material editor SLOW - i think its a CORONA issue?

[shortcirkuit]

Hi devs,

This material editor is driving me crazy (its been years) - ive tried restarting/merging scenes/scene cleanup scripts etc.  So i decided to do a quick video on switching between 2 corona materials and 2 standard Physical materials (from max).  Look how much quicker it is to swap between physcal materials vs corona materials.  It seems to be a corona issue?  or am i mistaken?

[maru]

I have personally never ever experienced a slowdown close to this. I am attaching a recording from a Ryzen 3900X, 3ds Max 2025, Corona 12 HF1.
Please provide basic details such as your CPU model, Windows version, 3ds Max version, Corona version.
Also, is this happening in any scene, or only in some specific one(s)? For example, if you take an empty scene and open the material editor, is it the same? Or does it only happen when a heavy scene is loaded?
Is this happening right after you start 3ds Max, or you need to work with the scene for some time and only then it starts happening?

[romullus]

What is your viewport texture display settings? Try to set baked procedural maps resolution to really low value and see if that improves your experience.

[muoto]

same feeling here (corona12 hf1, max2024 or max2025, nvidia rtx4090)... material UI is sooooo slow, even on a complete new empty scene

baked the 128px didn't change anything

[shortcirkuit]

Specs are as follows:
Threadripper 5995WX
256 GB RAM
4090 GFX card.
Win 11.

Corona Daily 30 July

My baked procedural map was 2048.  Ill try 128.

As for when it happens, mostly after opening an existing interior scene and usually after some time.  MOst new scenes appear to work ok and then it gets bogged down!  Still never as fast has Maxs physical material editor

I have personally never ever experienced a slowdown close to this. I am attaching a recording from a Ryzen 3900X, 3ds Max 2025, Corona 12 HF1.
Please provide basic details such as your CPU model, Windows version, 3ds Max version, Corona version.
Also, is this happening in any scene, or only in some specific one(s)? For example, if you take an empty scene and open the material editor, is it the same? Or does it only happen when a heavy scene is loaded?
Is this happening right after you start 3ds Max, or you need to work with the scene for some time and only then it starts happening?

[pokoy]

This is due to the fact that Autodesk ported (almost) all of their UI to Qt, while Corona still uses the win32 UI framework, so any materials from Max will display its UI faster.

Vray rewrote their UI to Qt, see the blog post here:
https://www.chaos.com/blog/the-qt-fication-of-v-ray?srsltid=AfmBOooGKkMEzBLEyVe5Ma_jz6IcgspWyJhZO02MDPrmk3QyDbe6-AN9

The upside of a UI port to Qt is a much snappier UI. The downside is that it takes effort and time and can get complicated.
Corona has avoided porting the UI to Qt for some reason (only VFB2 uses Qt right now as far as I know), probably due to the fact that supporting old max versions would force them to take care of two UI frameworks for each release and UI component. Still, a switch to Qt is long overdue.
Autodesk started porting to Qt in 2016 if I'm not mistaken and finished porting most UI elements in 2019/2020 (with some exceptions though that still make Max slow at redrawing the UI).

tl;dr - unless Corona doesn't port their UI to Qt you will not see any improvement.

[Aram Avetisyan]

This is due to the fact that Autodesk ported (almost) all of their UI to Qt, while Corona still uses the win32 UI framework, so any materials from Max will display its UI faster.

Vray rewrote their UI to Qt, see the blog post here:
https://www.chaos.com/blog/the-qt-fication-of-v-ray?srsltid=AfmBOooGKkMEzBLEyVe5Ma_jz6IcgspWyJhZO02MDPrmk3QyDbe6-AN9

The upside of a UI port to Qt is a much snappier UI. The downside is that it takes effort and time and can get complicated.
Corona has avoided porting the UI to Qt for some reason (only VFB2 uses Qt right now as far as I know), probably due to the fact that supporting old max versions would force them to take care of two UI frameworks for each release and UI component. Still, a switch to Qt is long overdue.
Autodesk started porting to Qt in 2016 if I'm not mistaken and finished porting most UI elements in 2019/2020 (with some exceptions though that still make Max slow at redrawing the UI).

tl;dr - unless Corona doesn't port their UI to Qt you will not see any improvement.

This is the all info you need in regard to this.

I will just add that when switching from same type to same type (e.g. from CoronaPhysicalMtl to another CoronaPhysicalMtl, or from CoronaColor to another CoronaColor), the change should be instant or much faster than switching to another type (at least for SME, I have declined to use Compact material editor straight from from Max 2011).
I have also noticed that the longer 3ds Max is open between sessions/scenes, the slower it can get. To get the best performance, you need to restart 3ds Max (it will still not be as fast as Physical or VRayMtl).

