Max hangs for 2-3 minutes upon every "Unhide all"

[aaouviz]

Off topic I know!

And I'm fairly certain this isn't related to Corona, but you guys are smart so I'm asking here.

I installed Max2024 yesterday.

Now I have a scene which hangs (freezes) for 2 minutes or so every damn time I use the Unhide function. Even if every object is on a layer turned off and I unhide, it still hangs. I've deleted all the proxies, scatters, cameras, lights, from the scene... still happening.

Edit: I Emptied the SML... this seemed to help, but only once I had deleted all the proxies, lights etc. If I empty the SME when all these are still in the scene, it's no help.

Anyone come across this before? Incredibly frustrating, I can't pin point a cause.

Any tips appreciated!

[romullus]

Never had this issue. Is this happening with every larger scene, or just with one specific?

[aaouviz]

To be honest, I'm not sure... I tested with a very basic 'empty' scene and it didn't happen, so it's probably scene specific.

Still very early in my bug-fixing process

Edit: I found a similar discussion here: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=32453.0

[pokoy]

Does the 'add key' button flash and refresh constantly while it hangs?
Even if not, it's probably the map preview for the viewports, it's supposed to build a cache but this sometimes fails and then Max rebuilds the viewport materials.

Try this:
- decrease map size for viewport textures (Viewports Configuration > Display Performance > set them all to small sizes like 512 pixels for example). This should shorten the time Max takes to rebuild the caches

If this helps, alternatively try this:
- set all viewport to Standard mode (not 'High Quality')
- disable map preview in all viewports ('Shaded Materials Without Maps'), do not use 'Realistic Materials'

This will disable map preview in general and should make unhiding objects snappy.

When creating a new Corona Physical mat the new material will try to preview maps again, if you see any lag, set the viewport(s) to 'Shaded Materials Without Maps' again.

Max is internally parsing materials to HLSL for viewport display which takes a while. This is supposed to build a cache so any scene you open is using that cache. For some reason, it fails in bigger scenes, rebuilding the cache every time you show the objects... It's something they didn't manage to fix since Max 2017 so if any of the above helps, make sure to submit a bug to Autodesk. Don't expect them to fix anything though, they have 0.5 people *maybe* working on Max viewports once in a while.

[aaouviz]

Does the 'add key' button flash and refresh constantly while it hangs?
Even if not, it's probably the map preview for the viewports, it's supposed to build a cache but this sometimes fails and then Max rebuilds the viewport materials.

Try this:
- decrease map size for viewport textures (Viewports Configuration > Display Performance > set them all to small sizes like 512 pixels for example). This should shorten the time Max takes to rebuild the caches

If this helps, alternatively try this:
- set all viewport to Standard mode (not 'High Quality')
- disable map preview in all viewports ('Shaded Materials Without Maps'), do not use 'Realistic Materials'

This will disable map preview in general and should make unhiding objects snappy.

When creating a new Corona Physical mat the new material will try to preview maps again, if you see any lag, set the viewport(s) to 'Shaded Materials Without Maps' again.

Max is internally parsing materials to HLSL for viewport display which takes a while. This is supposed to build a cache so any scene you open is using that cache. For some reason, it fails in bigger scenes, rebuilding the cache every time you show the objects... It's something they didn't manage to fix since Max 2017 so if any of the above helps, make sure to submit a bug to Autodesk. Don't expect them to fix anything though, they have 0.5 people *maybe* working on Max viewports once in a while.

Hi! Thanks for the reply.

I did all this and no luck. To answer your query; no it doesn't flash.

[aaouviz]

Ok,

I think I have isolated the problem.

It is scatters (but earlier turning them off didn't help, so maybe it was originally a combination of problems).

If I turn them off the unhide command doesn't make max hang for 1 min.

If I turn one on at a time the hang time increases.

I suspect this might be caused by the maps I'm using in the scatter density...

I'll continue to do more experiments and probably provide the scene for checking...

[hurrycat]

Is any scene manager docked while unhiding? I find that having my layer manager visible often leads to a significant delay when selecting objects, especially if Display Influences or Display Dependents is on.

[aaouviz]

Is any scene manager docked while unhiding? I find that having my layer manager visible often leads to a significant delay when selecting objects, especially if Display Influences or Display Dependents is on.

Hmm, interesting. I always have my 'deault' layer manager docked...

Hiding it didn't help :(

[pokoy]

Ok... some unsorted thoughts:

- If you have a single viewport only and set it to wireframe instead of shaded and unhide then - does that help?

- Try with the material editor closed - it's constantly 'talking' back and forth to Max and even if it doesn't display anything it will slow down Max.

- I recently enabled State Sets by some key I hit accidentally and it slowed down the scene as it records all object states, maybe have a look if it's enabled

- Macro Recorder enabled?

- Unhide bit by bit to track down which elements of the scene are problematic but you're saying you did this already

- Do you happen to use the Distance Map with a lot of objects or heavy geometry used in its list?

- Strip all objects of their materials, does that help?

- Do you see a lot of animation tracks added to the scene for no reason? There was a bug that would bloat files by adding them...

- Merge the entire scene into a new one, save and reopen the new scene, do you see any improvement?

Can't think of anything else right now...

[aaouviz]

Thanks!

All no to every query.

I'll do a full merge, to see if this helps, but so far the only thing that helps is to disable every scatter. EDIT: Full merge didn't help. I'll try rolling back Corona.

Even if every scatter viewport visibility is set to None it hangs when they are enabled. I turned off all mapping, distance, includes/excludes for every scatter, and it still hangs.

I enable the scatters, do an unhide (even is nothing is hidden!!) and it hangs... crazy

The worst thing is; If I open the problematic scene and just delete the scatters, the hanging issue remains. If I do lots of other cleaning; ie collapsing objects, removing distance maps, emptying the SME etc and then delete the scatters, it finally unhides quickly.

This is a scene I created in Max 2023 Corona 10. Yesterday I upgraded to 2024, Corona 11 (latest daily)... probably something there!

[pokoy]

So it's Corona Scatter? Make sure to let the guys know in the daily builds thread...

[aaouviz]

Seems like it... still testing

Rolling back to Corona 10 didn't help as it keeps the latest scatter installed.

I had to manually delete Chaos scatter (uninstall thru windows didn't help) and then install scatter that was included with Corona 10

Yep! FIXED FINALLY (I think!)

Latest version of scatter was the problem... urggghh

I tried so hard to avoid using dailies and did so well until yesterday but got sucked in and now it's cost me another half-day of work :(

[aaouviz]

Thanks for the help Pokoy, hurrycat and romullus.

Reported now in the bug report section. Not sure if others are affected or not...

[pokoy]

Glad you found the culprit, will add this to my list of "Murphy's Law and how it applies to 3dsmax" :D