2018 crash when saving

[Anonymous]

@Alfred.DeFlaminisI've lost my scene and can't open it at all now. I've logged it with Autodesk through the error report. Could you take a look at the scene for me and see if you can open it? It just crashes Max for me...

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous, 

Strange, opens right up for me but crashes on Save once in a while.  Not to quote IT Crowd, but you might try rebooting.  What is strange about your log is that it doesn't show a Max cause for the lack of opening.  It just reports what amounts to 'unknown'.  I saved out as 2017, 2016, and merged all objects into a new scene and attached it here just to be thorough.  When I was saving them out I did get a crash which triggered a known issue in the tracker (more below).  Nothing about that issue affects loading in any cases I've seen.  

For the report I generated with crash on save, the issue is logged for Vray, but it's not clear to me if this problem is caused by Vray or Max.  I know that the developers have communicated the problem to Vlado.  Do you have access to the Vray nightlies?  If not, please request it.  It's likely already been fixed on the Chaosgroup side (if it's a Vray issue) and you can get access to the nightlies by emailing support@chaosgroup.com.  These two things may be related.  

If you keep getting crashes, please keep submitting the CER logs.  Eventually it should trigger in an area that isn't unknown/external.  

 
Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

It might have something to do with using the CUDA GPU rendering I've been using. It's always been a bit buggy. I'll check out the nightlies with Chaos group and see if there's any issue there. As a workaround, I've merged my scene into a new project and hopefully it doesn't do it again. If it does, I might try going back to CPU only rendering and seeing if that fixes things.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I emailed Chaosgroup directly on your behalf and sent one of the crashlogs to them and I don't think this is a Vray issue after speaking with Vlado a bit about it.  I was getting the crash on save but the report generated is completely different from yours.  Both of them were not caused by Vray and he did send me some proof. 

That being said, did the merge work?  I'm half tempted here to send this to development as a new tracker issue, but I'm not sure how to log it yet.  Would you mind generating more CER's and submitting them so I can see if they show more info?  Thanks very much!

EDIT: Send/sent.  I think faster than I type.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Oh wow! Thanks for that Alfred. Yeah, the merge did work and I can open and continue on with my simple little scene. It did crash last night once or twice. I sent the log via the dialogue that pops up so that may be something you want to have a look at. I've also recieved your PM - and I'll action that tonight when I get home.

Thanks Alfred!

[Anonymous]

Oh! The other thing I wanted to ask was how does Max handle UI settings in regards to custom button modifier sets? Do they save with the project or is it saved in Max's settings? Because I've set them up once or twice and they keep going back to default. 

The other thing is this scene converter dialogue keeps popping up when I open my scene and tells me that there are legacy plug-ins that are no longer installed. Probably because I un-installed all of Nvidias stuff. What should I do?

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Thanks for submitting the new report.  This one has more details and has a different cause than the last one.  The crashing module is vray_bitmapbuffer.  This time it seems Vray is involved.  I am going to email you your entire crash dump right now so you can send to support@chaosgroup.com and they may be able to explain what is happening here.  

Custom button modifier sets are saved in 3dsmax.ini.  If you search for the term "ModifierSetName" inside 3dsmax.ini you should see it.  That being said, your 3dsmax.ini must be getting corrupted somehow or possibly you have two copies of Max open and one is saving over the ini after the other writes to it.  Please try setting up the modifier sets with 1 copy of Max open, save, and restart Max.  That *should* do it.  If it doesn't then please let me know.  

The scene converter must be seeing a MR material, effect, etc. from the scene.  Maybe from the architecture materials in the material editor slots?  You might try to save your render settings as a preset and merge everything into a new scene.  Might leave behind whatever MR object or traces that are there.  You can also just close the conversion window, I do it with scenes I get from the forums all the time.  

Please let me know how it goes, emailing you directly now with your crash dump files.  

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I just wanted to follow up here, curious if any of those suggestions helped.  Thanks for any updates!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

I merged my scene into a new project and all is well so far. I'd still like to stay in contact in case something else happens because the scene is relatively simple, and I'm curious to find out why some of these things are happening - whether it's Vray or Max.
At the moment, the only issue I'm having is my scene explorer/layers window aren't opening if I hit the relevant icon on the UI. The only way I can get it to open is if I go through the (edit?) menu at the top of max. But then some of the icons (like the freeze icon) don't show up when the window has opened, so I can't really use it.. So there's some kind of bug going on there.

