topic Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow in 3ds Max Forum

10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 10:06:08 GMT

Greetings,

So we installed a new 10 gb network but opening and saving max files stays as slow as ever. I keep looking at the windows resources manager to see where the bottleneck is, but nothing seems to be at a 100% so I don't know what is throttling 3ds max. When I look at photoshop or corona image editor I see that they use the full potential of our network, alas max doesn't.

I try to work with files that aren't even a gb, with xref's that are a bit less then 100mb.

Does anyone know what I should invest in to get faster loading times, or a better workflow that accomplishes the same?

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

markcalloway — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 11:16:16 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

You need to find out what the bottle neck is.

Firstly I would copy your work locally onto your computer and open it, see how long that takes then you know how slower opening it on the network is.

If there is no difference then the network is not the issue.

If its a lot faster on your computer then you know there is a bottle neck somewhere. Opening a file on a network is always going to be slow then opening it locally on your computer so your never going to get it to be just as fast.

There are so many things that could be the bottle neck that you may need to get your IT involved. It could be the Raid manager on the server of the server hard drives. It could be the server is under load or that even though your network is 10GB that the adapter in your computer is 1GB or 10/100, if your on WiFi you also likely not going to get 10GB connection.

What sort of opening times are you experiencing?

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 12:45:15 GMT

I know pretty much for certain that it's not the network because we can test this with stresstesters. I did just some test's with a file and it's a difference of 8% in time, this has probably to do with latency because of the amount of textures and xref's (which I all copied locally and relinked so nothing was using the network).

With bigger project's we have loading times up to 10 minutes.

Just for some extra info: our server is equipped with ssd's in raid config connected with 10 gb switch (dual cables) and we are connected to that switch with an 10 gb pci network card. This is all tested and fully functional. We get the performance in other programs like photoshop, corona image editor, ...

I also keep an I on my cpu, ram etc but nothing is working at full load when opening/saving files. So I'm really at a dead end in searching for a bottle neck.

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

markcalloway — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 13:29:19 GMT

8% difference between opening on a network compared to locally on your computer sounds normal. Like I said earlier your never going to get it nearly as fast as opening it locally.

That 8% over 10 minutes is only an extra 48 seconds loading.

It sounds like a lot of effort and expense to find that 48 seconds but like I said your never going to get the times to match so it will be less than 48 seconds you would be saving yourself.

If you really want to cut that 10 minutes down you need to look at your computer. If you want to post your specs I can take a look.

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 13:45:09 GMT

It's not about the 8% difference, like I said this is probably due to latency. I'm looking for the bottle neck that causes the other 92%.

Specs:

intel i7-5820k

64 gb ram

ssd drives (seperate ssd scratch disk)

gtx 1070

10gb network card

But looking at the resource manager in windows it doesn't seem like 3ds max is working all that much when it's loading. It slowly fills up some ram and runs the cpu at about 7%

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

-niels- — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 15:01:00 GMT

Just throwing something random in here:

Is there any antivirus actively scanning .max files?
If there is, try excluding those and see if it makes a difference...

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

dgorsman — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 16:23:16 GMT

A couple of other things...

When looking at CPU performance, use individual cores rather than overall performance. Many operations are single threaded so when you have one of six cores maxed out you'll only see ~ 15% which isn't accurate.

"Stress testers" don't always test for what's happening with specialist programs; some of them are optimized to give best-possible results. Use some real monitoring tools to see where the activity is.

Check for missing links; if something with a UNC path is has changed servers, or something from a mapped drive has changed to a different drive letter, the system could be searching a large number of locations rather than flagging it as missing.

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

markcalloway — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 09:05:25 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

If you start a new Max project and save it to your computer without adding anything and close Max, how long does that take to open? Is a blank Max file still slow to load or is it a lot Faster?

If a lot faster then its likely something in your other files which is slow to load.

If its also slow then its likely something with your computer.

Also do you have access to another computer with Max installed? does that computer have the same issue or is it a lot faster?

@-niels- gave a good suggestion about the antivirus, try disabling this and see if it makes a difference.

Also just confirm do you use any form of roaming profiles on your computers?

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 16:54:51 GMT

So I just opened a File with just a teapot and like expected it opened pretty fast (50s).

For your other questions: I tried the same files on a separate pc with the same results (within margin) . Also the antivirus doesn't seem to be the issue, and no roaming profiles are used.

The main problem is that I can't really see what max is doing when it's loading these files. If I knew what is taking max so long then I could fix the issue and streamline my workflow better. But now I can only wait 😞

Do you guys have a good suggestion of diagnostic tool?

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 16:57:53 GMT

what monitoring tools should I use?

