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]

I see you are using Max 2016, Have you tried last version 2018 with last patches? Also, could be this related to any external plugins installed? Have you tried to collapse for example all meshes to edit mesh with the collapse utility to see if it saves OK?

I have noticed if you have a long list of modifiers in an object eventually can corrupt the geometry even if those modifiers are standard and collapsing could help.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply, but it is simply to do with the way max works internally. scenes with very high object counts, multiple blocks and other garbage (coming in from any program from autodesk) like autocad or revit for example create this behaviour in max. The scene has no modifiers attached to anything - everything was baked down to editable poly. 

Also MAX 2016 is the most stable release in recent years - this is well known.

I'm really interested in getting a developers reaction to this tbh....

[nathan.loofbourrow]

Karl,

Would you be willing to share the scene so we can analyze it? We have done some work on file I/O performance but we can do our best working with actual customer data.

PM me if you need a private dropbox.

[nathan.loofbourrow]

Sorry, Felix, can you share your scene?

[Anonymous]

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for your response it is appreciated.

We ended up fixing that scene with our standard rinse and repeat process of saving selected and re-merging.

Nevertheless I'm interested in drilling a bit more into the 3dsmax selection procedure and how this might be improved. Presently when selecting objects in a scene with a very high object count (from within the editor of the layer stack or the schematic view), 3dmax freezes and enters what we call 'house of cards mode' where too many clicks on the ui will cause the program to hard crash and vanish.

It appears to be the case that rather than using a cumulative memory based approach to scene management 3dsmax lists every object in turn on every new operation, before returning the result. In cases where there are multiple objects of the same name, (like block for example), im guessing that 3dsmax would need to verfiy world coordinates in addition to the name, explaining the crazy wait times.

I have attached this video demonstrating the long wait times involved even when selecting a single object - www.a-vr.co.uk/downloads/maxselection.mp4

I'm interested in your take on this because scene management would be a big win for 3dsmax if it was improved.

Ps - Are you able to shed any light on what 3dsmax is doing during a save operation (especially when windows TM shows zero activity)?

best

Felix

[companioncube]

can you try and use this free plugin called Forensic to clear the CAD blocks and other mess.

https://www.sinisoftware.net/

2018.4 is great, and 2019 is only a month or so away. you might want to consider upgrading.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for this - i might try Nigels plugin although feel strongly that MAX should do it natively.

Cheers

Felix

[Anonymous]

If i were you i'd stick with 2016...! 2018 is fraught with bugs, i seriously regret installing it... but it's done now and we're stuck with it...

we paid for our subscription for 2017 and never installed it as it was rubbish, and '18 is proving to be no better... honestly I dont know how autodesk can continue to get away with it... 

[Anonymous]

I mean, they are pushing MAYA everywhere these days. From game development to movies. It's kinda obvious why every Max release feels half-arsed attempt to just keep the current users from leaving to some third party apps (Modo, Blender, etc.).

We are using Max in our game studio for a while but some artists have started using Modo as a trial these days cause of Autodesk's push towards Maya.

[companioncube]

@Anonymous @Anonymous

try be a bit more specific. what bugs? what hardware? what OS? what drivers? create a new thread with your specific problems. submit crash reports. 

If you have a feature request submit it to the ideas forum.

I can see the Dev team care and they try and communicate with the user base as much as possible, give them feedback. 

[Anonymous]

have done. but lets face it, you don't have to look very hard to find them...

if they can't see them before it's released they're clearly not doing their job properly or rushing it out the door to meet a deadline,

with little consideration for the customers who pay a fortune for this software. 

[Anonymous]

Bumping this thread to provoke a response from the developers......

Cheers,

Felix

[nathan.loofbourrow]

PMing you directly.

