Max 2010 - Performance

[Jesse Moody]

I know there are other threads about this but I needed to see if others are having the same issues.

So we made the switch to 2010 to get all the latest features. I was using Max 9 with all the add ons and service packs up until pretty recently then I switched to 2009. Noticed a slow down from 9 to 2009 and now to 2010 the slow down is insane.

I have an object on screen with 164k tris. That is it and it's chugging. Barely moving around on the screen. Weird thing is it only does it if any object is selected. If nothing is selected then it doesn't slow down.

Any ideas why? Same issues?

[dejawolf]

i had similar problems with vista 64 and 3d studio max 8.
its a vista driver compatibility issue for me. its an error with drawing vectors.
here's a test:

create a line object, with 4-5 lines. copy it 25 times.
does your computer slow down?

[Junkie_XL]

Yep it's not just you. I show a framerate that is twice as bad (or greater) in max 2010 vs max 2008. A 600K scene at 23 FPS shows 11FPS in 2010.

I'm sticking with max 2008 and polyboost I think. Max 9 & 2008 are identical in performance for me.

[Jesse Moody]

Man it's seriously ridiculous how much slower this is. It should be faster. I shouldn't have slow down on a machine with a quad core and 8 gigs of memory. Seriously.

[renderhjs]

a friend told me this tip to disable the screen anit-aliasing in the ini settings which I am about to find. He said that it should boost things up,- another idea would be to disable lots of plugins you never need so that they wont be loaded with the startup, that should boost again.

and no newer versions these days does not mean faster & quicker software - its more of the opposite. Photoshop is a pain in the ass to work with starting with CS3, max has not gotten better in this regards.
On a side note though in some cases complex scenes do navigate smoother- though not always.

[perna]

Hey Jesse. I'm surprised a big studio like Raven would install a fresh Autodesk product. I mean you guys are just as aware of the dangers of that as the rest of us. There was never a 3ds max that worked halfway well without installing a service pack.

render: Ayup. There's something wildly confusing about "newer" also meaning "slower and buggier", especially when it comes to bigtime stuff like operating systems.

[renderhjs]

well I worked my way through the Area threads of autodesk and it seems that by default it is not that easy to disable it (or not possible). THe reason for that is some .NET 4 stuff that does not allow to switch or alter font things - or something like that.

Josef Wienerroither writes (http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewreply/117875/):
Cleartype in WPF ( the new .Net tools in Max like Ribbon, Sceneexplorer, Application frame and a lot other things) CANNOT be disabled because of a .NET/Microsoft limitation/design decision. The upcoming dot NET 4.0 version will have the option to disable font antaliasing, if this will be backwardscompatible for dot net 3.xx stuff i don’ know though...I think Autodesk chose to enable cleartype in general for Max 2010 to make the UI fonts consistent and not to have Cleartyped fonts mixed with standard “sharp” UI fonts…

But there is a hacky way
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/24971/#114431

but the general echo in many threads especially this one:
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/25717/P0/
is that max has become slow and bloated, and many ask for a complete rebirth of the core


but personally performance so far was for me not an issue with max2010 - I was rather pissed at the GUI changes which are butt ugly, slow and absolutely not logical or in other words: shitty designed. Its like they toss the whole GUI foundation over board and try something noobish like glossy web 2.0 styles aimed for idiots.
Like in 2010 the File menu is not readable anymore as File (instead some giant Vista start button alike) and all the commands LACK SHORTCUT DESCRIPTIONS !! - how is someone supposed to know now that ctrl + shift+ s is perhaps save as, or the other shortcuts.
And the Ribbon interface is Garbage as well - its slow not at all responsive, has ugly bloated fade animations for the tooltips and in general a pain to learn because there is no text context or shortcut context. Instead each time I have to remember the icon = its like learning Chinese characters sometimes to me - very very difficult to learn.

I already mentioned the forced blurType stuff (clearType), not only can it only anti- alias now text but often I also see wrong rendered text stuff that then gets bold or looks as if it were rendered twice or 3x on top of each other - and if I then hover over it or refresh the panel its gone.


But every big company seems to like these Funky bloated FX interfaces - even Adobe really went down regarding that matter. Flash CS4 is a disaster to use on notebooks because it sucks to much CPU usage while doing nothing. Why? because they included Flash Players into the Interface that run constantly making your computer slow.
Same shit with Photoshop CS4 which is also a fucking pain to use on decent hardware because it consumes like 200% of the RAM compared to what it actually could use (like Photoshop CS or CS2 without the version cue bloater). Because they decided that viewing 2 documents at once or more using tabs is cool, and having alpha rounded transparency GUI designs is cool as well, or sells the product better if anything else seems to be less progressed.

And Vista Win7 is no different - bloaty icons and performance compared to Win2000 or XP just to sell new Hardware...
I could go on and on the majority of software developers really seem to focus on new target groups that can be easier attracted with visuals instead of functionality.

[Frankie V]

I was having some serious slow down in Motion Builder and Max 2009 but I found that making a custom setting for my Nvidia card solved the problem. I’m running dual monitors if that makes a difference.

[kite212]

i haven't had too many issues, before when i fist got it i had some chugging, but as newer drivers came out the more stable it has become. i had a 6 million scene and my fps was jumping between 20 -150. right now i have a 258k tri object and my fps is between 170 and 200. and my machine only has 4gig ddr2, 2.6 amd quad and a 4850 512 win7 x64, and i have 2 screens a 22in and a 32in. so i would check vid drivers to make sure they are the latest. my laptop was having a few issues with it but i just updated my drivers for it and its doing better. also a new hotfix came out like 2 weeks ago or so.

edit
i would like to see the ribbon removed though, i dont see why the tools couldnt have just been added into the modify tab, just as many agree on area, its time for autodesk to start from the beginning and make a nextgen 3d app, and please make uv unwrap similar to headus >_<

[pior]

Yeah thats the biggest lesson this recent years - never install a newer version 'just to try out the new features'.