[shortcirkuit]

hardly a solution though - to restart!  Such a waste of time.  Some of my scenes take 10 mins to open!  WOuldnt it be best to get to the root cause of the issue?
If what @pokoy has written to be true, then surely we need to get up to speed (QT).  Today for instance, i think i wasted up to an hour or so opening scenes so it works properly for little while.  It just all feels so 1995 pentium clunky at times and i have a pretty beefy machine.

This is due to the fact that Autodesk ported (almost) all of their UI to Qt, while Corona still uses the win32 UI framework, so any materials from Max will display its UI faster.

Vray rewrote their UI to Qt, see the blog post here:
https://www.chaos.com/blog/the-qt-fication-of-v-ray?srsltid=AfmBOooGKkMEzBLEyVe5Ma_jz6IcgspWyJhZO02MDPrmk3QyDbe6-AN9

The upside of a UI port to Qt is a much snappier UI. The downside is that it takes effort and time and can get complicated.
Corona has avoided porting the UI to Qt for some reason (only VFB2 uses Qt right now as far as I know), probably due to the fact that supporting old max versions would force them to take care of two UI frameworks for each release and UI component. Still, a switch to Qt is long overdue.
Autodesk started porting to Qt in 2016 if I'm not mistaken and finished porting most UI elements in 2019/2020 (with some exceptions though that still make Max slow at redrawing the UI).

tl;dr - unless Corona doesn't port their UI to Qt you will not see any improvement.

This is the all info you need in regard to this.

I will just add that when switching from same type to same type (e.g. from CoronaPhysicalMtl to another CoronaPhysicalMtl, or from CoronaColor to another CoronaColor), the change should be instant or much faster than switching to another type (at least for SME, I have declined to use Compact material editor straight from from Max 2011).
I have also noticed that the longer 3ds Max is open between sessions/scenes, the slower it can get. To get the best performance, you need to restart 3ds Max (it will still not be as fast as Physical or VRayMtl).

[shortcirkuit]

also - its not instant from corona phy material to coroan phy material as you can clearly see from my initial video i posted.

This is due to the fact that Autodesk ported (almost) all of their UI to Qt, while Corona still uses the win32 UI framework, so any materials from Max will display its UI faster.

Vray rewrote their UI to Qt, see the blog post here:
https://www.chaos.com/blog/the-qt-fication-of-v-ray?srsltid=AfmBOooGKkMEzBLEyVe5Ma_jz6IcgspWyJhZO02MDPrmk3QyDbe6-AN9

The upside of a UI port to Qt is a much snappier UI. The downside is that it takes effort and time and can get complicated.
Corona has avoided porting the UI to Qt for some reason (only VFB2 uses Qt right now as far as I know), probably due to the fact that supporting old max versions would force them to take care of two UI frameworks for each release and UI component. Still, a switch to Qt is long overdue.
Autodesk started porting to Qt in 2016 if I'm not mistaken and finished porting most UI elements in 2019/2020 (with some exceptions though that still make Max slow at redrawing the UI).

tl;dr - unless Corona doesn't port their UI to Qt you will not see any improvement.

This is the all info you need in regard to this.

I will just add that when switching from same type to same type (e.g. from CoronaPhysicalMtl to another CoronaPhysicalMtl, or from CoronaColor to another CoronaColor), the change should be instant or much faster than switching to another type (at least for SME, I have declined to use Compact material editor straight from from Max 2011).
I have also noticed that the longer 3ds Max is open between sessions/scenes, the slower it can get. To get the best performance, you need to restart 3ds Max (it will still not be as fast as Physical or VRayMtl).

[dj_buckley]

Yup, "Get with the times" springs to mind.

[James Vella]

Some of my scenes take 10 mins to open! 

Not related to the UI topic however if your scenes take 10 minutes to open, I would certainly start to optimize - proxy out large mesh(s), xref items that can be delayed or turned off until render time etc.

[pokoy]

A UI port to Qt will help with displaying the UI faster, not necessarily scene open times.

As James says, a few things to keep in mind when scenes take very long to open:
- Max rebuilds caches on scene loading for materials/maps. It is supposed to re-use caches that were built/used in the past but clearly this system is not reliable. Autodesk uses a directX-related HLSL parser from Microsoft for the HQ mode in the viewport and it's basically a black box to them. Max' Nitrous viewport engine is really outdated by now as it was designed some 15+ years ago.
Scene sizes, material counts, texture sizes and counts etc have grown over the years, and Max development never caught up.
- Nitrous is really fast for pure geometry drawing but will not perform well in HQ viewport mode for the reasons above. Make sure you use Standard viewport mode for ALL viewports and disable map display when saving - this will be a much faster mode and will not trigger a cache re-building when re-opening the scene.
- As Romullus suggested, switching texture sizes to smaller values will also help if texture caches are being built.

