shameful development

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've been using max since it was first released under DOS. Since Autodesk acquired 3dsMAX, product development never got beyond patchy updates to ensure a robust revenue stream for the company. Today after watching yet another large architectural model constantly freeze, and crash, for no reason, I felt compelled to post to this forum. You can clearly see from the screenshot that this 10+ minute save operation was caused by 3dsmax basically freezing for 10 minutes and then saving to disk. Attempting a region selection causes the program to hard crash (dissapear), whereas using ctrl+c does not. This model behaves like 90% of the large complex architectural models we work on and is no exception. The low standards of 3dsmax are particulalry evident when compared with Unreal (which we use extensively) and is capable of displaying the same models with no problem in realtime. Is Autodesk not ashamed of this lazy, incompetent development, and the countless hours of pain and suffering caused to its thousands of paying users on a daily basis?

just wondering..

[Anonymous]

Hi, Thanks for the tip but we already use this, and still have issues when adding more than 2 or 3 slice planes (even if they are disabled). I think a simple checkbox to disable it 100% would be nice really. Trimming large photogrammetry models requires several planes to be fine tuned, and this process is basically impossible in MAX. Talking of dreadful VP performance, we are struggling to understand why large scenes (10 million polys) are so unworkable in MAX. In this example it takes about 20 seconds to simply deselect the objects - why is this? https://www.a-vr.co.uk/stream/20seconddeselection.mp4 It feels like where occasionally this thread has provoked some constructive responses, there is still a general theme of denial underpinning much of what is being said about the general state of this program. Thanks Felix

[Anonymous]

Thanks ill take a look at that script...

[companioncube]

Have you tried any of your scenes in 3Ds Max 2020 or 2019.3 to see if there is performance difference?

[Anonymous]

Yes and we test early releases here but I still find 2016 to be the most stable unfortunately. Its clear-as-day the software needs a major overhaul - something like moving from UE3 to UE4, or windows 7 to windows 10. The question is I suppose, when will that happen? 3dsMAX to 3dsWORKS could be a good name change.....for PR purposes I suppose. Anyway here is an example of a classic 3dsMAX vanishing act, invoked by simply trying to select a large number of objects. https://www.a-vr.co.uk/stream/hardcrash.mp4 You may also notice another weird aspect of MAX in this clip which i've coined 'fussy software syndrome' where occasionally it will simply ignore a command, until invoked again. How is this behaviour acceptable for a piece of incredibly expensive commercial software I wonder...

[companioncube]

Does the model in that example have CAD blocks? Personally i found 2018.4, 2019.3 to be the most stable versions of max there have ever been. I started having crashes at one point with 2019.3 but deleted my ENU folder and everything was ok again. Have you shared any more of your scenes with the dev team? The more real world examples they have the better they can diagnose problems.

[Anonymous]

Hi, no it doesn't have any blocks, but it came from Revit, so geometry is nested below helper objects. Revit is an Autodesk product too though right... cheers, Felix

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @Anonymous 

Thanks for keeping this thread active! I would really like to pass along any working models (that you are allowed to share) to the development team so they can look into these slow performance issues. Like @companioncube said, this can be super helpful!

I think we are finding that some of these imported models need a little "prep work" before we can expect them to perform optimally, whether importing from Sketchup or Revit.

Hopefully together we can push toward better 3ds Max viewport performance for future releases by isolating those issues in the current versions 😄 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for your help - here is the file - http://www.a-vr.co.uk/downloads/sample.rar

I am struggling to attach all the polys into one object - it just wont do it.

I'm interested to hear how you get on....

cheers

Felix

[hagen.deloss]

@Anonymous 

Thanks for passing this file along! It's really slowing down my scene as well in Max 2020, and while i see that the scene has a fair amount of empty helper nodes and 20+ cameras, i don't believe these to be the root issue. I have also isolated the slow performance issues down t the buildings, not the city scan you have included. i extracted the cityscape and it runs fairly quickly...it's the buildings that have me stumped, you said they are exported from Revit?

I will post back when I have more information 😄

[companioncube]

@Anonymous 

you've got 50,000+ objects in your scene, you can't work with a scene like that in any 3D app. 3D programs don't mind lots of polys but they hate a lot of objects.

i collapsed the model by material and it went down to 700+ objects and converted to mesh (always convert to mesh, only use poly for modeling). now the scene is responsive. just doing that also halved the file size. you just need to change the way you work a bit. 

file with model collapsed by material https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YP1X-UdzeShQ-n-eVzcX3VpdRK71jPlZ

[Anonymous]

Hi thank you for your input. I am aware of the object/poly count thing and am therefore baffled why Revit models come in like that. This is not an unusual scene, and something we have to process on a daily basis. 