Like many stated before, it really doesn't work like that anymore. It is completely ridiculous, but I think the dev teams of monster apps really don't have control over their products anymore. I keep hearing smart people telling me 'oh but your hardware is better, sure the app is a little bit heavier but it should run fine', huh.

Also this likely puts your purchasing dept in a awkward position as the latest version is usually the only one available. This alone (and this is just my opinion) makes warez a truly important resource as this is sometimes the only way to get a stable version of an app EVEN when you just bought the real thing.

Anyways I'm not of much help here, sorry! Good luck man. I know I gave up on this hehe :P

[mLichy]

We used Max 9 at Bungie when I was there last, but now I'm going to be using 2009 I guess. But I've been using 2009 otherwise and like it for the most part. Idk about 2010. I did also notice a slowdown, but I think I have AA turned off which probably helps, and I don't run really any plugins.

[perna]

with max it tends to go like this:

-new major version with big new features, most of which are horribly broken
.SP that fixes the worst bugs, but the features still feel incomplete
.people complain that things don't work the way they should

-new major version that adds just small new features, but fixes most of the new stuff in the previous version
.SP makes it a really nice experience once you disable all the crap you don't need. Stability is good.
.people complain that there aren't any new big features (lol)

-Repeat

So, basically about every other major version should be skipped. Let others file bug reports and tear their hear out and just wait until next year for the issues to be sorted.

Max2k9 works very well for me, and I'm pushing it quite far. Before that I used 8, it was also very good. I'm sure I'll install max2011 SP1 for professional use, and max 2010 SP1 just for testing, on the laptop I suppose, off-hours

[Blaizer]

I'm also using max 2k9 but i have some annoying bugs.

I downloaded the demo for max 2010 and it really has a bad perfomance. The load is slower aswell. The scanline renderer is also slower than never and is something totally weird. Some renders i usually do in ms, in max 2010 are minutes... no jokes, and it's only scanline + catmull rom with super sampler for quality (3 omni lights).

I have had several problems with rigs with max 2009/2010. to use Simmetry for the skin is a super crash with old archives from max 2008. Axis with envelopes got crazy and the handles appears in the next city...

I work with quadro, so in viewports, i didn't notice an spectacular fall of perfomance, 20+fps only (without hardware acceleration)

This is what i call to kill a program.

[Frankie V]

So, basically about every other major version should be skipped. Let others file bug reports and tear their hear out and just wait until next year for the issues to be sorted.


Ya but then they got you with the upgrade con. You check out the latest version, decided to give it a pass and then have to pay twice the upgrade price for the version that works the way it should have in the first place.

Unless your lucky to afford the subscription plan.

[elte]

After reading this thread I have a doubt of switching from maya to max, I thought maya 2009 is buggy enough before reading this thread. I'm in doubt switching now.

It's quite true after reading this : http://thnkr.com/b/

[Jesse Moody]

Ok I took an object from 2010 exported obj to max 9. Turbosmoothed both for the high poly and max 9 is steady at like 250-400 fps on screen while 2010 is at like 20

What the hell. Thats insane!

[pior]

By the way. Anyone knows a good way to get older versions of software, legit? For instance CS4 is way too broken, how do you even get a CS2 license then?

[CrazyButcher]

ebay :/

[Toast]

For instance CS4 is way too broken

how so?

[pior]

Well on the two win machines I tested it on it was slower both for menus and brushstrokes (uber x64 machine and 3years old dinosaur aswell).
It felt much more polished on the Mac, but I guess that's much easier to achieve?

Yeah CB that's so annoying ...

Anyways back to the topic of newer Max versions. Earlier this week I was playing with max2009 and it seemed to load my max8 preferences just fine (menus, menu bars, colors, shortcuts) but the next day all shortcuts were back to defaults. Reverting back to the default UI, and then loading my custom settings again still didn't bring the 'cuts back either. Any ideas? That the kind of things that really should work well from one version to another...

[GCMP]

Tried max 2009 but not the 2010 version, did notice a slowdown in general with some functions (edit poly and scanline rendering) except the actual loading time to run the application had improved significantly.

Just wondering when you guys say we just installed 2010 and it's slow, are you just overwriting the old application and keeping the same software on the machine?

For instance when testing max 2009 viewport navigation was alot slower while having a maxtor one touch two connected, once the drive was disconnected and the drivers unloaded the application seemed faster.

I think it's mainly due to incompatiblities with other services, service packs may not help this if your set on using the latest max but a process of elimination might help overcome these problems.

ps: cs4 is great, had no problems with it at all, much faster.

[perna]

pior: Aye :) I'm still on my CS2 (well, cs4 installed for opening cs4 files). I learned the lesson with.. was it 5.1? It was pretty good and it took a few years before it became sensible to upgrade after that

[Jesse Moody]

Oh we are on subscription. I still have Max 9, 2009, and 2010 on my rig.

I have an external hard drive connected so maybe I'll see how that works unhooked.

I'm gonna give 2010 a try here at home on my laptop and then try 2010 on my wifes monster desktop to see if there are any differences.

