Persistent modeling crashes with 2017

[Anonymous]

I've been giving Max 2017 another go since installing SP3. Unfortunately, I'm still seeing lots of random modeling crashes. Mostly when using snapping in subobject mode in orthographic view. Max will freeze for a few seconds and crash, but it allows me to save a recovery file, so no work gets lost.

Still, it is deadly for the workflow.

I've been sending reports every time and making sure these are marked with my email address. Can someone at the Autodesk end look into them and let me know what they think?

[Anonymous]

Hi all. Just checking if there's any progress on this. 

[info_1]

I'm still having a very bad time. My workaround has been to not use the high quality viewport settings and doing the old timey test render as you go work flow. wish I had not uninstalled 2016. When I get a slow day I'm going to wipe the disk and install everything with W7 . It seems like I end up doing this every time I upgrade 3ds max, I take that back - it doesn't seem like it- that is what I end up doing every year. This time I even waited for SP 3 -cause it was still crap after SP 2. If i weren't so old I'd change software.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

There has been some comments in the tracker about the source of two of your Max crashes over the past week or two.  I know they are currently trying to resolve those issues asap and I voted for the issue specifically to elevate it on your behalf.  I'm not in a position to know exactly when it will be updated but I'm sure they are trying to roll it out asap.  I'd also be willing to check your event viewer logs and see if I can find anything.  I've had some luck solving other issues like this by doing so, but not all.  You can PM me a link if you want them to stay private.

@info_1,

If you'd like I can also check out your event viewer logs, there may be a hardware reason for your 20-30 minute not responding.  (Heat most likely, power, etc.)  You can PM me a link if you want them to stay private.  Those logs may tell more of the story.  I'm betting there is something in there with errors to DCom, .Net, or ucrtbase.dll.  In most cases where users are having your type of issues, those are related.  It's heartbreaking hearing your experiences with 3ds Max.  There is likely a system problem that is compounding this issue.  I will say I use it on Win7 and I have very few issues, certainly none of them that people on Win10 AU seem to have.  (I can't even repro most of those issues on Win10 though.)  This has been a source of constant frustration for me because users have so little control over their own updates with W10.

For both of you, the more info I can get the more I can put into the tracker to help narrow down the problem.  Most of the time these issues cannot be reproduced but having more info may help to repro the issues.  I know you guys are not happy and I want to do anything possible to resolve these issues.  NVIDIA released a hotfix driver today (few hours ago) that addresses some problems in Windows 10, might be worth a look.  They pulled the latest driver release due to instability and bug issues but this hotfixed version is supposed to address those issues. 

Best Regards,

[info_1]

Hey Alfred -

Thanks for letting me know about the Nvidia hotfix. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your attention to this. I've been using 3DS max in one form or another on a daily basis for 13 years now, Don't remember anyone from autodesk replying to one of my angry rants with useful information.

Thanks-

Ed

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @info_1,

I've been on the job about two and half months now and I still have some things I need to improve on but I am trying!  Thanks for the kind words! If I'm being totally honest, I've had some rants myself in the past.  Having worked about 12 years in the field myself I feel I'm in a good position to understand the needs, frustrations, and concerns you guys have.  I know exactly how it feels that deadlines get shorter, directors manage by exception, producers expect the world in 3 hours, and that many clients don't know what they want until they've seen what they *don't* want, etc.  The stress is insane so I never get upset about ranting because I've been there. 

I hope to solve this issue, but if I don't I won't let that stop me from going to the mat for you and the other users all day every day.  Thanks for your great attitude!

Best Regards,

[alexnode]

Hi Alfred , it is happening to me too. I always upgrade at sp2 or sp3 to avoid this situation but ... it is not working well. 

I too experience random crashes while modelling. It is really bad, I had no problems at all with 2016 and windows 10 for at least 12 months. They are quite random, i got one while slicing. another just snapping vertices, another pressing f4 to turn the viewport to edged faces.

They seem graphic related but not sure... i am searching for the Nvidia hotfix now. I am using an old titan X (maxwell)  

Latest version of windows 10 anniversary and max 2017 sp3 plus the latest version of vray. I switched to dx9 a few days ago but there is no improvement.          

[alexnode]

I installed the latest 375.63 from nvidia. I am reverting to DX11 since DX9 crashed a lot. 

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @alexnode,

I checked your logs and here is what I found:  

You have all the same errors as Bertrand.  (And another user recently, that's now three people with the same logs... pretty rare).  Of 4 unique crashing modules, 2 of them are Max problems, and 2 of them are driver issues.  It does seem to be certain people who are really affected.  Are you using a Titan card?  Titan cards currently comprise 50% of all the card involved in some of these crashes.  The drivers used for the original testing were 361.91, I wonder if trying those would help at all.

The mesh crashes and ogsdevices crashes are being worked on currently and those seem to be totally Max issues.  The driver and dx11 issues seem to be related to problems within those graphic drivers themselves, and google sort of corroborates this with users having issues in other areas with the Titan cards.   On the NVIDIA forums there is a strong sentiment that the drivers aren't to blame but actually other hardware in the system with W10 compatibility problems.  I have no way to verify this however.  I will continue to look into this.

Best Regards,

[alexnode]

Yes it is a Titan X (maxwell) . I installed the latest drivers again and checking to see what is the problem ....  I will try the old drivers too, if i see a lot of crashes. 

[pokoy]

I'm not often here on the Area because these forums were pretty much useless for me but I have to say I really appreciate the level and quality of communication from you, Alfred. Addressing reports directly with the people who submitted reports is something I've wanted to happen for the last few years.