In short, if you're using HQ viewport mode, try to use Standard mode everywhere, save and re-open. If it's faster, HQ is the bottleneck.

I have no idea how it is in 2024 (I'm still on max 2021) but on my production scenes, switching to HQ mode even with maps disabled will hang Max, some objects will just disappear (while still being selectable) - a sign of the caching system failing.
I can't even open Slate or the Slate material browser, it'll build previews for all maps/mats and will take 25+ minutes on any of the bigger scenes I have. Not sure if Slate 2.0 improved anything but my guess is... no. I'm still using the old Mtl browser from Compact Ma- Ed for this reason.

Autodesk doesn't test too much, at least not with production scenes typical for what we do, and they don't check for 3rd party compatibility, that's up to the 3rd party to provide.
It's possible some problems arise from the combo of Max (with all its subcomponents developed at different times by different teams who are long gone) plus Corona but that would be on the Corona team to investigate. Which can be really hard since sometimes there's no documentation on important changes from the Max development team, and if you want to support multiple Max versions you need to track each one on its own.

And then check, of course, for all the other possible issues - slow network connection, plugins that rebuild their geometry (Scatter, Forest etc), loads of HDRs in the material editor or submaps, texture count and sizes.

[shortcirkuit]

Thanks for the detailed info - i think youre right baout how autodesk havent caught up to the higher demanding scenes.  I feel as though things have gotten slower (ie load times) - more interested to see if the Corona devs can do anything about it though regarding the material editor.

A UI port to Qt will help with displaying the UI faster, not necessarily scene open times.

As James says, a few things to keep in mind when scenes take very long to open:
- Max rebuilds caches on scene loading for materials/maps. It is supposed to re-use caches that were built/used in the past but clearly this system is not reliable. Autodesk uses a directX-related HLSL parser from Microsoft for the HQ mode in the viewport and it's basically a black box to them. Max' Nitrous viewport engine is really outdated by now as it was designed some 15+ years ago.
Scene sizes, material counts, texture sizes and counts etc have grown over the years, and Max development never caught up.
- Nitrous is really fast for pure geometry drawing but will not perform well in HQ viewport mode for the reasons above. Make sure you use Standard viewport mode for ALL viewports and disable map display when saving - this will be a much faster mode and will not trigger a cache re-building when re-opening the scene.
- As Romullus suggested, switching texture sizes to smaller values will also help if texture caches are being built.

In short, if you're using HQ viewport mode, try to use Standard mode everywhere, save and re-open. If it's faster, HQ is the bottleneck.

I have no idea how it is in 2024 (I'm still on max 2021) but on my production scenes, switching to HQ mode even with maps disabled will hang Max, some objects will just disappear (while still being selectable) - a sign of the caching system failing.
I can't even open Slate or the Slate material browser, it'll build previews for all maps/mats and will take 25+ minutes on any of the bigger scenes I have. Not sure if Slate 2.0 improved anything but my guess is... no. I'm still using the old Mtl browser from Compact Ma- Ed for this reason.

Autodesk doesn't test too much, at least not with production scenes typical for what we do, and they don't check for 3rd party compatibility, that's up to the 3rd party to provide.
It's possible some problems arise from the combo of Max (with all its subcomponents developed at different times by different teams who are long gone) plus Corona but that would be on the Corona team to investigate. Which can be really hard since sometimes there's no documentation on important changes from the Max development team, and if you want to support multiple Max versions you need to track each one on its own.

And then check, of course, for all the other possible issues - slow network connection, plugins that rebuild their geometry (Scatter, Forest etc), loads of HDRs in the material editor or submaps, texture count and sizes.

[Juraj]

I will oppose all the advice in this thread, because I can already tell you, it will not help. Any big-PC (Threadripper, Xeon, etc..) in high-core version, is pain like this in material editor unless as you correctly shown, you use native Physical Material.
Corona, will have super slow material editor in any remotely sized scene. And it's not snappy even in completely empty scene, unlike native.

This has absolutely nothing to do with proxies. This is technical issue on Corona's side that they just don't care about. I guess majority of users aren't on 64-core machines.

BTW, my settings:
Standard viewport (so no HQ)
Every big mesh is proxy. (most of long opening is due to bugs like "corona assets" etc.. and similar stuff, having proxies makes scenes smaller, but it hardly makes difference in opening after scenes start to feature bloat).
Viewport texture settings 1024px for all 3 types(laughably blurry, so despite having 16GB of Vram, I only use like 2GB per scene because otherwise everything will be even slower).
Basic material editor for editing materials. I only use Slate to create them, but because it's so slow, all the little changes (changing IOR 10perc. here or there, etc..) I do in basic.
All textures mapped locally, on local disc with exact paths.
No plugins whatsoever. No ForestPack, no nothing.
It doesn't matter which Max version. It's the same as long as I can remember. Really makes zero difference.

