Rendering times several times slower in 2024 vs 2022 when using substance materials.

[keltonr01]

When rendering a scene with a substance2 map, render times are several times slower in 3ds Max 2024 vs 2022.
I've attached 2 screenshots from Arnold which show the render times. This issue also occurs with V-Ray. Also, the system also does not appear to be fully utilizing the CPU.

When rendering with Arnold GPU in 2024, the initial render also takes a long time to actually begin the render compared to 2022. 

There is one issue I have with V-Ray that I do not have with Arnold in that the system completely locks up when beginning a render and when a render is finished in 2024. When I contacted Chaos support and they looked into it, they informed me that it was due to the substance plugin regenerating texture previews, so I assume that is with the plugin, not V-Ray. My full conversation with them is here, if that is of any help.

Thank you. 

2022 (6 seconds):

2024 (28 seconds):

 

2024 CPU usage during render:

 

[RobH2]

I am as dissapointed with Substance as you probably are. I've been reporting for several years that there is something very wrong with Substance. Anytime I've used it in a file it cripples it and has for several versions of Max now. I was hoping that when Adobe aquired it they would fix it but they have not and as you've found, it's gotten worse. What's worse yet is that we all pay a pretty good price for having it now. 

What I do to be able to use Substance is to bake the maps once I have it set and ready to go. You can right click on the node just before the material and choose 'Render Map...' Do that for all textures that feed into a material and remove the Substance node and then you'll get interactivity back. 

[keltonr01]

Yeah, that's what I was planning on doing. It's just really unfortunate that is the case now. It's really interrupting my workflow. 

I do find it kind of interesting that this issue doesn't seem to be more widespread. The only accurate results I could find on Google is a thread by you on here on the forums. 

[RobH2]

That's intresting and unfortunate. I hope we aren't the only ones who have this issue. If we are we need to find out why. What are your machine specs? I also have pretty severe lag when running a VRay IPR window while working. I didn't used to. But now, even if it's small, if I'm trying to work in a viewport and have IPR going, it bring everything to its knees. Chaos says they can't reproduce it. 

There are more threads about that than just me and some think it's just affecting Ryzen Threadrippers. But a few Intel users have reported it. 

[keltonr01]

Sorry for the late reply, but just saw this now. I actually have the same machine as you. 3950X with a 4090 (even an NH-D15, lol). Although the 4090 is new as up until last month I was using a 1070 but still had the same issues. I am on Windows 10 though. 

I don't know if it's related to the IPR issue, but Chaos was able to reproduce the slow rendering issue and narrowed it down to the substance plugin regenerating texture previews.