[fly_soup]

I didn't notice any slowdown with 2010 on my machine. Right now I've got a 950k scene and I'm getting around 120 fps rotating the view around. It drops to around 40 if I enable edged faces for everything and to 75 with a sub-object selection, but it doesn't drop below 30 during normal use (just to see, I applied two turbosmooth modifiers to a 1200 poly object, turned on the stack preview, and jerked it around with the shift tool. It dropped to 11.) That's in single view expert mode on a widescreen display with the graphite ribbon floated over to the other monitor. I'm running a quad core with 2GB of DDR2 and a 768MB GeForce 9600 in 32-bit XP Home, so it's weird that it would be so slow on a rig with 4 times as much memory. If it's not the video drivers or something, I blame Vista.

[j_bradford]

I use Max strictly for rendering at work so using 2010 doesn't make much a difference for me. However when I played around with the ribbon it was extremely slow and buggy. There are times when it would crash Max simply by doing a few operations on it. I'm kind of suprised by this release because Autodesk took polyboost, which has a sleek interface and reconfigured it into the ribbon - which never existed before. Why not just integrate everything into the command panel or quad menus? Having the ribbon there on top of the command panel has made the viewport so small now, especially for those that like a 2-column command panel. I hope autodesk chooses to ditch the command panel or ribbon. It's really cluttered to have everything on screen like that.

[renderhjs]

maybe they were to afraid to touch the ancient GUI code to make big changes and instead made something new like the graphite toolbar with cool and fancy effects such as big rollover tooltips.

At the moment I have a scene that I can only render once every session, as soon as I render a 2nd time I get a crash starting at the beginning of the render process. This is kind of sad as it forces me to tweak texture sizes and geometry again in order to be able to render things after each other.

[Kimono]

I've noticed a massive deterioration in performance aswell Jesse, have also become quite accustomed to working on models with the suffix "_recover_recover_recover_recover_recover_recover_r ecover". I never had access to Polyboost before and the tools seem to be extremely useful so the upgrade has proven to be worthwile in that regard, I am however firmly in the "total rehaul" camp. I would not mind putting the hours in getting to grips with an improved program than spending the same amount of time staring at a slideshow.

[Mark Dygert]

We have it installed at work but we're not switching over until our next project a few months from now. I've played around with it, the only thing that slows me down is the ribbon, it eats up way too much vertical screen space and is a step backward from polyboost functionality wise. Monitors have more horiz space, let me dock it to the left or to the right or better yet float it.

Hopefully there is a way to disable the ribbon and go back to using polyboost. The ribbon MrBlueSummers was working on was much more robust.

[Jesse Moody]

Vig you can undock it and float it. I have it on my 2nd monitor along with other tools.

What killed me is you can't set hot keys for polyboost functions any longer. WTF!!!

[renderhjs]

I found out that if you hit alt + f for the file menu (even though you cant see the underscore f..file because of the Vista alike Button),
and then hold or press alt again some gimmick animation shows the shortcuts to the entries there - quite hidden imo. but still broken to me as you cant see sub stuff like export selected right away.

maybe it works the same with the graphite tools?- will check that later today

[almighty_gir]

running a dual core 3.2Ghz, 4gb ram, Nvidia 9800GTX 512mb system
windows 7 64bit beta
Max 2010 64bit.

i've got nothing but compliments after jumping to this from max 9, it works like a dream by comparrison, i can import meshes from zbrush in about 1/10 the time it would have taken before (i'm talking very dense meshes). i don't get the chug you mention Jesse, i've just opened a wip model, need to build some armour parts over a high res mesh, figured i'd select it, as you say that's when you have problems. then panned it all over the screen, and hit prtscrn to show my fps.

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/3764/dasuberplanx.jpg

i've also not had a max crash yet either... maybe 2010 was designed with windows 7 in mind over vista, as m$ are jumping to that later this year? dunno... i just don't have any of the problems you guys are having.

[fly_soup]

You can still set hotkeys for polyboost functions, they're just listed oddly. They don't show up under the Graphite Modeling Tools category where any logical person would expect to find them, but under the Main UI>All Commands list, all of the PolyDraw functions are now listed as "PolyDraw Drag", "PolyDraw Extend", etc. and the others, like SetFlow, SwiftLoop, and Insert Loop are listed by themselves.

[perna]

I didn't notice any slowdown with 2010 on my machine. Right now I've got a 950k scene and I'm getting around 120 fps rotating the view around. It drops to around 40 if I enable edged faces for everything and to 75 with a sub-object selection, but it doesn't drop below 30 during normal use (just to see, I applied two turbosmooth modifiers to a 1200 poly object, turned on the stack preview, and jerked it around with the shift tool. It dropped to 11.) That's in single view expert mode on a widescreen display with the graphite ribbon floated over to the other monitor. I'm running a quad core with 2GB of DDR2 and a 768MB GeForce 9600 in 32-bit XP Home, so it's weird that it would be so slow on a rig with 4 times as much memory. If it's not the video drivers or something, I blame Vista.

You say you didn't notice any slowdown - what were you using before? I have a 5 million tri object open now on this machine running at 70 FPS. That's max 2009 and an ancient GF6.


almighty_gir: No wonder you're seeing performance improvements, you upgraded from max9 :) It makes sense to compare 2010 to a more recent version.

[renderhjs]

.... They don't show up under the Graphite Modeling Tools category where any logical person would expect to find them, but under the Main UI>All Commands list, ...it is the general category is as I believe because you do not have access in maxscript or the macroscript template in which category to store your scripts.
It makes sense then as the "graphite tools" are in fact just scripts added via maxscript. I wish they would tidy that up.