It would be great to have you over at the Max beta board so you could give beta users the same kind of feedback, I'm pretty sure this would've helped to catch a few critical bugs very efficiently before they're out in the wild and affect the entire userbase.

Judging from your feedback on the CERs it doesn't seem that graphics hardware description is included in the automatic crash error reports. Wouldn't it make sense if it was included so you could see if a problem or crash can be tracked down to a certain graphics card type or model?

We happen to see crashes on even the most simple mesh operations here at work, Max getting unresponsive regularly, and some viewport glitches, too. I'm glad it's being worked on but, again, I'd be much happier if these were ironed out during beta. 2017 was a very strong release and I wanted our office to switch but the regular daily crashes have been a showstopper for us.

Keep up the good work!

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @alexnode,

Thank you for the confirmation.  I does seem like there may be an issue with the Titan cards, I now have 3 users with the same crash reports.  I am putting together info and will be submitting that info to QA to look at. 

@pokoy,

Thank you for the praise!  It means a lot to me.  I remember when the Area was a lot more quiet and I do what I can to change that.  Autodesk is really aware of the past issues and I have to say are going way above and beyond to address those issues.  I'm happy to be here and do what I can to help with the product I love most in the world.  

Truth is that the reports have many layers to them.  The GPU information exists in the logs but there are two separate logs.  One for sysinfo and one for the crash info.   I often check the crash logs first because I don't want past history of what I've seen with hardware to taint my objectivity when investigating.  The graphics hardware is collected in sys info but I like to get confirmation in the thread so other users can easily decide if the thread is relevant.  Some users don't like their business aired without permission so often I know the answer to the GPU question but I ask anyway to be respectful of the privacy of those individuals.  When I ask about hardware if I don't get an answer or the question is ignored I know that the user would like to remain discreet and I do my best to respect that and I typically don't bring it up again.  

The mesh crashes are those two issues as mentioned above that are totally Max issues.  They are ranked in the system and need to be addressed.  I've done a search on your email address in the system and you have one in there, but it actually not the same error as the others in this thread.  (Likely a personal version of Max vs. your workplace.)  It's related to the interface, and resetting your user settings may help.  If you'd like me to look up some work machines I just need the report number or an email address and I can search for you. 

If I have extra cycles at the end of the day I'll try to get access to the beta forums, but my role is specifically for the general forums currently.  I could make a lateral move to QA but I must admit I do enjoy helping people here and I wouldn't want to give that up quite yet.    Thanks again for the kind words.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi Alfred,

How and where do I find the event logs?

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I have a link here on how to export them, and you can PM me a link if you want to keep them private.  

On another note, do you find that you have the same modeling crashes if you use DX9 instead of 11?  I'm just trying to gather more information about that.

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello to @Anonymous, @pokoy, @alexnode, @info_1, @Anonymous,

I've been outside this thread for a while but wanted to check back in.  I was hoping to test two things and see if they help any of you with your crashing issues.  Thank you for taking the time to try these.

First, do you all use the viewcube?  I had a conversation with Jon Bell recently and he'd advised me that we should recommend disabling the viewcube more often as it seems to cause stability problems for certain users.  My first thought was this thread, so I'm here to check in and ask you all to please try it.  

Second, I wanted to check to see if I could positively nail down these issues as driver issues or Nitrous issues.  The best way I know how to do that is to ask you to please try to run 3ds Max with DX9 and see if you have the same crashing problems.  If you do, please try legacy D3D (just for a bit) and see if the crashing problems are gone.  I'm wondering if there may be an issue in both the drivers *and* Nitrous DX11 and that they are somehow affecting each other.  If the crashes continue even in legacy D3D then at least I can update with that info that in the tracker.  

I hate to ask you all to do this, but I cannot repro this and I just can't let this go either.  I want to solve it and I want to get you up and running again with stability.   Thank you so much for your time and effort there.

Best Regards,

[info_1]

I'm sort of caught up with my paying jobs so I've been playing around with it today. I've been using some of the overclocking tools for the GTX to figure out if there were any voltage or overheating issues. Without overclocking anything, I've been flying around a problematic scene while running EVGA precision X - The founders edition card that I bought didn't come with any system tools like this, and the nvida driver doesn't do anything in terms of managing fan speed or voltage or anything. I don't know if It's fixed, but nitrous dx11 is working beautifully right now. It probably only crashes late at night while I'm under the gun for something. Too early to tell maybe.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thank you @info_1 for the update!

EDIT:  I removed this post because I don't want to encourage people to mess around with over/under clocking their cards.  It's interesting that info_1 got a result here but this issue with crashing my be related to the viewcube in 3ds Max and I don't advise people to mess with the defaults on their cards.  

Best Regards,

[info_1]

I can't say for sure just yet but it seems to be totally stable with the precision x running. It's actually pretty magical for a long time max user-when it works. I don't understand why The nividia driver doesn't have tools to set the fan speed curves etc. I tried the ASUS tweaker and had a lot of artifacts and other issues. I dunno.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Interesting, thanks for the information here.  

Best Regards,

[alexnode]

My Titan X (maxwell) is in factory settings never changed.  I could have a go and underclock it during the weekend but not sure that is the problem. 

[Anonymous]

With all respect, though, it should be absolutely not necessary to have to go tweaking the factory settings of a supported card in order to make Max work normally, especially when all other 3D and 2D apps, all of them pretty taxing on the GPU, work like a charm...