It's not anything else, it's Corona. Yes you are correct.

This does in no way help with slow material editor, and esp. slow material editor during IR. That's like unusable, I waste like 90perc. of my time and 99perc. of my mental health waiting on shit to unfreeze.
It's what it is :- (.

If it's really all because of QT, then that should have been tried ages ago.

One thing I never tested, if it's connected to materials being applied to scene ( and/or additionally, having "shown in viewport"). So I will test:
- disable show in viewport in big heavy scene
- dis-apply all materials (I don't know, apply them to single box and hide it) just keep big material editor full of materials.

[hurrycat]

I have to add to this, in hopes of strengthening our point here, that the Material Editor is the single biggest burden to our everyday productivity. We constantly have to deal with scenes that are populated with thousands of proxies and geometries, Scatters, Forest Packs and everything remains relatively snappy on a 3970x with 128gb ram except for the material editor, using nothing but Corona Materials.

We are using the SME exclusively and I have to say that the heaviest SME slowdowns we are experiencing are during IR, even after limiting the number of cores used for rendering.

Trying to replicate this behaviour in a fresh new Max Instance is unrealistic and very far from real world usage scenarios. Also, restarting Max can be a pain when opening scenes and starting IR can easily take 15 mins and we often avoid it unless Max crashes lol.

Already voted for it in the Ideas Portal, porting to Qt is long overdue and will save us not only time but frustation as well.

[muoto]

+1 à thousand times

[lupaz]

Hi devs,

This material editor is driving me crazy (its been years) - ive tried restarting/merging scenes/scene cleanup scripts etc.  So i decided to do a quick video on switching between 2 corona materials and 2 standard Physical materials (from max).  Look how much quicker it is to swap between physcal materials vs corona materials.  It seems to be a corona issue?  or am i mistaken?

I don't have this problem, nor scenes taking 15 minutes to open. That's insane.
Sure, the SME could be faster, but nothing like you're showing happens to me. I don't use the simplified material editor at all.
I'm saying this not to rub it in, but to understand what is going on. Maybe it's just a bad combo of Max version, Corona Version and Windows version?

This is what I use:
Max 2023, Corona 11, Win 11.

Reading about issues like these makes me want to stay with what I have, which is a shame.

[shortcirkuit]

interesting - im on max 24 and it really has been happening for years for me, with over 6 or so machines and on various max/corona versions.  I
currently i have a 5995wx TR with 256GB ram and RTX 4090.  My other machines are also TR and intel and it does it on all.

Curious, what kind of scenes do you work on?

Hi devs,

This material editor is driving me crazy (its been years) - ive tried restarting/merging scenes/scene cleanup scripts etc.  So i decided to do a quick video on switching between 2 corona materials and 2 standard Physical materials (from max).  Look how much quicker it is to swap between physcal materials vs corona materials.  It seems to be a corona issue?  or am i mistaken?

I don't have this problem, nor scenes taking 15 minutes to open. That's insane.
Sure, the SME could be faster, but nothing like you're showing happens to me. I don't use the simplified material editor at all.
I'm saying this not to rub it in, but to understand what is going on. Maybe it's just a bad combo of Max version, Corona Version and Windows version?

This is what I use:
Max 2023, Corona 11, Win 11.

Reading about issues like these makes me want to stay with what I have, which is a shame.

[lupaz]

Curious, what kind of scenes do you work on?

Archviz, interior and exterior.

[alexyork]

I agree with a recent poster - working with materials is by far the slowest, most clunky and awkward part of working creatively with Corona in 3ds max, I think. It does very much sound like it comes down to lack of QT implementation. I personally use Compact 99% of the time, because I'm working with library materials, not creating things from scratch, and rarely need the benefit of nodes. Navigating CoronaPhysicMtls inside this is... painfully slow, and does tend to get worse the longer the max session is running. Hopefully the switch to QT can be made soon as a priority.

[Basshunter]

Same here. This really needs to be fixed.

[shortcirkuit]

@corona Devs.... i was told to write my issue here so it can be looked at BUT i cant help feel like its a room where people are yelling and no one is listening.  If you advise us to come to this area of the forum and put in our issues, it would be amazing if someone could ackowledge it from the dev team and let us know if its being considered or not?

[Marijan]

Working in the material editor, whether in compact or slate mode, has been painfully slow for years, especially when IR is running. If this issue is related to Corona and not 3ds Max itself, it should be a top priority to fix.

[pokoy]

Working in the material editor, whether in compact or slate mode, has been painfully slow for years, especially when IR is running. If this issue is related to Corona and not 3ds Max itself, it should be a top priority to fix.