[jfjacques]

Hello Felix, 

This is a rant, nothing useful, don't download 2018

As a fellow architect which uses max late in the pipeline I feel I have to chime in.  Comparing it to the likes of rhino(amazing), revit(getting better), cad(useless but solid,) and finally Archicad (amazing), it's clear that max is as close to objectively awful as software of this ilk can be.  I judge software by how logical and intuitive it's UI, how stable, how easily I can optimize workflows and how useful in the pipeline. Max has legacy, third party plugins, UV mapping, and the slate editor going for it when it comes to archviz. Unfortunately it's extremely unstable, (like you I came here because of a crash) full of hidden corners, and redundant operations, and doesn't even have two letter hotkeys. I don't know what devs or autodesk are doing, but max is a constant nightmare. It takes new associates a few weeks to get into rhino or even revit, but max just seems to frustrate even competent modelers day in and day out. Every time you think the process is bug-free and best practice is understood, it hits you with some critical error. I can't wait for pipeline alternatives, but knowing autodesk, they won't provide the small but important toolsets that max has for archviz in, for instance, revit. This is what happens when you have  metastasizing monopoly like autodesk. It's beyond shameful.  

[companioncube]

be more specific, otherwise nothing improves. for me 2018 and 2019 are really stable. 

what hardware, what OS, what drivers, do you submit your CER reports, have you posted suggestions on the 3Ds Max ideas forum, join the Beta? 

[Anonymous]

Be more specific?

Ok Ill be more specific.

3DSMAX is a joke - Autodesk use it as a cash cow, generating millions of dollars of revenue from legions of artists who have found themselves tied to the product because of the monopolisation of the sector by Autodesk. 

The product is basically non-functioning when it comes to any real-world operation, like for example handing a scene with a few thousand objects, or trying to edit anything over 500k polys. When I say non functioning I mean it will sometimes just vanish, with no warning. If you are lucky it will just sit there, alternating between 'not responding' and the hourglass until said operation is complete. Sometimes just trying to select a single sub-object from a larger object will cause this to go on for minutes, which is extremely stressful when in a production environment.

The reason for this is because Autodesk have zero interest in the product and 100% in the profit.

The result is that (by my conservative estimation), they are responsible for lifetimes worth of time wasted for no reason other than laziness and incompetence on the part of the developers.

This kind of response is the VERY LEAST you can expect from your paying customers.

Now why don't you go and put some actual work into the next release, what do you think??

thanks,

Felix

[whitebirchstudios]

I too get frustrated with the non-responding that seems to pop up whenever it wants for no specific reason, however, MAX 2019 with the latest update has been good to me. I still get the non-responding, however, it is less often and sometimes I can blame it on plugins like Forest Pack Pro. If I get a few of those in my scene it gets ugly.

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @Anonymous 

First, thank you for posting on the forums! I wanted to reach out and see if I could help with any of the issues you currently have in 3ds Max.

I won't be able to comment on some of the things you mentioned, but I would like to say that I work adjacent to the Max development team on occasion, and they are great folks, and really dedicated to making the product better.

That being said, your frustrations are understandable, and they are important. at least to me 😄

In regards to slow performance

I want to help with the slowdown issues, so below is a list of suggestions that *may help speed up your work. it sounds like you are working with rather large scenes for production!

• Make sure you are on the most recent graphics driver
• File > Merge geometry if a scene is being bogged down and has excess, un-used information in it
• Disable any plugins such as Vray, Forest Pack and test 3ds max. A quick way to disable 3rd party plugins
• Check out these tips to resolve slow performance when using 3ds Max
• Also look over this list for scene optimization when working with large scenes in 3ds Max
• If the above list doesn't resolve the slow performance issues, I'm happy to send you some scene cleaning scripts that may help clear out excess junk from larger production scenes.

I really hope I can help @Anonymous , please let me know if there are any further details you want to pass along, such as a dxdiag of your machine, or a file you would like me to test.

Looking forward to chatting with you soon,

[lorddavius]

I'm trying to do just that. Made a scene with 3.000 non instanced teapots converted to editable poly, also made a cube and subdivided it until it reached over 1.440.000 polygons.

This is a scene with over 7 million polygons in total. And I can navigate on it fluidly with a midrange GPU (GTX 1060).

If you can, please, share your scene (or any other scene with similar issues) on the forum. There are people more than willing to help - if you want help.