3ds max 2018 freezing viewport bug (same as 2017)

[dimarakov]

One year later and same bug as in 2017 max. the programmers of 3ds max what they are doing? drinking vodka all year with 3ds max testers? or they not got paid for their work.

how pathetic is that.

from year to year the 3ds max getting worse and worse. what happned with your autodesk?

[lightcube]

For what it's worth, all the issues I had with GTX 980 have all vanished after Nvidia released driver updates a while back. 2018 is working very well for me personally now.

[JabbaTheNut]

Hi @lightcube,

I have updated my NVidia drivers.  I tried current drivers and a few versions previous.  In all cases, I still get persistent freezing.  I am sure that the problem will eventually be solved.  However, in the meantime, it is frustrating.  I am still wondering if a Quadro card would solve the problem?

[bostlund]

I'm going to chime in on the discussion with a similar but different experience (not to hijack the thread). I have a Quadro M4000. My system used to run really stable, no freezes and very little crashes unless I really taxed the system. My build and experience with max has been very stable until now. I got a client that needed some VR work done so I bought at GTX 1080ti and installed on my system. Everything went downhill at that point. 

My issue is not exactly with viewport freezes during used be massive display lag during rendering. I used to be able to make edits in Photoshop, Lightroom, have another instance of max open, and watch Youtube all while rendering on the same system. After putting in the GTX card I cant even move the mouse while rendering. I know its not system lag and that its display lag because my music will continue to play in the background and the render will show more completion after the lag. After the issues were getting to back I put the M4000 back in thinking it would solve it. But the same problems continued so I wiped out the Geforce display drivers with DDU and reinstalled the Quadro Drivers. No effect. It's really impeding my ability to work and have tried just about all the things mentioned on the forums. It's not just the issue of one specific thing being nvida, max or vray. They are all contributing to the problem one way or another.

My other issues (screen stretching) that are starting to happen after using max. The stretching issues only occur after Max has run and continue after max closes. I've also received a "nvidia kernel error code 3". Spending $$$ on these cards for them to not work is really frustrating.

System specs:

Windows 10

3ds Max 2018

Vray 3.5

Asus X99-A 

i7 5960

64GB DDR4

Quadro M4000 (installed) Driver 385.69

GTx1080ti (removed)

Wacom 22HD Touch

LG 4K 27MU67

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @JabbaTheNut,

When this first arose, it affected all NVIDIA cards, quadros included.  Just to show you how much I was following the cards affected, here is my internal spreadsheet for the problem that I updated based on all of my forum cases and sent to QA.  (Attached) You can see it was basically all cards, not just GTX's.  I don't think the quadro specifically would solve your freezing problem, unless the different drivers for it fixed some kind of driver issue.  

NVIDIA released a driver update in July that addressed the issue and fixed it for (I thought) everyone.  The couple folks in this thread recently are the first I've heard of any problems since those new drivers were released in July.  My first thought is to try to run some kind of driver removal and wipe any traces of your current drivers out, reboot, and install the latest versions.  At home I do not install parts of the NVIDIA drivers that I don't use.  For example, the sound driver, the vision (whatever that is), and geforce experience.  Given this this was driver related in the past, I think that's a good place to start looking here.  If you want, you can email me your event viewer logs to [email protected] and I'll look for any issues in there.  You might also try the suggestion for Bostlund in the 2nd paragraph below, might be power related.  

Hello @bostlund,

The locking up issue you are experience during renders was the result of a Vray update, I believe it started with 3.2.  (Maybe 3.5)  There is a forum thread about it at the Chaosgroup forums, might be worth a peek.  Although it isn’t part of Autodesk, this post may have information that could help you.  Please use best practices to safeguard your systems if you decide to adopt any of the suggestions on this site.

I have never seen anything like that screen stretching problem before.  It's affecting your bg, so it's a hardware/driver/OS issue no doubt about it.  Are you running in SLI or something?  Maybe not enough steady power to the 12V rails?  It feels like a power problem to me.  Please try to go to the NVIDIA Control Panel ->Manage 3D settings->Global Settings->Power Management mode and change to “Prefer maximum performance”.  This seems to solve issues like this for many people.  Also setting Windows to maximum performance can help a bit too.  I wonder if these would also help @JabbaTheNut. 

EDIT: Grammar, flow.  