[almighty_gir]

almighty_gir: No wonder you're seeing performance improvements, you upgraded from max9 :) It makes sense to compare 2010 to a more recent version.


that's fair enough dude, but he said he went from max9 to 2009 and had a slow down, then a bigger slowdown from 2009 to 2010. so it would make sense that i should have a slowdown too, right? but i don't.

[renderhjs]

I have like 20 crashes a day with max2010 now simply because it cant handle a certain polycount and subdiv. settings. Though they are not random and regular workflow is not interrupted, rendering is not smooth at all
:(

[kite212]

i get the most crashes when i try to undo in 2010, ill undo like 5+ steps and bam, and some of the graphite tools brick it

[fly_soup]

You say you didn't notice any slowdown - what were you using before?
I was using 9 before too. Yeah, maybe it's not really a fair comparison.

[perna]

Aye, anyone getting a slowdown from max9 to 2010.. it's probably a driver problem or old hardware.. maybe running ATI or something... something outside of their viewport rendering implementation, because that has truly improved a lot since v9.

I want to get the time to share my "init setup" for max2009, which is a number of things you do after installation to remove rubbish and change defaults. The thing about max is most of the rubbish can be turned off, but few people have the time to mess with that and are stuck with the dreadful out-of-the-box experience. I don't know whether people who spend little time tweaking their setup would actually end up using such a script though; it does sound like a contradiction.

Well, I'd like to recommend 2009. It continues to work very well for me. The bugs I run into are mostly obscure things which are rarely an issue. The biggest problem I have is now and then the undo stack randomly clears... And while that sounds horrible, it hasn't made much of a difference in practice.

gnight

[renderhjs]

some of the annoying things in pictures:

like the xth time today:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/9575/max2010crashing.gif
because rendering fails, and then sometimes not

and then the buggy GUI
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/7761/max2010fuck01.gif

[Mark Dygert]

Jesse, good to hear you can float it. If my second monitor wasn't full of animation tools I'd probably do that too.

I just figured out how to change the ribbons orientation from horiz to vert and docked it next to the command panel, where I normally look for modeling tools. It can also be toggled so its not always eating up space. I could start to like 2010...

Per, yea I think 2009 is probably 3dsmax at its peak right now, if the choice was mine I'd probably stick with it. Best performance I've seen and most stable build yet.

render, that crash happens to me too. More often with Mental Ray... It can be slightly less annoying if you run the renders through backburner The render errors out but at least it doesn't take 3ds down with it. It's pretty easy to set up locally too, as soon as the job is sent it goes back to 3ds and lets you keep working while its rendering. I added Manager and Sever to start up on boot so they're always there.

[kite212]

having the graphite tools docked to the right is better but i cant collapse it and make it smaller which kinda sux, i also made some extra buttons to change its alignment, and open and close it, and a button to open loop tools

[renderhjs]

I got another bug

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/6496/max2010savebug.gif
for some reason a scene with 1.7 million polygons fails saving here,- it crashes and I get a endless loop in which max tells me each time that the file went corrupt and asking if I would like to save a copy but which fails as well and so he keeps asking

I never had that with any prior version of max - but then again i didn't worked before with so many faces. Anyway not nice

[renderhjs]

argh I HATE autodesk!
it fucked my last 3 iterations of the file with that error, now I have to redo 1/2 day of work !!!

[ironbearxl]

Not all the graphite tools have kb shortcuts, for instance they left out Cap which works very different (ie it's better) from regular Cap.

Edit: Just figured out graphite Cap is actually the same as create poly.

[NyneDown]

I downloaded the free trial for work (they're implementing 3d visualizations...finally) and noticed a huge decrease in performance also. The machine I have at work is mean as hell too...the specs are top of the line and still it lags while moving around in the viewports.

If it aint broke...dont fix it. Upgrades are supposed to be for improvements...not 2 steps backwards. Autodesk is really starting to chap my ass.

[kite212]

i feel really bad for you render, seems like autodesk hates you, maybe they are jealous of your uv tools, and how its better than theirs >_< the only problem ive had with 2010 is bringing my desktops ui over to ma lappy, the buttons i made freaked out and broke my ui, and some times my lappy chugs, but i blame shitty nvidia drivers for win7

[renderhjs]

oh well I guess we all have some times were we hate something like a certain OS, drivers or support of a company.
Will see if max2009 works out better for this project -_-

[cgFreak]

another idea would be to disable lots of plugins you never need so that they wont be loaded with the startup, that should boost again.

.


Please tell me man, how to disable unneeded plug ins. Cos' I've been trying to disable those from the plug in manager but there were no options to unload plug ins'. Please Please Please Please Please Please help me...:poly142:

[crozer]

i jumped from max8 to 2010 and didn't notice any differences at the beginning. my modeling and working-progress was doing just fine, until i had to start rendering.
i never had to modify and switch so many options in the rendering parameters, until i started using max2010 and wanted to make any progress rendering :/

i initially thought my gfx-card was just getting trapped by time and wasn't up for 3d working anymore.

[renderhjs]

Please tell me man, how to disable unneeded plug ins. Cos' I've been trying to disable those from the plug in manager but there were no options to unload plug ins'. Please Please Please Please Please Please help me...:poly142:

check out:
3ds clean scripts:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=63739&highlight=3ds+clean

even though its aimed for max2009 you should be able to get out the batch scripts and maxscripts needed to tweak things.

[Jorgegs]

I hope to hell Pixologic doesn't get in the bloat bandwagon, because there is not byte of ram I can spare when running zbrush.

I still use Photoshop 5.0, for 99% of my texturing. I just fire up CS2 when for warping or using brushes. I'm basically working in abandonware. (it's from 1998 )

damn emoticons

[renderhjs]

he he I told my boss the other day at work to get me Photoshop CS2 because CS4 is so bloated and is impossible to work with (lots of flickering, crashing, hanging up, delays,...).

