see if it helps.

Also after saving the scene try to convert all objects to editable mesh. Modifiers in stack affects performance as they're continuously re-solved. Don't do it all at once as the operation might take a long time.

Do you have renderable spline objects? I sometimes have performance problems with those.

I guess this is some kind of out-of-resources thing, and God knows what is the resource that Max runs out of... May be just processing power.

As a last resort, you may consider archiving the file and sending over to me or someone else you know, if it is not a problem for you, to check to see how it performs on other machines.

There are times I find my i7 4700 hq laptop perform better than a Dual Xeon 2680 V3 with Quadro card on the very same scene. It is often weird, what's going on - but I'm sure there's a reason.

edit: I remember on some early versions like 2012 or so that there were severe slowdown issues with groups during animation playback. It was solved in some version way before and I remember you say you're running on 2018, but still check to see exploding groups helps. Also save the file with those changes to a different file and check after restarting. If the scene is very large, this might actually happen. You may also try merging the scene into an empty scene and also check if your scene boundaries are not away from the origin.

Good luck

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

coilbookmedia — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 01:36:02 GMT

Thank you

The craziest part is when the scene is opened viewport runs at 150 fps. I moved time slider and now viewport stays at 30 frames per second even if I move viewport all the way to the left like it was when scene was opened.

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

raiden_xavier — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 11:20:25 GMT

Hi @coilbookmedia,

Hope you are enjoying your stay in the forums.

Here are some points to be aware of when FPS starts to tank in 3ds max:

Xref: Have the high poly objects referenced from a separate scene.
Motion clips: Run a check to see any imported assets have unused motion clips. Also helps with file size.
Stacks: as @Byteman said, make sure objects are only editable mesh or poly. Lots of objects with multiple modifier stacks hits performance.
LOD (Level of detail): popular in game engines, as an object is further away from the camera it lowers the mesh density.
Adaptive degredation: Can help with animation in viewports.
Group and Layer: group similar objects and hide unused objects where possible
Materials: Apply the same material to similar objects where possible. Example: 20 identical glass materials for different objects is more demanding than 1 glass material applied to all the objects that require it.

If you are unsure of anything i'm happy to explore with you.

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

raiden_xavier — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 17:16:52 GMT

Hi @coilbookmedia,

I wanted to check back and see if a post helped you with your problem.

It would be helpful if you could add a post with any progress or a solution. That way other Community members can benefit from your experience.

Please remember to select the 'Accept as Solution' button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

raiden_xavier — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:32:24 GMT

Hi @coilbookmedia,

Did you resolve this issue? It would be great to have a solution and mark this as solved!

Hope you are well.

Regards,

Re: A lot of hidden mesh slows down max

coilbookmedia — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 14:35:24 GMT

Hi. Thanks for all your replies.

It turned out to be an animated path deform. When we animated mesh with Path Deform modifier even when it is hidden it slows down max 2018.4 a lot (time line scrubbing). Hopefully you guys can look into it.

Thank you