There are things to consider to make sure only Corona win32 UI slows it down as I noted above:
- use Standard Mode in all viewports (avoid HQ)
- disable texture previews in all viewports (otherwise Nitrous will reflect a change to let's say a noise map in the material and it can get slow depending on viewport map/textures resolution settings, much slower with bigger preview sizes)
- avoid displaying any material that uses a distance map in the material editor (known to cause slowdowns, especially if an object used in a distance map is manipulated while the material editor displays that map/material)
- (no idea how plugins like RailClone or ForestPro etc affect the viewport but they might play a role, too)

If you eliminate all of the above it's likely Corona's win32 UI that causes the slowdown when displaying manipulating materials, and especially so while in IR.
A good test is to set a slot to a native Max Physical Material and compare it to a Corona material. The native one will be much faster.

As someone pointed out already, I also found that a new fresh max session will be faster and get slower over time. Maybe devs have an idea why this is.

Additional note - there was a new behavior introduced in Max 2023 or 2024 (not sure) that was supposed to skip the evaluation of hidden objects (and their materials, I suppose). However it was bugged and didn't work, this was undiscovered for another 1+ years and only fixed then. So scenes should generally feel snappier in newer Max versions where this is working.

I would love to see some support/dev interaction here. It's a bit silent lately in general and this topic never got the attention it deserved, especially since Qt in Max is now 5+ years old.

[TomG]

Qt rewrite of material editor won't happen in the next Corona release, but it is on the cards - the rewrite of the VFB to Qt was a starting point. As well as being something we'd be considering anyway, it's also highly voted for on the Ideas Portal https://chaos.aha.io/ideas/ideas/CMAX-I-23 which adds further weight to this. That said, while it is a "feature request" I personally see this as being more of a bug (the slowdown at any rate, not necessarily the Qt rewrite as that may or may not be the solution to the slowdown), and as such again a bug doesn't need to be "considered" as we always plan on fixing bugs.

Most likely things will stay quiet until the next version of Corona is out, as we already have our work cut out there and there's unlikely to be time even for some initial fact-finding, but we will let you know once we have more details on cause, possible ways we can solve it, and time frame for that to happen!

[pokoy]

...not necessarily the Qt rewrite as that may or may not be the solution to the slowdown)...

There's not much reason to doubt this. This has been discussed in other places (bound to NDA so not the right place to discuss here) close to Max development when Qt was introduced. Win32 UI was clearly identified as *the* bottleneck when it comes to UI. When Arnold was added, its materials and the render dialog were Qt-fied specifically to address the issue of a slow UI.
Apps that use Qt exclusively are fast & snappy in terms of UI (for example Blender), while Max with its Franken-UI where all types of different frameworks were used over the years tends to get slower and slower (command panel using Win32 being another much discussed example).

[TomG]

That will be our first port of call when investigating, the Qt rewrite :) It will definitely speed things up overall, whether it resolves some or all of these particular slowdowns (that not everyone is experiencing), the tests will find out!

[pokoy]

That will be our first port of call when investigating, the Qt rewrite :) It will definitely speed things up overall, whether it resolves some or all of these particular slowdowns (that not everyone is experiencing), the tests will find out!

There's the problem where Max is getting slower with rising number of objects and materials in a scene - scenes with only 30 objects and 15 materials without many maps will not see much of a slowdown. Also, some users are relatively new to Max or unexperienced in general - they might not be able to properly judge what they're seeing.
In this thread, you're getting lots of responses from experienced users (who probably worked with different plugins and renderers in the past) who are seeing this and have reported this for a broad range of Max and Corona versions, so maybe there's some weighting needed whenever users post their experience.

Then there might be hardware issues, or plugins or even user error etc. I understand that looking at a broader picture might make sense.

Still, no reason to doubt the effectivity of using Qt if Autodesk themselves went with it specifically because the UI got slower and it was the only remedy. And moving on from an outdated and limiting framework, of course.

[pokoy]

...the Ideas Portal https://chaos.aha.io/ideas/ideas/CMAX-I-23 ...

FYI - the link sends me to a log in page that doesn't seem to be hosted on chaos sites.

[Marijan]

Most likely things will stay quiet until the next version of Corona is out

Sorry to hear that Tom. I don't mean to downplay or dismiss other feature requests and updates, but in my opinion, having a smoother experience with the material editor and the ability to smoothly tweak materials while IR is active would be a significant improvement for everyday workflow and would enhance productivity for all Corona users.

Speaking of the new release, could we get a sneak peek of what's planned? There haven't been any updates on the Trello roadmap.
Thank you!

[TomG]

I think this one will work https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ideas/CMAX-I-23 , let me know. I think the previous link was one that only worked for admin folks (we're still learning out way around the Portal :) ). The only login required would be the Chaos ID (so long as you are already logged in at chaos.com, it shouldn't even ask you for a login on the Ideas Portal, in case you want to ensure you are only filling in your Chaos credentials on a Chaos site).