Dylan

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I won't abandon a thread, if people reply I'll come back.  Sometimes I don't get a notification, maybe due to a hiccup on the server but I am not intentionally avoiding any thread ever.  If you reply and I don't answer within a day or two then please send me a PM and I'll be there asap.  

Vray would have nothing to do with your scene explorer not showing up.  I don't have any issues listed for this in the tracker, so my guess is a possible user settings corruption.  It's strange because you'd mentioned your settings get reset sometimes.  If you are sure your hard drive is in good health, I would consider trying to create a new user in Windows and see if your problems continue.  Sometimes the really strange things are due to a profile corruption, it's a good place to start testing.  

When you are editing your ini for the modifier sets, is Max open?  That may be why your settings are sticking... trying to see if there is a commonality between these two issues.  Is your Windows user an admin?  Thanks for the info!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

No no I was talking about Vray in terms of Max crashing. I'm sure vray has nothing to do with my windows not showing up.
You could be right about Windows profile corruption though. I had some issues not long ago after I'd done a fresh install of Windows about 2 months ago and the Start bar not showing some of my system Icons and me not being able to open windows (like control panel and add/remove programs). It was very strange.
So I ended up having to do another install of Windows over the top of the one I had just done.. 

Maybe I should consider formatting re-installing windows (again..)

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Ah I see @Anonymous, thanks for the update.

Ultimately though keep in mind I *do* have a logged issue similar to this which is still being investigated by QA.  That issue was listed as having Vray as part of it but Vlado confirmed it's simply in the stack but not responsible.  This was just a day or two ago and I updated the tracker so now they need to go through the motions again.  I don't know what triggers that crash yet and am waiting for QA.  

The first crash is still unknown but not caused by Vray but the 2nd one was specifically with the bitmappager (or map loader, something like that). I've never seen a crash in that area though.

You may be correct that installing one Windows on top of another could be a problem, but I don't know for sure.  It may just be a registry corruption so making a new user profile should generate a brand new one, worth a shot and less time consuming.  I try to avoid reinstalling the OS if possible, but sometimes you just can't avoid it.  However I'd expect you would be having issues with other apps if Windows itself was bad.  The registry can affect single apps but OS level corruptions tend to affect multiple things in my experience.

Sometimes crashes can happen from power settings in Windows.  I would check the NVIDIA control panel and Windows power settings and set them to 'performance' to see if that helps.  A number of the video games I've played in the past required this and I know my machines at work and at home do have them set to performance.  

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I just wanted to follow up here, any progress on this issue?

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

I created a new profile and did everything we talked about. Last night I had a few crashes, which has been a rare occurrence with 2018. But I've still got a few issues going on. This scene I've had to merge into a new project again and then re-save. Otherwise the project wont open at all.
Max crashed a few times last night. Once it crashed back to desktop with no warning, no indication... nothing. Just one second rendering.. and the next second... desktop..
And it was also making one of my Sofa models disappear whenever I plugged a texture into the diffuse slot of a V-ray material. But I could fix the model from disappearing if I changed the viewport view setting from 'Standard' to 'High Quality'..
I sent a log report after it crashed but I'm not sure if it went through or not as I had some network issues going on. It did say it successfully went through though. 

Dylan

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I looked up the crash log and saw the crash in Vcruntime140 which is one of the MS Visual C++ Runtime packages.  You can try to reinstall them, there is a tool at the bottom of this article by MajorGeeks which will reinstall them all for you.  Shutting down without a CER is often a driver/Windows issue but not always.  (I recently saw this behavior with AEC walls and windows in specific conditions and it was a Max issue.)  

I don't think that would affect opening the file but I cannot be sure, you may have a corrupted object in there.  Would it be possible to share this file with me? If privacy is necessary due to NDA reasons, I can create a private folder for you. I am happy to do so if you would like.

For the disappearing object, I'm betting your shader cache is corrupted.  Can you please try shutting down Max, deleting it, and restarting for me?  You can find it at C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2018 - 64bit\ENU\en-US\plugcfg\maxFxoCache.dat

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I have recently received confirmation from Vlado that the crash on save and autosave is related to the Vray license server and has already been fixed by Chaosgroup and will be rolled into the next 3.6 update.  For those of you that cannot wait, contact Chaosgroup customer support for access to the nightly builds which should resolve this for you sooner.  

If anyone is not using Vray and is getting this issue, please let me know.  The other known cause is Backup and Recovery software, specifically Dell.  (There may be others.)  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Thanks Alfred. Max has been crashing non-stop on me lately. Like, it's gotten to the point where it's not even usable. Anything I touch in the material editor just crashes Max. I sent a log via the dialogue. Is this something you could check out?