Cursor occasionally hangs while rendering, max 2018. Not case in 2016.

[chroma123]

I'm having a performance issue while rendering in 3d studio max 2018. I recently upgraded to 2018 from 2016, and the machine is simply unusable when doing a local test render, because the cursor hangs for a while before catching up, hanging, catching up, and so on. Like it's spending all 100% resource available. I don't want it to happen. At least I could write emails or watch tutorials while test rendering with max 2016 without any problems, and also modeling on another scene in another max instance.

So any ideas here before I fire ahead at chaos group?

Thanks

[darawork]

Hi,

As you are rendering locally I'll mention this tip:

Start Task Manager while 3DSMax is running, Right-Click the 3dsmax.exe listing and 'go to details'.

In the details pane, right-click and choose Set Affinity:

Tick off one or more CPU cores to free up some processing power.

If you were rendering with a farm in vRay you can go to the distributed rendering page, settings and set Use Local Host to off.

Hopefully this will work for you. 

[chroma123]

Thanks for tip.

We run test renders locally and send off production renders to our render farm, which hooks our workstations onto DR. Which will mean that when I'm off work and my spawner is on, it will with this tip not use all my cpu power. That's not a good thing. I would have to manually change it every time I leave the office. Good tip,but ...  

[darawork · Accepted solution]

Ahh get you,

Anything useful in here:

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/powercoretools-3ds-maxs-cpu-management-tool 

Thanks to @spacefrog_

[chroma123]

Now we're talking! Installed.

I think this will do the trick. A million thanks!

[darawork]

No problem, it was really Spacefrog who did the work... and Google for finding it. 🙂

[spacefrog_]

Just a quick remark about the scripts function dependent on the newer renderers ( like Arnold especially )

The core affinity mask my script assigns  might get set back as soon as the the renderer takes over control. Especially Arnold seems to do this, looks like it controls the core affinity mask by itself internally. You can verify this by using the usual taskmanager method, where Arnold behaves the same: grabbing back all cores during rendering, even whith the affinity mask being set differently before. I think Arnold has some max threads setting or so in the interface now ( not exactly sure )

Did'nt test Powercoretools compatibility for newer Max versions (2017*/2018) too explicitely, so not sure how good it does work nowadays 😉

* Ooops - totally forgot that  i released a fix for Max 2017 ....

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Here is the relevant thread at Chaosgroup.  

Disclaimer:  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.

Best Regards,

[spacefrog_]

Thanks for the link Alfred

Great to read about that possibility for Vray to set an env variabl

set /a VRAY_NUM_THREADS=%NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS%-1

I guess the best thing would be to  integrate this with Powercoretools, so that the script would apply this transparently during rendering only

AFAIK one can change the ENV variables of running processes, at least when you have enough privilegues

Forms a nice technical challenge and will most probably involve some dotNET magic

Put on my todo list ..

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

That sounds great @spacefrog_.   I think the power core tools are really slick and it's really and truly great to see you again around here.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

tks, woks to me!

[marc.pat]

In Arnold for 3ds max if you want a fast interface when is redendering you can set -1 for set one thread free.

An example in the video ( italian language ) 

best regards.

[b_apostol]

hello,

We're having the same problem. Can you tell what exactly you did to fix the problem? thanks in advance.