[TomG]

Sorry to hear that Tom. I don't mean to downplay or dismiss other feature requests and updates, but in my opinion, having a smoother experience with the material editor and the ability to smoothly tweak materials while IR is active would be a significant improvement for everyday workflow and would enhance productivity for all Corona users.

Speaking of the new release, could we get a sneak peek of what's planned? There haven't been any updates on the Trello roadmap.
Thank you!

I completely agree on the importance of this, slowdowns like this are not good for the experience. It will have to wait until the next version is out though as the next version is already well underway, with no way to fit this in (and do it properly), so the delay is not due to a rating of how important this is, just that the ball is already rolling down its path, plus a Qt rewrite is a big thing so even if we stopped something else (or several something elses!) there wouldn't be time to complete it for the next release.

Should be able to update the Trello next week or later this week :) Thanks!

[pokoy]

I think this one will work https://chaoscorona.ideas.aha.io/ideas/CMAX-I-23 , let me know. I think the previous link was one that only worked for admin folks (we're still learning out way around the Portal :) ). The only login required would be the Chaos ID (so long as you are already logged in at chaos.com, it shouldn't even ask you for a login on the Ideas Portal, in case you want to ensure you are only filling in your Chaos credentials on a Chaos site).

Yes, that one works - sent me straight to the Idea page (I was already logged in earlier today) - thanks!

[TomG]

YW and ty for letting me know! I didn't realize grabbing the link from an (admin) view of the list of ideas would give me some super-sekrit version, and that I had to copy the link from the regular portal. Good to learn these things lol!

[Juraj]

Update from my testing:

- Show Textures in Viewport ON/OFF = No difference (using standard ShadedViewport, no HQ)
- Materials applied to scene or existing only in material editor = No difference
- Type of material, amount of textures = Some influence?

I have very optimized Windows setup. No ControlFlowGuard, Ultra-performance mode, higher-process priority for 3dsMax, no network setup (all files local, full-path mapped. It's nothing to do with this.
I have zero plugins in 3dsMax. It's not that either.

It's Corona/Corona materials.

I can replicate ultra-slow material editor with single object and two materials in material editors. Since to me even fresh resetted scene just swapping two default Corona Material Editors are like 1-2 seconds to switch.
It's nothing to do with my Windows or PC, 3dsMax Physical material take 0.0001 second to switch. It's instant. It's just Corona material that is immensely slow.

And once I start IR, it's just catastrophe. I don't remember if it was always like this.... but I've been on big PCs (Xeons, Threadrippers) for so long that the issue might have worsened with that, or with just later Corona versions. I don't know, I have no frame of reference. But it's massively frustrating.

[pokoy]

Win32 UI definitely *is* the bottleneck, no doubt here as well. Other factors might have an effect but nothing comes with a toll that heavy.

[alexyork]

I remember when Autodesk announced their major "Small Annoying Things" 3dsmax campaign, where after years of angry commenting from customers they finally understood that we wanted all those small but workflow-slowing bugs, weirdnesses, or lack of vital tools to be fixed/implemented. They held various user group meetings with their department head(s) (I was at one in London) to actually get this feedback 1:1. It never quite hit the mark fully but it was a great period and had a very noticeably positive impact on 3dsmax, and I think the attitude has carried forward there ever since. Naturally, the issue nowadays over there is a massive lack of innovation within 3dsmax, so it could certainly be fairly argued it's gone too far the other way!

Anyway, it's something to think about. I've often wondered if Corona development would be better handled by making existing-feature improvements, bug fixes just like this happen to point version updates/hotfixes e.g. 12.1, 12.2 etc. and saving the new feature updates for major versions (and not necessarily every major version). In that way perhaps it would be possible to delay major new features being worked on and pivot development to addressing sometimes very serious bugs within the current major version in a hotfix - as many as needed - maybe 2, 3 or 4 x. In recent times there have been instances where potentially show-stopping bugs have had to be left for some future major version update because it's too late to shoehorn it in, causing frustration in the userbase (reasonably so...). As a studio, we have completely skipped 2 or 3 major versions of Corona (maybe 8, definitely 12) because of this situation. And if that reminds anyone of how many of us work with 3dsmax then I'm not surprised! Since 3ds max 2008 or so we have ignored every other version, because it's pretty well-known that the odd-versions are usually where the bulk of new features are introduced, and the even version is where they're bug-fixed and optimised... in a production environment that's critical stuff.... We don't and can't work with flakey software. C12 has proven a bit of a nightmare judging by many accounts on this forum, so we've skipped it. Not something we want to have to do, ever.

[shortcirkuit]

this is my experience 1000000%.  its 2024 and i feel like im using a pentium machine from 2002.

