Max hangs for minutes at a time selecting polygons in Editable Poly objects with higher poly count (300k)

[blakerobinson]

So I had a search around the forum but couldn't really find much in terms of recent Max versions, and computers have progressed pretty rapidly. Mainly asking this question to see if this is what other people are experiencing and if I should temper my expectations for using Max.

I have a mesh that is roughly 1m polygons (zbrush model for 3D printing that I've brought into Max to edit/process a little). It imports just fine as an editable poly. Rotating and moving around it is fine and rendering the mesh itself seems quick. Adding modifiers such as squeeze/skew is fast. The mesh is a single element.

However, if I take the newly imported file and enter Editable Poly edit mode and select-by-vertex, or select-by-face, then try to select some of the polygons (around 200,000 using the selection square, with no culling options) 3ds Max 2024 just locks up for around 2 minutes. The polygons are eventually selected and 3ds Max resumes. During the time it's hung, 3dsmax doesn't seem to be using much CPU - 10-12%ish. It's just hung in some kind of loop. It's using around 8gb of ram, so nowhere near my 64gb installed that paging might explain.

Some things I've noticed:

• Switching to 'Select Element' (which selects the whole mesh) and clicking the mesh selects all 1m triangles almost instantly. It's just when selecting collections of triangles/edges.
• Using a Poly Select modified to select polygons has no such performance issue. It seems to be when directly editing an Editable Poly (and Editable Mesh) or using the Edit Poly/Edit Mesh modifier.
• Even selecting a single polygon results in 8-10 seconds of unresponsiveness. However, if shift-clicking, only the first click takes this time, and subsequent clicks to draw shortest-route-lines is instant (until you release shift and start again).

My spec is an I9 10900k 3.7ghz, 4090 24gb RTX, so not really a slouch when it comes to power. Also happens on an i7 7700k, 3090 24gb RTX.

Is there something I'm doing wrong workflow-wise when it comes to 'higher' poly objects? I've found mentions of gpoly and such but this seems long-removed from 3ds max. Also seen things about xref, but this is a single editable poly so not sure that would help. In it's current state, Editable Poly doesn't seem fit for purpose for editing (what I feel like) is not a particularly high number of polygons for modern 3D work on powerful machines.

Interestingly, creating a new sphere that is 1m-ish polygons doesn't have this same issue.

[blakerobinson]

Actually noticing issues today with a 300,000 polygon object.

300,000 polygon doesn't seem like a lot of polygons to be experiencing this kind of performance to me. Editable Poly is practically unusable as I'm having to wait 20-30 seconds while Max is hung just clicking a single triangle. I've gone back to versions 2023 and 2022 and experiencing the same issues in both versions of Max.

Interesting I had an old install of Max 2021 sitting around and installed it and having none of these issues.  I can load and select 200,000-500,000+ triangles of a 1m polygon object and it's almost instantaneous and usable.

Is this the intended behaviour that Max 2024 is outperformed by 2021 by a factor of 300x on something as simple as selecting/editing triangles in a model with a higher polycount or is there something seriously wrong with Max 2022+ Editable Poly? Am I missing an obvious workflow thing here, like some kind of optimisation setting? I don't tend to edit high-poly stuff that often so I'm genuinely curious if I'm doing something wrong.

[sqwert]

I had this problem with 2023 .

Use a wacomm pen and 3d mouse

after selecting a high poly mesh moving was a stutter fest  

tried same mesh now and get 145fps while moving, no idea what starts the lag

[blakerobinson]

Thanks for the feedback but that sounds like a different issue. I don't have a wacom pen and this is not a stuttering or framerate issue when selecting a mesh. As mentioned, this is 3ds Max locking up for minutes at a time when selecting polygons of an editable poly in edit mode.

[blakerobinson · Accepted solution]

Thanks to the patience and suggestions of the support staff, I figured out what was causing my hanging issue.

I'm a scripter and write lots of Maxscripts so I usually have 'Macro Recorder' turned on.

Having this option on will massively affect the time it takes to select polygons in select-by-polygon/edge/vert mode, so if you're encountering issues with slow selection times, check this option is off and toggle it off if you're working on high-poly meshes and don't need it (Scripting menu, Macro Recorder). Hopefully this helps out anyone else who spots this issue in the future and searches the forum.