[Anonymous]

....Also I forgot to mention but mesh is a legacy format, and broken in MAX. Most complex geometry tends to become corrupted when selecting at the sublevel when working with meshes, so I tend to avoid using them. See this clip....

https://www.a-vr.co.uk/stream/meshcorrupt.mp4

[companioncube]

I haven't experienced a problem like that with mesh, it's definitely not present in newer versions of max or it could be a specific problem with that model. 

i always convert to mesh after editing or when the model is final because its a bit faster than poly and the file size is a bit smaller. the more important thing is to try keep your scene under 10,000 objects. 

[hagen.deloss]

@Anonymous 

I am planning to pass your previously provided file along to the Max team that handles interoperability and importing...do you happen to have access to the corresponding Revit file this model is imported from? 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for looking into this and for requesting the model. Despite chasing the architects that revit model is not available any more and has been updated now anyway. What I can tell you is that when architects supply Rveit models this is typically how they come in - 10's of thousands of objects. I'm wondering if Autodesk could improve the interoperability with Max and Revit to a common sense level, given that they are not only industry standard platforms but both developed by you.

[Anonymous]

In this post I thought Id focus on 3dsMAX incredibly poor import performance. In this example I am importing quite a large .OBJ file (another photogrammetry scan), whilst noting the vast RAM usage just prior to a hard crash. Interestingly it takes Meshlab with it, if I try importing the same file. Meshlab has NEVER crashed importing any photogrammetry scan, as can be seen in the second half of the clip, whilst it uses about 10 times less RAM!!  3DSMAX will almost always crash unless the scan is under 10 million polys. If this isn't the clearest example of why 3DSMAX is basically broken I don't know what is.

https://www.a-vr.co.uk/stream/big_import.mp4

[companioncube]

is that Max 2016 in your example?

[Anonymous]

Hi yes it is

[companioncube]

I can't talk for the performance but as for the crash have you tried a newer version of Max? I think there has been about 7-8 minor bug fixes to the obj importer since 2016 as well other fixes that might be causing the crash as the import finishes. 

2016 will never get another update so there isn't much point as using as an example of what needs fixing in Max. You've got to upgrade at some point. 

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I thought I'd reinvigorate this thread since I've been using 3dsmax 2020 for some time now.

Viewport performance has improved, but to be honest the program is still essentially a headache to use, due to poor development choices and bad coding.

Here are some of the most annoying things that frankly should not be in a product that costs as much as MAX:

1. Closing a project and not saving it still results in a minute or more of the program just sitting there 'not responding' until it eventually closes. Why has this weird behaviour persisted since MAX was first released?

2. Multisubmaterial dialogue does not expand, and we need to scroll up and down instead. Why?

3. Layer manager, when putting a selection to a different layer the destination layer expands, which is very irritating when there are lots of objects in there, because we have to scroll up, close the layer and re-select when working in the layer window. TIP to your developers: Keep things static unless the user has selected an option to 'open the layer stack' when moving objects to a new layer.

4. Isolate mode (same problem as above), when isolating an object max resets the viewport to 'zoom extents selected'. WHY? its extremely irritating having to re adjust the view every time we isolate especially when working at a sub-object level. Again stop changing things by default and make this an option that can be toggled somewhere please.

5. Pro-optimser is broken - multires still better in the realworld. Pro-Op frequently reverts to 'invalid' status for no reason in large scenes which have it applied to multiple objects. Multires does not do this and also retains UVWs by default. Despite being possibly more efficient in the geometry decimation How can a new feature be worse in every other way??

These are just 5 things picked from hundreds. Please remember that whilst you make your millions of dollars, there thousands of people like me who work with this tool every day, and lazy development like this makes our projects far more painful than necessary to work on whilst increasing production time, user frustration, and project instability in the process. 

Working In Unreal I have a new metaphor for 3dsMAX. Every project is a journey, and the first part of that journey must be made in MAX, a nasty uncomfortable, unreliable old banger, that gives me anxiety every time I drive it. Nevertheless I must drive it in order to get to the next car which is a top-of-the-range Tesla waiting for me several miles down the road.

The irony here is that the rusty old banger costs me thousands of dollars to keep running each year, whilst the Tesla is completely free. Only in the weird and wonderful world of software development is this madness even possible!