I wish I could get my hands on Photoshop CS1 (with layer effects + newer brush engine) or max2009 at work (because right now they bought me max2010).

I am scared a little bit about Win7 because there is no single test out there comparing it with winXP and so all the media is hyping is that it is faster as Vista but vista never was a choice for me or any of the companies I worked for so far.
Being able to address more RAM is welcome (win7, 64 bit) but if the next Photoshop CS5 requires just 3 GB as a minimum to work somehow and Win7 itself again some 2 GB it means software developers are getting to sloppy.
Especially autodesk and adobe delivered catastrophic results in this regards, their newest max and Photoshop are the slowest and buggiest apps ever released.

[pior]

Render, it's good to hear common sense like that every now and then!
Adobe made it very hard for users to get legit versions of their older software. However I think CS3 will be fine for you, maybe give it a try? CS4 is okay for paintings, but I wouldn't recommend it for editing multiple textures at once ...

[renderhjs]

I have different test results with painting in CS4, the tablet FPS is actually a hell lot lower as lets say CS1 or CS2. CS3 was okay but still with a hick up every now and then with painting.

I compared with a friend CS3 and CS4 and CS2 all next to each other with a Wacom intuos 2 - and we noticed a very dramatic difference in the refresh rate of the tablets beeing read in Photoshop.
In photoshop CS4 I can't even draw a curve with the mouse in 1 attempt, it always hangs up and makes a big zig because it was busy initializing some GUI shit when I hold down the mouse and start to drag - its a nightmare - adobe: you fucked up totally!!!

Even the designers at the company hate it especially the openGL stuff (we used that lately with some 3d game project) - because it starts to tween and ease with hick ups every now and then.


somehow related: I totally dig google's recent software (and also web) philosophy making stuff speedy, snappy, lightweight and instant reacting like google chrome, chrome OS or even the google search. They are all super fast compared to their competitors (bing, firefox, IE,...). I wish autodesk and adobe would take a slice from that and rewrite their cores to really bring the fastest core engine and architecture out there so that we can start in a new era of their packages.
Especially max needs a rewrite of the core and Maya needs a real GUI - booth are so ancient in their architecture its almost a shame that they sell it each year as something new - guess thats why they started with the GUI shit to hide the dirt.


argh booth companies make me totally angry

[rv_el]

You said it Moody. This has been horrible for us at work. I installed SP1, but not hotfixes. Do those help?


A really really big problem i'm having is basic navigation. Its already hitchy in a lot of ways, but really whats killing me is the middle mouse roll!!!!

the way i work is with a lot of quick pans/rotatearounds/zooms .. i'll zoom out, rotate around fast and look at the silhouette and zoom in and work on something closer up.

I've been using max for ages - i can't descrbie problems in detail, but like riding a bike, you just know when something is off

In 2010 i'll try to work fast but the zoom keeps "hanging" . Its like the entire middle mouse will move its functions over to the modify panel or something. i'll pan and rotate around a model and then try to zoom.. nothing.. try again.. nothing... then i migh pan and try again and it will finally go

most often i have to click in the viewport to get the middle mouse to work again - this makes me lose my selection AND pacing.

Its horrible zooming in, selecting something, hitting a button on the mod panel. Then panning around the model for a quick second, then you go to zoom back out and you just can't. wtfballs!

Am i the only one seeing this?




Also on another note, honestly i've had a lot of issues with new software. CS4 and even ZB 3.5R3 have been some of the hardest transitions with the most work arounds ever!

[rv_el]

holy shit i think i just figured something out... The Alt Button all by itself highlights the fuckign Edit menu up top!

So you hit alt, it moves function to the Edit menu and then you have trouble zooming etc.. so you have to click back to viewport to get it back.

*shrug* i guess its alwasy been there!?



It seems to do this witht he Modify panel more. Like i said earlier where you do something in the mod panel, then pan around in the viewport and then try to zoom, and it doesn't work. clicking is the sure fire way to get it to go. it doesn't always want to work. testing in 2009 it looks like it doesn't do it.

-Select sub object vert
-mouse wheel (or pan i think does it too) up and down on modify panel (like if your going down to edit smoothing groups or ids)
-alt+middle mouse in viewport (then let off alt)
-try to zoom in and out

2009 seems to always zoom, 2010 sometimes scrolls the mod panel instead. I might get used to the quirk though.. ugh.. just feels so stiff in the viewport in general!

[Blaizer]

With my quadro, and maxtreme drivers, the perfomance in viewports is the same as with max 2008/2009. Service pack didn't help LOL

But... the scanline renderer is slower as hell. It renders the images in almost the double of time.

[rv_el]

Been doing a few tests back and forth. Max 2010 actually handles things super swift on very high tri counts so long as your already spinning around. Its feathering the alt button etc.. that causes issues.



I could be wrong but i feel like everybody is telling Autodesk they are having "performance" issues and its like some Rally Race car driver going to a Drag Car mechanic and saying the car he's been modding and building for him has poor "performance" so the mechanic keeps boring the engine and throwing turbo and everything at it when what the guy needs is some suspension and different tires.

I feel like 2010 is even worse with the alt+middle thing, and seems to have issues switching gears between panning, zooming, and rotating around in the viewport.. may be its just me. I never (2009 or 2010) understand exactly why alt+whatever is much slower(less responsive actually) than clicking on the buttons down at the bottom right (orbit / pan etc..)