Update from my testing:

- Show Textures in Viewport ON/OFF = No difference (using standard ShadedViewport, no HQ)
- Materials applied to scene or existing only in material editor = No difference
- Type of material, amount of textures = Some influence?

I have very optimized Windows setup. No ControlFlowGuard, Ultra-performance mode, higher-process priority for 3dsMax, no network setup (all files local, full-path mapped. It's nothing to do with this.
I have zero plugins in 3dsMax. It's not that either.

It's Corona/Corona materials.

I can replicate ultra-slow material editor with single object and two materials in material editors. Since to me even fresh resetted scene just swapping two default Corona Material Editors are like 1-2 seconds to switch.
It's nothing to do with my Windows or PC, 3dsMax Physical material take 0.0001 second to switch. It's instant. It's just Corona material that is immensely slow.

And once I start IR, it's just catastrophe. I don't remember if it was always like this.... but I've been on big PCs (Xeons, Threadrippers) for so long that the issue might have worsened with that, or with just later Corona versions. I don't know, I have no frame of reference. But it's massively frustrating.

[Ink Visual]

As a studio we naturally delay updating to latest release of any software for couple of months until all the bugs are fixed (and the right moment in production timeline arises).
In the past we were always pretty confident with Corona updates though, getting any new release very quickly on board. This is not the case anymore, just like Alex said, we skip more an more updates reading about issues/experiencing them ourselves.
As far as I remember we had to skip C10 and we are definitely skipping C12 now. I guess it's hard to keep the balance between innovative features vs stability/optimization but atm we definitely feel like Corona would benefit more from the latter.

I remember when Autodesk announced their major "Small Annoying Things" 3dsmax campaign, where after years of angry commenting from customers they finally understood that we wanted all those small but workflow-slowing bugs, weirdnesses, or lack of vital tools to be fixed/implemented. They held various user group meetings with their department head(s) (I was at one in London) to actually get this feedback 1:1. It never quite hit the mark fully but it was a great period and had a very noticeably positive impact on 3dsmax, and I think the attitude has carried forward there ever since. Naturally, the issue nowadays over there is a massive lack of innovation within 3dsmax, so it could certainly be fairly argued it's gone too far the other way!

Anyway, it's something to think about. I've often wondered if Corona development would be better handled by making existing-feature improvements, bug fixes just like this happen to point version updates/hotfixes e.g. 12.1, 12.2 etc. and saving the new feature updates for major versions (and not necessarily every major version). In that way perhaps it would be possible to delay major new features being worked on and pivot development to addressing sometimes very serious bugs within the current major version in a hotfix - as many as needed - maybe 2, 3 or 4 x. In recent times there have been instances where potentially show-stopping bugs have had to be left for some future major version update because it's too late to shoehorn it in, causing frustration in the userbase (reasonably so...). As a studio, we have completely skipped 2 or 3 major versions of Corona (maybe 8, definitely 12) because of this situation. And if that reminds anyone of how many of us work with 3dsmax then I'm not surprised! Since 3ds max 2008 or so we have ignored every other version, because it's pretty well-known that the odd-versions are usually where the bulk of new features are introduced, and the even version is where they're bug-fixed and optimised... in a production environment that's critical stuff.... We don't and can't work with flakey software. C12 has proven a bit of a nightmare judging by many accounts on this forum, so we've skipped it. Not something we want to have to do, ever.

[arqrenderz]

We are on the fence too about upgrading to Corona 12, too much unresolved problems on the forum vs no useful features for us and our workflow.

[shortcirkuit]

probably not a popular opinion on what im about to say - but the latest VFB, for me atleast, is slower.  I used to be able to copy and paste the render (while rendering) and paste it into photoshop.  It was never so laggy.  Now, its extremely laggy while rendering.  I find the tone mapping setings are also.

[davemahi]

We have also been skipping releases, and will be for this one as well. Bizarre what is going on with the updates in my opinion.

[lupaz]

We skipped version 12 as well. First time we skip a version.

[shortcirkuit]

probably worth a try - i havent tried yet but will later this evening.
https://cganimator.com/csgpuhittest/

Here is an extract from the page:

"So, what the heck is GPU hit test?

When navigating the 3ds Max viewport, 3ds Max often needs to determine what is underneath the cursor.

For example, in 3ds Max, when you hover over an object, it shows the object’s name under the cursor. When zooming or panning, 3ds Max must calculate the cursor’s 3D position. Similarly, when selecting an object or sub-object, 3ds Max needs to determine what is underneath the cursor.

This process is called hit testing. 3dsMax cast a ray from the cussor point and detect that the ray hits. So, as you can expect, the more object and polygon you have, the more time

Around 3ds Max 2014, when the development team was focused on improving hit testing performance, they created a GPU-based version of hit testing. However, this approach had some issues, and since 3ds Max still had a software driver mode that relied on CPU hit testing, the team decided to improve the CPU version instead. Eventually, they achieved similar performance with the CPU, and the GPU version was gradually forgotten.

