topic Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW in Maya Forum

Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 06:17:02 GMT

Hi, ok so I bought the latest macbook pro 2017 15" 16mb Radeon 560 Pro and decided to upgrade to High Sierra.

First thing I notice is that I cannot scrub the timeline in realtime, even with nothing loaded in my scene. The most I get is 17fps when playing on an empty viewport. Does anyone has the same issue. I'll be downgrading to Sierra in a few moments and I'll see if this will persist.

I'll try to share a video of me trying to scrub the timeline later.

Thanks.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

sean.heasley — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 16:07:20 GMT

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

Have you tried changing the playback settings?

You can find these by right clicking on the timeline and changing to play every frame for example.

Let me know if this helps or if you need any more assistance!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 19:58:38 GMT

Yes, playing it all frames changed the frame rate a bit.. it plays a bit
faster but scrubbing the timeline is the same.

I was talking to other peers who got the same issue after upgrading to high
sierra. Rigs that used to run at 20...24fps are running at 4fps.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 08:40:53 GMT

Ok... so, I've downgraded to Sierra, there is a small improvement, not as much as I hoped.

one interesting thing I found during these tests is. Maya 2016 and lower worked perfectly on a macbookpro (with sierra installed at least). Playback is 24fps with nothing loaded in the scene and the timeline response is way faster than 2017 and 2018.

Not sure what you guys did but I wouldn't upgrade to 2017 or 2018 If I'm a mac user . I hope there will be a solution for this.

cheers.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

sean.heasley — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 19:37:23 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

This is pretty unusual. I just tested on my Mac with 2018 and was getting a steady 24 fps while playing back an empty scene.

Out of curiosity, if you make a simple animation and play it back, is it still at 4 fps?

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 10:24:56 GMT

Hi Sean,

Just out of curiosity, what is the video card on the mac your testing? I'm using a macbook pro 2017 16gb ram with the Radeon 560 pro 4gb, there are 2 other users I know with the same computer and same issue I'm having. I've tested it out on maya 2016 (viewport 2.0 as well) and seems it works fine. 2017 and 2018 doesn't.

I'll keep digging it and If I found some solution before I decide to return this computer I'll post here.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

sean.heasley — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 16:31:56 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

The Mac I have at work is an older Mac Pro

It has:

3.7 ghz Quad core Intel Xeon

12GB Ram

AMD Fire Pro D300 2GB

Out of curiosity, have you tried enabling the legacy viewport?

If you navigate to your Maya folder, there should be a Maya.env file.

If you open that in a note editor and type "MAYA_ENABLE_LEGACY_VIEWPORT = 1" you can enable legacy viewport and see if that improves the fps!

Let me know if anything changes!

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 10:18:54 GMT

Hi Sean,

Didn't make any difference changing to the legacy viewport.

But, one really interesting thing I found. If I plug an external monitor (HDMI) and use both the macbook pro display as 2nd monitor + the external monitor, everything becomes faster... If I close my notebook lid and use only my external monitor it becomes slow again. Kinda crazy.

My external monitor is an ASUS 2k resolution. I'm assuming it has something to do with the retina display from the macbook pro?!.

would you guys have a notebook like this to make some tests?

cheers,

Yuri.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

mspeer — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 12:39:33 GMT

Hi!

Higher Resolution needs better GPU, or

higher resolution = lower fps.

That's normal.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 18:15:20 GMT

mspeer, That's not the case. the macbook display resolution i'm running is 1650x1050... when I plug it to my external monitor I'm using a 2560x1600.

It's crazy faster on the external monitor. The thing that's bugging me.. again, If I use the macbook display + external montiro is fast. If I cloase the lid and use only the external monitor becomes slow again, if I use only macbook display is even slower!.. I could do a video to show this.

cheers.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

mspeer — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 18:31:14 GMT

Hi!

1. I relied on your video from your first message with a resolution > 3K ! ???

2. Without the same Hardware and Software it's not possible for me to help you more with your problem.

But it sounds like a driver issue or simply the resolution. The driver may adapt some settings to enable a flawless 2 monitor setup, sadly you didn't specify what setup (side by side, copy, details about resolution, framerate...?)

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

sean.heasley — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:27:36 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

I'm just checking in to see if you need more help with this. Did the suggestion that @mspeer provided work for you?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:37:11 GMT

Hi Sean,

No, unfortunately, he could not help.

I'm still digging on my own. I discovered that the hiDPI (Retina display) on the MacBook Pro makes everything really laggy, that's why working on an external monitor works better. I've downloaded a software to disable the hiDPI which helped a bit but still digging into it.

but in fact, Maya 2016 is still way more friendly on a MacBook Pro than 2017 or 2018. hiDPI ON or OFF.

still debating if I should just return it to the apple store.

Thanks for the help.

yuri.

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

sean.heasley — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 21:43:20 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

I actually forgot to mention how unusual it is that the viewport works fine when you're connected to the external monitor but not on just the mac itself.

It's possible it could be an issue with the Mac itself but I somewhat doubt that. It would however be worth looking into testing on a similar machine if that is at all possible for you.

On top of this, is it possible you could change your Mac settings so the display stays "active" on your mac even when you close the lid? Its possible you could do that so you could work on the external monitor normally and just have the mac next to you shut.

Let me know if anything changes!

Re: Maya on High Sierra Extremely SLOW

sean.heasley — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 20:01:10 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

Just wanted to check in to see how things were going. Have you had a chance to try the suggestion I provided yesterday?

If your issue is solved, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.