topic Nvidia Physx extreme slowdown/kill in Maya Forum

Nvidia Physx extreme slowdown/kill

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 12:05:45 GMT

Hello,

I'm doing some experiments with the Nvidia Physx plugin for Maya LT 2018. Now not running on a workstation setup, it's a more generic gaming rig (1070 ti, i5) so I don't really expect it to perform all that well. But what I'm noticing is that when opening the files the file is read in less than a second, but it takes 3-5 minutes until the mesh actually appears on screen. Same thing for exporting my creations, I'm looking at 5-10 minutes for exporting easily. I'm not even hitting the simulate button anymore because that's 15 minutes easily for 2 seconds of simulation.

Now I noticed that this extreme slowdown only occurs once I start painting latchtonearest and driver. Up to that point everything performs as well as I would expect it to in regards to my system.

I'm not really expecting any kind of solution to this at all, I'm more curious if anyone has any experience with using Physx in Maya? And maybe have some pointers to give me?

(Also have an issue with importing the files to UE4, basically it just crashes the entire engine without fail, but since I am spending hours opening and exporting files to make even the slightest edit it's pretty much impossible for me to nail down what is actually happening.)

Re: Nvidia Physx extreme slowdown/kill

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 13:26:20 GMT

Ignore this

Re: Nvidia Physx extreme slowdown/kill

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 13:26:31 GMT

Ignore this

Re: Nvidia Physx extreme slowdown/kill

sean.heasley — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:04:51 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

I haven't worked with this personally so I can't confirm anything that you are seeing. If you're seeing crashes in UE4 as well that leads me to believe it may be something with the Physx plugin itself.

Are you working with the most recent version of Physx?

Also have you talked to their support at all to see if there's anything wrong on Nvidias end?

Re: Nvidia Physx extreme slowdown/kill

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:42:00 GMT

Hi Sean,

No, I thought I'd start here. I eventually gave up and created the same mesh from scratch to continue testing, had no issues then for some reason. I double checked the geometry and even matched the facecount but for some reason it was just broken it seems. Had this issue a lot with Maya LT 2018 lately, been deleting my prefs folder 3-4 times a day the last week to export weight maps etc.

Either way, I found that workaround. Personal suggestion: If you haven't tried Nvidia PhysX, give it a go just for fun. The results are fantastic. Autodesk has a decent tutorial on making a basic cape for Geralt in the Witcher series. My own mesh was slightly more complex (wearable skirt) which required significant effort in order to function with animations, but gosh golly were the results fantastic. I've posted some screenshots here of a skirt type mesh I was working on and while it ended up being functional, a two-sided non-closed mesh was a nightmare to weight. With PhysX? Wow. Just wow.

Also, please update this:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya-lt/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/MayaLT-CustomizingMayaLT/files/GUID-6F8FAF48-D0CA-4ECD-96EC-2821B5C0A890-htm.html

Stingray does not come with a version of Physx for Maya LT 2018, even though page is supposed to cover Maya LT 2018. It comes with an outdated version for 2017 you can't even install. A link to the Nvidia download center would be more useful.

Re: Nvidia Physx extreme slowdown/kill

sean.heasley — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 19:08:45 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

Glad to hear you were able to workaround it and thanks for the detailed response!

I went ahead and forwarded this info to the right teams/department that handles our articles and knowledge bases etc so they'll be sure to update that one as soon as possible!