Best Regards,

[bostlund]

Thanks, I checked out the vray forums. I think it's possibly a hardware issue because I can send it to Rebus to render and it works just fine. So likely something I have to deal with Nvidia for. There should have been no reason that putting in my gtx1089ti and everything stopped working. That's said it doesn't make sense that taking it out and then putting my M4000 back in didn't resolve the issue. The hang up is exactly as described on the chaos group forums so it could be related to something with an update on vray or windows that happened along side installing the new video card or it may have just been a coincidence. I was using max 2017, updated vray and installed the new card and it started to hanging up. So I upgraded to 2018 as I though it would work better with the gtx1080ti. The 1080ti is not listed as a tested gpu on the max list yet so I thought that's why I was having issues. I'm going to try some of the suggestions on the vray forums and see if thinks work out.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thanks for the update @bostlund.  It's quite possible Rebus uses servers without GPUs in them but I can't say for sure.  Did the power settings have any effect on the screen tearing?

@JabbaTheNut, did the power settings help at all for your issue?

Best Regards,

[bostlund]

The power settings made no difference that I can tell so far. I turned it
back to default for now just so I can try downgrading my version of vray to
see what happens.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thanks for the update @bostlund,

In that forum thread around page 2 or 3, there is instructions on how to add an environment variable which can take 1 of your processors off of rendering so your system doesn't hang.  That might be the way to go for the lag, but won't change the screen tearing.  

Best Regards,

[pierschapman]

I am experiencing a quite high likelihood of producing frozen Max17 viewports whenever I tab out to say After Effects and do some edits, preview AE timeline etc. GTX980Ti card, currently drivers are 384.76 but experienced the same with at least 3 different driver versions.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @pierschapman,

Do you see the same problem without them open?  Maybe you are running out of memory? 

Best Regards,

[pierschapman]

All viewports can also freeze just with minimising Max17, or tabbing out to chrome, or screen saver having activated - so it doesn't present as exclusively a memory full issue (64Gb system so unless AE is previews fills it there is usually no ram issue).

Yesterday I uninstalled Geforce Experience, and also inside Max17 turned off Improve Quality Progressively inside Viewport Configuration -> Display Performance, based on some comments from this thread and others. So far I haven't had a viewport freeze yet, but that doesn't guarantee anything, sometimes it's many freezes requiring restarts of max, sometimes it's infrequent.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thanks for the update @pierschapman.  Sounds like that isn't it then. Maybe it's a driver issue but we should test that.  According to this document the 980 was certified with driver version 385.41 just recently for 2018.  Can you please try that for me?  Also, can you try setting Windows to performance power settings?  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

How come the 780 and the 980 are certified but they skipped the 970?

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Ideally Max wants workstation cards but it does work well with consumer/gaming cards.  As the viewport is using more and more GPU based operations it seems that the recommendations are only on the X80 series for the improved specs they bring.  That being said, I have a 970 at home and it works fine and I love it.  The hardware list shows tested cards, but it doesn't mean that others cannot work well with it, just that they aren't certified or tested.  My experience is that the difference between a 980 and a 960 is pretty huge in terms of what they can handle, even in games.  

I am not a master of hardware so there may be someone with more understanding of the guts inside the cards.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Actually I have a Quadro m5000m and I get the freezing.

[pierschapman]

Absence of proof isn't proof of absence but... 2 days now without a viewport freeze since I uninstalled geforce experience and also inside Max17 turned off Improve Quality Progressively inside Viewport Configuration -> Display Performance. So one or both of those maybe responsible for the freeze free max viewports so far.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and welcome to the community,

Would you please try to update your drivers for me?  There was a freezing issue due to drivers from July but if your drivers are older you might still be affected.  Another thing to try is what @pierschapman has posted, uninstalling GeForce experience and turning off Improve Quality Progressively.  Would you please try that for me if the drivers don't help?  (To find it, click the + symbol in a viewport->Configure Viewports-> Uncheck IQP).  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[JasonLuckett]

For what it's worth I have quadro k6000, freezes like hell with max 2018's command panel pull out. Drivers old and new no difference.

Buggy UI with the layer and explorer to boot.

Jason

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @JasonLuckett,

Can you please try the driver versions 385.08.  This is the driver that passed certification testing, it would be great to know if the problem persists with it.  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[JasonLuckett]

Just tried that driver, same bug/problem. I've got a deadline for the end of tomorrow so can't afford anymore time on this !

Thanks for the suggestion though Alfred.

Jason