Also it seems to be better when i exported something as an FBX and brought it back in to a fresh start of 2010. So i'm not taking a 2009 file and working on it in 2010 (like i have been)....
I don't know what thats about. But it seemed to help quite a bit!

[roB0T]

some of the annoying things in pictures:

like the xth time today:
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/9575/max2010crashing.gif
because rendering fails, and then sometimes not




i cant render model with 4mil polygons lol. i must render some parts separately and put them in photoshop together :poly118:

but thats ok the really annoying thing is i cant turn addaptive degradation on. u know like some time ago in max9,if u had over 5 mil tris in your viewport u just press the letter O and everything is fine. but its not working, i dunno why :(

http://up.ecchi-squad.net/uploads/1258095933.jpg


and the config menu is different tooo...

http://up.ecchi-squad.net/uploads/1258079170.jpg

[onionhead_o]

after reading this thread i don think i want to switch to max 2010

[MoP]

I feel like 2010 is even worse with the alt+middle thing, and seems to have issues switching gears between panning, zooming, and rotating around in the viewport.. may be its just me.

Gah, so it's not just me?
This has been killing me recently since I switched over to 2010 from Max 2008. Whenever I press Alt now to pan/rotate around the viewport then try to use scroll wheel to zoom, nothing happens!
And it's because exactly what you said, it seems to be sluggish on Alt press response, so it ends up toggling the menu bar at the top even after you've finished pressing the mouse button for navigation.

I never had this problem on earlier versions, and I'm using the exact same mouse and keyboard setup. They've definitely changed something either with the pan/rotate method or the Alt press detection, and it's definitely much worse than it used to me. It's driving me mad! :(

[pior]

A quick reminder : "Never switch to a new 3DSMax release before the first service pack is out." No matter what the IT guy says ...

[garriola83]

no way. i have no problems with 2010. to me its faster than the older versions. it can handle more polys in the scene than the older versions, came with polyboost plugins, etc. ive never heard of this alt-middle mouse problem. i use it ALL THE TIME and no problems. maybe...its you guys' thumb-and-mouse discipline?

maybe its you guys video cards? usually its a visual issue, slow frame rate, buggy visuals, etc, you need a new graphics card.

ionno, like i said, i love 2010 and im the only one i guess. quad core, 8 GB ram, nvidia 9800gtx, and im using windows 7 ultimate

[MoP]

ive never heard of this alt-middle mouse problem. i use it ALL THE TIME and no problems. maybe...its you guys' thumb-and-mouse discipline?

Nope, I'm using exactly the same computer, mouse and keyboard that I was using on Max 8 and Max 2008, and I never had any issues with the ALT + viewport navigation on those apps. I don't have any problems with Max 2008 on my work machine either, and it's got a completely different hardware configuration. Similarly Max 8 on my laptop exhibits no issues with navigation, it's all working perfectly smoothly.

The fact that more than one person has noticed this issue only with the 2010 release makes me think they've messed something up somehow (I'd be inclined to think it's related to the new ribbon-style menu stuff, which is painfully slow to build when you click on it... the old-style File menu used to draw immediately, this new one takes a good few milliseconds before it responds).

I've got a 6gb, i7, GTX275 machine at home that this issue showed up on, it doesn't seem likely that the speed of the machine is an issue (although I guess it's possible that it's some sort of driver issue).

[Ark]

Im not a max user, but id suggest rolling back your graphics card drivers a few months to see if it helps. Sounds like a similar issue i had with xsi and the latest ati drivers had memory leaks that were causing bad performance and eventual crashes.

[garriola83]

well as for the alt-middle button issue, i did test it out and it does SOMETIMES not work it does for the most part. i let go of the middle button first or the alt key first and still zooms with the wheel scroll. BUT i remember that i use ctrl+alt+middle button+drag to zoom anyways just to keep it consistent with the middle button to navigate.

are you perchance using a mouse with more than 3 buttons? like a gaming mouse? at work we only have these cheapo mouses and so to get used to it i use one at home. like someone said it might be a driver issue as well. yeah it cant be the hardware, i cant figure it out since you have a beefier build than me.

since i got win7 everyhting kinda quickly fades for me anyways so im used to a couple of milliseconds of delay but nothing that i head from the OP.

ive been using max for a long time and the only build that i had a beef with was max7. other than that i welcomed it with open arms. i tried maya when it was still alias and man....talk about bugs. but any program is not without a few bugs here an there.

[Ruramuq]

The ALT interfering with the menu is an old issue, that seems to happen from time to time indeed. but probably less frecuent in max 2010. who knows what causes that. I remember max3 allowed to detach and hide the menu, but then later, not even hiding the menu would fix that

but there are other bugs in max navigation like:
without releasing the mouse:
MMB_PAN ›› ALT ›› RMB click ›› then release all
and then
MMB_PAN ›› ALT ›› rotate view—› BUG
(the navigation jumps when ALT is pressed)

This bug always happens when MMB and ALT are pressed both when RMB is released to cancel the navigation

[Neox]

digging this out :/

i just had to switch to 2010 because beein onsite in a clients office, however, any way to fix that alt issue by now? i'm getting crazy with that stuff going on.

Also i have heavy UI slowdowns when working with ePoly, be it modifier or an editable poly object, when i switch any subtool to another it takes quite some time and the right menu is flickering like hell in that time. With eMesh its way faster, it seems like it has to load the submenus and as eMesh has only a few compared to ePoly it takes less time to load them up. Also opening the customize userinterface panel feels like it takes ages to pop up, deleting anything in the quad options is making the right side panel update all the time, which is again 1-2 seconds each time....

