Substance performance on Max 2024 even slower than Max 2023

[RobH2]

Maybe I'm alone on this but even a powerful as Substances can be, I've found them nearly impossible to use in a production workflow. They bring working with Slate to a crawl if even one is used and if more then it's nearly impossible to work with any effeciency and I have a pretty powerful machine. I can only imagine how frustrating it is if you machine is a little slower. 

I've been testing Substance in Max 2024 and it's orders of magnitude slower than Max 2023. It's really frustrating for what we pay Adobe to have Substance and not be able to use it. Does anyone else have this experience with Substance? I'm really curious because for at least the past 3 years, I've been unable to leverage the power of it yet I've paid hundreds of dollars to have access to it. 

[CiroCardoso3v]

I stopped using Substance files in 3ds Max for that reason. First, they are super slow changing settings, second, you tend to lose any setting adjustments you did and third, sometimes scenes stop opening at all.

My workflow now is open the file in Substance Player and export the textures.

[RobH2]

Glad but sad to hear that I'm not alone. The "supposedly" power of Substance is supposed to be the "interactivity" in Slate. But sadly, that's not the case. I, like you, just export the textures and use those. I just have to do that a number of times till I get it right. It sure would be nice if they worked as advertised by just dragging sliders in Slate. Maybe one day they take it seriously and fix them for us. Thanks Ciro. 

Thanks for letting me know that it's not some odd confilct on my machine. I was hoping it was kind of so I could dive in and fix it. But, also good to know that my machine is most likely healthy and that others have the same problem. 

[jcalcagnino]

Same here, it's never worked correctly. Such immense lag, totally unusable.

[snagarajaJANXP]

Hi, 

Please share more details about this performance issue to help reproduce them on our end:

Are you using the scanned materials?
What are the time differences you are seeing between these versions?
Which version of the Substance plugin are you using in these versions?
Are you maintaining the same Substance plugin settings in both of these versions?
Is there any other information you could share to help repro this issue on our end?


We made some performance updates, which will be available in the upcoming release for 3ds Max 2025. Hopefully, that might fix this performance issue you have described here. Please stay tuned

[RobH2]

I'll do that. There is a chance that some things have improved. I haven't used a Substance lately because of the issues I was having. There has been a Max .2 patch and an upgrade to Substance since I last used it. Maybe it's ok now. I'll find out. 

Let me do a test and get back to you. I appreciate your having reached out. 

[RobH2]

I'm going to upload a file to your PM. The delays that I previously experienced persist. For instance, I have 3 Substances that I've put on componets of a model I did recently for a client.

For me, the delay in Material Editor is the most problematic. In Slate if I double-click to change Substances, there is a huge delay, generally 15-18 seconds before I can perform any task or move in the panel. If I have 5 substances, and I check each of them twice to make adjustments, that's 15-seconds X 10 or about 2.5 to 3-minutes, just to switch betweent them.

Once I start a render or an IPR preview, that performs maybe a little slower than normal but not too noticable. It's the Slate lag that really makes it difficult for me to use Substances in a production environment where you have to work quickly.

If you can't reproduce the lag, then I'll just keep diagnosing on my end. You can review my specs, that's why I use them in my Signature so there's always a reference to them.

Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for taking a look.

@snagarajaJANXP   Edit: I posted the file in a PM to you twice. Let me know if you don't get it. After posting, the message to you does not show up in my SENT messages. I can send it again if necessary. 

[snagarajaJANXP]

Thanks for sharing this information. This has been prioritized on our end. Hopefully we will get a fix out asap. 

[RobH2]

It looks like you were able to reproduce it? Thanks for the attention.

[wernienst]

Following this conversation, I agree. It's still frustrating.
For example, when I open the compatibility dialog, it states "... has detected an incompatible renderer."

When I call the menu's Substance to Arnold or Physical Material workflow using a Substance texture from 3ds Max' maps subfolder, only the Normal output gets connected to the material, and the Scripting Listener shows warnings like this: "Warning: baseColor missing for Substance to Arnold workflow" (maybe a hint that these textures were built for earlier Arnold versions?)
Assets from the Substance 3D Community website seem ok.

Rendering in Production Rendering Mode is unreliable (sometimes black objects), ActiveShade and Interactive Modes are ok.

I didn't notice any performance issues (previews) though.

3dsMax 2024.2, Max2A 5.6.5.2, Substance Plugin 2.8.0 of Dec 7th

[RobH2]

Thanks for these details. It always helps when someone from the mothership pokes in and looks around. They do keep an eye on us. We just don't always know it. People come here to complain a lot and they can do that certainly, but it helps more if there are details of the issue so that those can be added to the developers list should they find it's something they can reproduce.

Unfortunately, all too often someome comes in and rants and raves and it turns out that it is an isolated incident or lack of user experience. Then they disappear because they are afraid to own up to it and apologize.

Software development these days is a very daunting task even on a good day. Those of us who have been in this 3d business over 25 years are used to living with flaws that may take a few releases to finally get solved. Some still persist even longer but what we do is just find workarounds and move on, finish up and get paid or if in school, get graded. I wish we saw less complaining and more understanding and constructive criticism.

Anyway, rambling...but, thanks for the info. I'm sure it will help.

[wernienst]

With Max2A 5.6.6.0, some of my problems (black previews/rendering) have been solved. 👍