However, the code for the GPU version was still present, and it could be enabled using Maxscript.
Now, in 3ds Max 2025.2, there is a bug in CPU hit testing, and enabling the GPU version can be used as a workaround. Interestingly, after a decade of GPU advancements, it also appears to deliver better results."

[pokoy]

No, this doesn't interfere with the material UI in any way. The 'trick' (which is a workaround for a bug really, and only for a few Max versions where this was added) only applies when you hover the mouse pointer in a viewport and get close to geometry, it tries to determine where to put the orbit center, not related to UI performance for the material editor.

[rubensabou]

I have tested this on two 64-core workstations and one 24-core workstation, and the issue is only occurring on the 64-core workstations.

I will oppose all the advice in this thread, because I can already tell you, it will not help. Any big-PC (Threadripper, Xeon, etc..) in high-core version, is pain like this in material editor unless as you correctly shown, you use native Physical Material.
Corona, will have super slow material editor in any remotely sized scene. And it's not snappy even in completely empty scene, unlike native.

This has absolutely nothing to do with proxies. This is technical issue on Corona's side that they just don't care about. I guess majority of users aren't on 64-core machines.

BTW, my settings:
Standard viewport (so no HQ)
Every big mesh is proxy. (most of long opening is due to bugs like "corona assets" etc.. and similar stuff, having proxies makes scenes smaller, but it hardly makes difference in opening after scenes start to feature bloat).
Viewport texture settings 1024px for all 3 types(laughably blurry, so despite having 16GB of Vram, I only use like 2GB per scene because otherwise everything will be even slower).
Basic material editor for editing materials. I only use Slate to create them, but because it's so slow, all the little changes (changing IOR 10perc. here or there, etc..) I do in basic.
All textures mapped locally, on local disc with exact paths.
No plugins whatsoever. No ForestPack, no nothing.
It doesn't matter which Max version. It's the same as long as I can remember. Really makes zero difference.

It's not anything else, it's Corona. Yes you are correct.

This does in no way help with slow material editor, and esp. slow material editor during IR. That's like unusable, I waste like 90perc. of my time and 99perc. of my mental health waiting on shit to unfreeze.
It's what it is :- (.

If it's really all because of QT, then that should have been tried ages ago.

One thing I never tested, if it's connected to materials being applied to scene ( and/or additionally, having "shown in viewport"). So I will test:
- disable show in viewport in big heavy scene
- dis-apply all materials (I don't know, apply them to single box and hide it) just keep big material editor full of materials.

[Marijan]

I have tested this on two 64-core workstations and one 24-core workstation, and the issue is only occurring on the 64-core workstations.

I have this issue on 24-core Xeons and 32-core Threadrippers.

P.S.
Sorry to bother you Tom, still no updates on the roadmap.
I'm really interested to see where Corona develepoment is heading for version 13.

[arqrenderz]

P.S.
Sorry to bother you Tom, still no updates on the roadmap.
I'm really interested to see where Corona develepoment is heading for version 13.
[/quote]

+1

[Ink Visual]

P.S.
Sorry to bother you Tom, still no updates on the roadmap.
I'm really interested to see where Corona develepoment is heading for version 13.

+1

[Basshunter]

P.S.
Sorry to bother you Tom, still no updates on the roadmap.
I'm really interested to see where Corona develepoment is heading for version 13.

+1

[TomG]

Hahaha well the community is unanimous in wanting that roadmap updated! I hear y'all loud and clear :) Definitely this week, hopefully tomorrow (the 25th). I am just getting confirmation from the devs on what is looking like it ought to be in, and what still has some uncertainty so we won't talk about it yet to avoid disappointment (of course even the things that do get listed are still plans and not promises - all is on track for now with what will be on the roadmap, but the nature of development is that can get unexpectedly derailed at any time).

I am looking forward to letting you all know about our plans!

[shortcirkuit]

Any update Tom?
Things are awfully quiet around here lately :)

Hahaha well the community is unanimous in wanting that roadmap updated! I hear y'all loud and clear :) Definitely this week, hopefully tomorrow (the 25th). I am just getting confirmation from the devs on what is looking like it ought to be in, and what still has some uncertainty so we won't talk about it yet to avoid disappointment (of course even the things that do get listed are still plans and not promises - all is on track for now with what will be on the roadmap, but the nature of development is that can get unexpectedly derailed at any time).

I am looking forward to letting you all know about our plans!

[Marijan]

https://trello.com/b/EfPE4kPx/corona-tentative-road-map-3ds-max

[TomG]

Yes, roadmap was updated on Sept 27th, there may be more to add depending on how development goes. After updating it, I was traveling last week, so didn't get to return here to say it was updated :)