It definitely has nothing to do with the ribbon, i disabled it, but the problem still is there, it always takes 1-2 seconds to switch, while in max2009 on my a bit older mashine at home (only thing thats better at my home office is that i have 8gig of ram and this machine has "only" 4) the switch happens on an instant and doesn't take a second or more to happen.
It really slows me down as i'm switching the subojects quite often in my workflow.

Another thing is a delay once using MMB to pan around - edit ok its my mesh 70k polies once i hide it pan is smooth

[renderhjs]

try this medicine
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=63739

[Minos]

digging this out :/

i just had to switch to 2010 because beein onsite in a clients office, however, any way to fix that alt issue by now? i'm getting crazy with that stuff going on.

Also i have heavy UI slowdowns when working with ePoly, be it modifier or an editable poly object, when i switch any subtool to another it takes quite some time and the right menu is flickering like hell in that time. With eMesh its way faster, it seems like it has to load the submenus and as eMesh has only a few compared to ePoly it takes less time to load them up. Also opening the customize userinterface panel feels like it takes ages to pop up, deleting anything in the quad options is making the right side panel update all the time, which is again 1-2 seconds each time....

It definitely has nothing to do with the ribbon, i disabled it, but the problem still is there, it always takes 1-2 seconds to switch, while in max2009 on my a bit older mashine at home (only thing thats better at my home office is that i have 8gig of ram and this machine has "only" 4) the switch happens on an instant and doesn't take a second or more to happen.
It really slows me down as i'm switching the subojects quite often in my workflow.

Another thing is a delay once using MMB to pan around - edit ok its my mesh 70k polies once i hide it pan is smooth

I'm having the same issue. Switching back to 2009... :(

[CodeFather]

digging this out :/

i just had to switch to 2010 because beein onsite in a clients office, however, any way to fix that alt issue by now? i'm getting crazy with that stuff going on.

Also i have heavy UI slowdowns when working with ePoly, be it modifier or an editable poly object, when i switch any subtool to another it takes quite some time and the right menu is flickering like hell in that time. With eMesh its way faster, it seems like it has to load the submenus and as eMesh has only a few compared to ePoly it takes less time to load them up. Also opening the customize userinterface panel feels like it takes ages to pop up, deleting anything in the quad options is making the right side panel update all the time, which is again 1-2 seconds each time....

It definitely has nothing to do with the ribbon, i disabled it, but the problem still is there, it always takes 1-2 seconds to switch, while in max2009 on my a bit older mashine at home (only thing thats better at my home office is that i have 8gig of ram and this machine has "only" 4) the switch happens on an instant and doesn't take a second or more to happen.
It really slows me down as i'm switching the subojects quite often in my workflow.

Another thing is a delay once using MMB to pan around - edit ok its my mesh 70k polies once i hide it pan is smooth


It is definitely the ribbon ! When turned off, however I get the same old (fast) performance of the previous releases of max. I toggle on and off the ribbon(using the vertical one) with the spacebar, whenever I need to use it, but I prefer to not .Instead, I put the tools I use a lot in a nice custom quad menu, or bind them to hotkeys.

[CJE]

So has anyone figured out some solution to improving performance in Max 2010? I'm pretty much on the verge of heading back to 2009, because the performance was better tenfold.

Are there really any features in Max 2010 for the majority of people that you cannot get in 2009? Polyboost covers the Graphite tools.

All I can think of is the improved viewport rendering like realtime AO and stuff.

Or are there some tweaks you can do to Max 2010 to improve the performance.

I find it very hard to work with in a reliable manner. I get lots of system hangs, freezes, and generally piss-poor performance using Max 2010.

My System:

Max 2010 x64 SP1
Windows 7 x64
4GB DDR2800
e-VGA 8800 GT Ultra 512mb
Intel Q6600 Quad Core 2.4ghz

[rasmus]

Just made the switch, same story here with those damn annoying navigation twitches... Glad to hear it's not just me! Anyone got a clue how to fix it yet?

[elte]

Just made the switch, same story here with those damn annoying navigation twitches... Glad to hear it's not just me! Anyone got a clue how to fix it yet?

service pack?

[Mark Dygert]

Just made the switch, same story here with those damn annoying navigation twitches... Glad to hear it's not just me! Anyone got a clue how to fix it yet?
Here's a rundown of things that have worked for me and other people, to some degree or another.
- Switch to 64bit, have more than 4gb of ram
- PhotoshopCS+ is a bit of a pig if you don't need it running (or other apps like itunes or streaming media), don't.
- Watch out for firefox it has a memory leak, you should restart it at least every hour.
- Update video drivers
- Update Max
- Disable the ribbon for testing, try the different modes.
- Select your mesh(es) right click and go Object Properties, turn off "Backface culling" if its on.
- If you can work in separate meshes instead of one giant mesh it will adaptively degrade the unselected objects to wireframe > Bounding box while it tries to preserve the viewport speed on the selected object.
- When launching max just like photoshop, don't steal focus let it finish loading before moving on or launching other apps.
- It helps my system if max is the first thing I start up after a system reboot.
- Make sure your HD has more than 2gb of free space I suggest 10gb.

Go Customize > Preferances > Viewports tab > Configure driver
- Try it with "Use cached D3DxMeshes" on and off if you don't see a difference turn it on. Same goes for "Use Incremental Scene Updates"
- Un-check "Enable Antialaiased Lines in Wireframe Views"
- Unless texture work is mission critical, un-check "Match Bitmap Size as Closely as Possible" and turn these down. Same goes for using even simple dx shaders in the viewport.
- Reset your material editor, this is a work bench not a storage closet. Removing materials from the editor won't remove them from your scene unless they aren't bound to a mesh. If you want to work on a material use the eye dropper or "get material from scene browser".
- If all of that turns up nothing try switching the display driver to openGL or Software and see if the performance is any better.
- If you have two monitors try running max on #1. If it is already move it to #2, close it and relaunch and see if that works. I remember reading that it runs best on the main monitor but some people mix the cables and use driver software to swap them, I read this can slow things down.

