Author Topic: TIP - 3dsMax > Display Performance - Don't set these values too high!  (Read 2799 times)

2020-09-02, 15:52:42

alexyork

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This is probably going to seem like 100% noob material to some of you, but maybe not everyone so if it helps someone then why not...

At some point there's a good chance that you've increased the max bitmap texture resolution in 3ds max > viewport > + button > Viewport Config > Display Performance up from the default. The default values are 1024 pixels for all 3 settings. Sometimes when you want to do a photomontage alignment to a super high res photo it's necessary to increase this, otherwise the photo/map will look very low-res and pixellated in the viewport, making it a pain to align to - or maybe you just want higher res textures to preview etc.

But beware! Setting these values to something other than 1024 or maybe 2048 will SERIOUSLY slow down your max file opening when opening scenes. We're talking going from just 10 seconds to open a scene up to 15 minutes! And that's when using seemingly modest values like 4096 or so... nothing you'd think would be too high... the reason for this is that you're allowing super high res maps to load for every single high-res map in your scene.. and this can quickly fill all your card's VRAM and cripple your system. You can of course set the viewport background/env map to something a little higher, but just be super careful not to overdo it on the main texture maps option - that's what can kill your scene loading times.

And btw this still applies even if you're using high end 2080ti cards with 8/12GB VRAM etc. (no idea on quadros, but probably the same).

Anyway... I'm sure most of you pros already knew this but there you go.
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2020-09-02, 18:10:59
Reply #1

Juraj

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This is super important, so good for bringing it up!

I never tested the speed of opening, but I routinely use 4096px and my scenes open fairly quickly. I am tempted to believe the slow-down would be rather due to swapping between GPU VRAM and System RAM. 11GB of 2080ti is still not a lot, because 3dsMax doesn't use any compression at all, so single bigger scene can eat up to 10GB in textures alone and that is just viewport in Max alone, Photoshop, Web Browser, Image viewers,etc. will eat VRAM at same time.
(But now I am gonna test this up)

When you run out of VRAM (you can check this on Windows 10 with task manager, there is GPU tab, from latest update you can even assign different GPU to different task/software), the performance completely tanks as well, if you had 200 FPS for example, you'll get right down to <5 FPS...

I've been on Quadro RTX5000 with 16GB Vram for over a year now for this reason alone. And I am upgrading all PCs to GeForce 3090 with 24GB to make life even easier (though GPU rendering & Unreal 4-5 will be nice bonus).

I have other "trick" people might not know with Corona, CoronaBitmap doesn't use TextureSize like Max Bitmap, but the procedurals! I was baffled why my CoronaBitmap materials look blurry in viewport and Ondra explained it's due to this.

This is reason why I advised people all year to buy 350 Euro 1080ti from used-market, and not brand-new 2070-80 with pathetic 8GB. 3dsMax doesn't care about the speed of your GPU much (in fact it runs fantastically on integrated Intel GPU lol), but VRAM is everything.
And the solution would be so easy for Autodesk... Unreal uses lossy compression for example that saves 75perc. of VRAM, such massive compression introduces artifacts on even spaces (like pure white/grey texture), but who cares in viewport?
I pondered lately if it's not possible to super-impose such compression from nVidia settings override.

In meantime, with Unreal 5 we're gonna get real-time mipmapping and unlimited texture size&amount : /. 3dsMax, on other hand, can be perfectly killed with single 20k texture shown 1:1.
(Would be nice to get that in Corona too, Corona too can be killed fairly easily with shit-ton of 8K textures, and no one uses tiled-exrs).
« Last Edit: 2020-09-02, 18:23:36 by Juraj »
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2020-09-03, 10:21:44
Reply #2

alexyork

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I have other "trick" people might not know with Corona, CoronaBitmap doesn't use TextureSize like Max Bitmap, but the procedurals! I was baffled why my CoronaBitmap materials look blurry in viewport and Ondra explained it's due to this.

That's interesting... will have to look into that. It works the opposite how you'd expect. Even more reason to be very careful about changing these values I guess.
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2020-09-03, 15:31:42
Reply #3

lupaz

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with Unreal 5 we're gonna get real-time mipmapping and unlimited texture size&amount : /. 3dsMax, on other hand, can be perfectly killed with single 20k texture shown 1:1.
(Would be nice to get that in Corona too, Corona too can be killed fairly easily with shit-ton of 8K textures, and no one uses tiled-exrs).

Been using Unreal lately?

2020-09-03, 16:04:24
Reply #4

pokoy

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Thanks for the reminder! I've set it to 8192 at some point but I really don't need it most of the time, and scenes do open slowly... back to 2048 :D

2020-09-03, 17:15:05
Reply #5

arqrenderz

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I have other "trick" people might not know with Corona, CoronaBitmap doesn't use TextureSize like Max Bitmap, but the procedurals! I was baffled why my CoronaBitmap materials look blurry in viewport and Ondra explained it's due to this.

That's interesting... will have to look into that. It works the opposite how you'd expect. Even more reason to be very careful about changing these values I guess.
This is super important, so good for bringing it up!

I never tested the speed of opening, but I routinely use 4096px and my scenes open fairly quickly. I am tempted to believe the slow-down would be rather due to swapping between GPU VRAM and System RAM. 11GB of 2080ti is still not a lot, because 3dsMax doesn't use any compression at all, so single bigger scene can eat up to 10GB in textures alone and that is just viewport in Max alone, Photoshop, Web Browser, Image viewers,etc. will eat VRAM at same time.
(But now I am gonna test this up)

When you run out of VRAM (you can check this on Windows 10 with task manager, there is GPU tab, from latest update you can even assign different GPU to different task/software), the performance completely tanks as well, if you had 200 FPS for example, you'll get right down to <5 FPS...

I've been on Quadro RTX5000 with 16GB Vram for over a year now for this reason alone. And I am upgrading all PCs to GeForce 3090 with 24GB to make life even easier (though GPU rendering & Unreal 4-5 will be nice bonus).

I have other "trick" people might not know with Corona, CoronaBitmap doesn't use TextureSize like Max Bitmap, but the procedurals! I was baffled why my CoronaBitmap materials look blurry in viewport and Ondra explained it's due to this.

This is reason why I advised people all year to buy 350 Euro 1080ti from used-market, and not brand-new 2070-80 with pathetic 8GB. 3dsMax doesn't care about the speed of your GPU much (in fact it runs fantastically on integrated Intel GPU lol), but VRAM is everything.
And the solution would be so easy for Autodesk... Unreal uses lossy compression for example that saves 75perc. of VRAM, such massive compression introduces artifacts on even spaces (like pure white/grey texture), but who cares in viewport?
I pondered lately if it's not possible to super-impose such compression from nVidia settings override.

In meantime, with Unreal 5 we're gonna get real-time mipmapping and unlimited texture size&amount : /. 3dsMax, on other hand, can be perfectly killed with single 20k texture shown 1:1.
(Would be nice to get that in Corona too, Corona too can be killed fairly easily with shit-ton of 8K textures, and no one uses tiled-exrs).

Hi Guys, I think you may have more leverage on autodesk to ask for this kind of changes, autodesk is a bit deaf we all know but it wont hurt to ask ;)