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

contact — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 08:35:47 GMT

I resume this topic because I face the same problem regularly.
I have 2 machines on the same network that do not react in the same way to the same files; The oldest one never has a problem of lag while the most recent can sometimes be particularly affected by the lag.
I already had several exchanges with the autodesk support about it, I know that the problem comes from the network. If for example I delete the map and asset link or If I copy the file localy, the lag disappears,
To resume your idea, how can I prevent the system from searching indefinitely for missing maps on the network? Since it seems that this research is causing the lag.
And do you have any idea why my oldest machine is not affected by this problem?

Thank you

Pierre

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

-niels- — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 08:47:31 GMT

Not sure if this is helpful, but on the Inventor forum there was a topic about slow network speeds recently.

@Xun.Zhang posted a link to an article that might be worth trying:

https://www.howtosolutions.net/2013/06/fixing-slow-sending-or-receiving-of-files-through-lan-network-using-windows/

If it really is related to searching for missing folders, then it might be a windows indexing thing...

Don't think i can really offer help on the subject though.

Hope you can solve it.

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

contact — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 10:33:05 GMT

Thank you, I will look into it.

I read this on Cgtalk:

"It's all about Asset Tracking, when you have many paths (Maps, Proxies, IES ...etc) and there status are not OK, that make autoback save runs slowly.
Solution: Install Script called "Collect Asset" after open it, press on 'Resolve paths' and 'Del Missing Paths', then go to 'Max' -> References -> Asset Tracking and do refresh.
That's All
It turn my save from 3.2 minutes to 12 seconds."

I think it is related, because the autosave is actually much faster when the assets are for example local.

Do you know why the status of the asset is "network path" (when located and found in a network drive) and not OK ?

Pierre

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

-niels- — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 11:13:44 GMT

Sorry, i've never (knowingly) worked with assets in Max so i can't say.

Pinging @hagen.deloss for some Autodesk assistance.

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

electrotoast_old — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 12:51:08 GMT

Which version of 3ds Max are you using? For 3ds Max 2018.4 and 2019, we vastly improved that auto-searching function when you have files in similar paths.

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

contact — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 12:56:51 GMT

Hi,

Thank you for your answer.

I'm working with 3dsmax 2019.1, windows 10 pro for workstation

Best,

Pierre

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

hagen.deloss — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 20:27:19 GMT

Hello @contact

I wanted to see where you were at with this issue, are you still encountering slow load times? If so, I would like to narrow down the environment you are operating in. Are you loading the networked shared files through a drive ( X:\project\scenes ), or a UNC path (\\server\share_location\project\scenes)?

If you have over 60+ paths, this could be a factor as well. Development is aware that multiple externally mapped paths are an additive factor in slow load times, they are looking into a fix for that.

In the meantime, if you can minimize the number of externally mapped files within any given scene, it should also help with the slow load time.

Thanks for the additional information, I look forward to hearing back from you 😄

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

contact — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:13:29 GMT

Hello,
thank you for your reply, I'm happy to know that the development is aware
of this.
I'm loading the networked shared files through a unc path.
I'm still try to figure why it is sometimes happening with my newest
workstation and never with my oldest...
I'm sure that windows 10 is doing something wrong, because if I look at
the network used by 3dsmax ( task manager / Ethernet section of the
Performance tab) I see a big difference between the two workstations for
the same network file. The oldest workstation does not use a lot
the network but the recent one is.
Old Workstation Send 700kbits/s Receive 600 Kbits/s
New Workstation Send 1,2 Mbits/s Receive 45 Mbits/s !!!
If I close max or disconnect the assets, the download rate of the network
becomes normal again
Best
Pierre

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 09:18:15 GMT

I'm glad that this topic is resumed. I will check the paths when I get back to the office and see if that fixes anything.

The multiple path issue will most likely be a problem for my as well. Because we have a big texture/asset library the amount of different paths is huge. Is this something that has persisted in all the versions of Max or is this a recent bug?

How should I minimize the amount of externally mapped files? I thought it was within the best practices to Xref a lot so multiple people can work on the same scene without destroying an others work? Or is it just textures and such that are the problem?

Re: 10gb network, but 3ds max stays slow

hagen.deloss — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 23:56:55 GMT

Hi @contact and @Anonymous

Okay interesting, do your files have long character paths? Strange question but what's the longest file path that you have mapped using this process?

Reducing the number of xref and UNC mapped paths isn't the goal, or best practices, it's a temporary way to work around the slow speed issue. I hope this isn't impacting everyone's workflows too much.

I will be chatting about this issue with @electrotoast_old this week and hoping to update everyone again soon. I'm sorry this one is taking a while!! Thanks for being so patient and easy to work with 😄