[Neox]

- Select your mesh(es) right click and go Object Properties, turn off "Backface culling" if its on.

hehehehe someone else here stated that it is totally for free and can not have any impact on performance. just had to quote that, as my experience is the same, backfaceculling makes things slower especially if its turned on, in many objects.

[Mark Dygert]

Yea it can seem free on certain meshes, just like simple dx shaders can appear to have no impact when only applied to a cube.

But isn't, it takes extra calculations to figure out what can and can't been seen. "But its removing polys from view, less is better right?" Figuring that out costs more especially when you start zipping around and rotating.

One other thing I forgot.
If you don't use sounds in your max files, set the Sound Plug-In back to Default. Customize > Preferances > Animation tab > Sound Plug-In > Assign. This keeps ProSound from initializing and eating up a few more resources, I'm not sure if Per's 3DClean gets this one too as its not a standard plug-in and was fully integrated in 2010.

[rasmus]

Vig: Thanks - I pretty much do all those things by default, but this isn't a performance problem, I'm pretty sure of that. It's related to the Alt button, which sometimes get stuck, or causes spasms in viewport rotation. Google gave me this (http://community.softimage.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/autodesk-3ds-max--3ds-max-design-2010/viewport-mousewheel-40+-alt41-issue-in-2010/page-last/) post, and I must say if there is some way of stopping alt from entering the file menu completely that sounds like a good idea - question is how.

[Neox]

Max2010 is the first time i really have the feeling something is wrong, i never got stuck when orbiting through the scene, in 2010 it happens all the time, but the fact that alt toggles to the menu and MMB doesn't untoggle it, is present in 2009, 2008 and 9 and can't go any further back to test it but i think its there since the start, the question is, what does it different now?

[Mark Dygert]

That... is freaky... Yea 2010 *shrug* hopefully they'll fix it in 2011. Not holding my breath.

I'm glad I don't run into that issue. I prefer to use 2009 + polyboost but they switched over at work.


EDIT: Now that you mention it I've run into similar issues where it will just stop rotating an object in the middle of dragging, even though the spinner keeps going the object just stops. It didn't happen at all in 2009 that I remember.

[CJE]

I've just discovered that the plugin "patch" from 3ds clean for 2009 works fine in 2010. Using this to disable useless plugins more than 1/2'd the startup time of Max 2010.

[Delerium]

I have the same problem with 2010 at work with the viewport navigation, the viewport randomly lags and even freeze up, resulting in me having to deselect everything. I never experienced this with any other version of 3dsmax. HIGHLY annoying!

[McGreed]

I was actually wondering what to do when you have a newer version of Photoshop and 3DS Max and want to revert back to a older version, because you now have a bunch of documents and scenes made in new version, and I'm guessing you can't load them up in the old versions.

So what do we do about that, 3DS Max I can save my objects as OBJ, and then remake the materials, but what about PSDs?

[renderhjs]

by default Photoshop saves as a backwards compatible and slightly larger PSD file so at least adobe did their homework. You can change it in the setting of PS or the first time you save a PSD file.
The reason some studios are some versions behind the most recent release of max is because of the non existing backwards compatibility. It is even worse if other apps try to support max or 3ds files because usually they turn out broken after a few newer releases of max.

[McGreed]

renderhjs, ahh nice to know about Adobe, I just assumed that I would have problems with it, knowing the problem with 3ds max. It really should be a way to 'lowfunction' save a 3DS Max file to earlier versions, should be able to check for things in the file that isn't in the old version and just warn one about it and still save it (and maybe delete the modifiers that doesn't exist in old version). I know that XSI has some sort of backwards exporter, would be nice with something like that for 3ds max.

[monster]

rasmus, Delerium,

Here's a couple of thing that were messing me up at one point. If you have a mouse that has tilt wheel "technology", the viewport can lag because the mouse is hardwired to wait a second to make sure the user didn't want to tilt the wheel instead of click it. This problem is more common in Microsoft brand mice with tilt wheel.

Also, Microsoft Intellipoint mouse drivers can cause the screen 3D Max to hiccup and occasionally corrupt the view. This is because the drivers run a process that takes period screenshots off all the active windows.

Finally, Max 2010 just always ran slow for me. I could tell 2011 was more solid from the moment I opened it.

[fonfa]

rasmus, Delerium,

Here's a couple of thing that were messing me up at one point. If you have a mouse that has tilt wheel "technology", the viewport can lag because the mouse is hardwired to wait a second to make sure the user didn't want to tilt the wheel instead of click it. This problem is more common in Microsoft brand mice with tilt wheel.

Also, Microsoft Intellipoint mouse drivers can cause the screen 3D Max to hiccup and occasionally corrupt the view. This is because the drivers run a process that takes period screenshots off all the active windows.

Finally, Max 2010 just always ran slow for me. I could tell 2011 was more solid from the moment I opened it.

is there a way to fix this without having to buy another mouse? it´s driving me insane :(

[monster]

Sorry bud. It's a hardware issue, not a driver/software issue. It took me forever to find a comfortable ambidextrous wireless mouse without tilt wheel.

As for the Intellimouse driver, just don't install them. My intellimouse at work seems to work fine without them.