Slow UHD cache, RAM usage very different than before (Windows 10 related?)

[vkiuru]

Hi,

switched to Windows 10 about a month ago and this may or may not have something to do with what I'm trying to describe here.

I'm having issues where UHD Cache, after working normally for hours on the same scene,  slows to a crawl (like taking 20-30 minutes when it just a minute ago solved in an instant) when doing something like merging a new object to the scene, sometimes even without any such action - randomly? After waiting the slow UHD cache, the rendering itself is about 30k rays/s total so the problem obviously carries over. This happens on files that get even slightly complex - I haven't kept book but scenes varying from hundres of megabytes to several GB (compress on save is OFF). It usually "corrects" itself for a while when I switch to a different camera, hit render and then cancel and repeat this process a couple times over. Other method is to save the scene and start a new instance of Max and open the scene again, but the problem comes back before long.

I've tried cleaning the files of any empty layers, note tracks or any other trash and merging everything to a fresh scene but no luck. I've noticed when computing secondary GI Corona seems to use memory very sparingly, by which I mean back in Windows 7 the memory load would jump to like 27 gigs right at the beginning of the calculation if that's how much the scene needed but now it shows "memory used" lingering between like 4 to 7 gigs in similar circumstances. I checked  the Windows memory paging files and they are on automatic as I've always had them but I still wonder if it's related to that somehow.

I'm using 3DS Max 2015 and Corona 1.3, had this same issue on daily builds earlier. I'm not sure about version 1.2 and can't test it right now. Plugins I'm relying on in these scenes are Forestpack, Multitexture and Berconmaps, occasionally.. The one plugin that is always present is Forest Pack (and I believe I have the latest version but will double check) and that's pretty much it. No corona proxies are present most of the time. Disabled legacy materials with the converter, overall ran the converter in it's entirety etc but no luck. Any ideas, no matter how far fetched would be appreciated at this point because I can't find a cause.

I'm on an i7-4930K, factory clocking, 32 GB of RAM.

[maru]

Hi, it looks like we have recently received few similar reports. Could you also report this in our support system by submitting a ticket? You can just copy the description from this thread. https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new

The only thing I can think of is some plugin, maybe Forest Pack? Could you try running Max with all 3rd party plugins except Corona disabled and see what happens?

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note to self: guy who created a box and killed max every time

[vkiuru]

Hi, it looks like we have recently received few similar reports. Could you also report this in our support system by submitting a ticket? You can just copy the description from this thread. https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new

The only thing I can think of is some plugin, maybe Forest Pack? Could you try running Max with all 3rd party plugins except Corona disabled and see what happens?

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note to self: guy who created a box and killed max every time

Thanks Maru, submitted a ticket. And yeah I strongly suspect it has something to do with Forest Pack since it's the only pluging that is always present in my scenes, sooner or later. Just checked and I'm running the latest FP build, 4.4.1

Earlier today a friend suggested I try running Max with compatibility mode, and while W7 compatibility did no better I had no issues when switching to the W8 one, precalc and rendering went smoothly but it might've been pure chance, busy day and I couldn't systematically try it for long enough a time or in different scenes but thought I'd mention it anyway. I'll read your reply tomorrow, btw, it's been almost a 40 hour (deadline)day today and basic things start to get challenging :D All I can do is give hard to follow descriptions of stuff I've encountered that might or might not be related.

Sometimes during these lags it gets so paradoxal, Max memory usage stays at or around 400 megabytes and slows the entire W10 down when it should be doing it's basic thing, stacking up RAM because of the noticeably heavy Forest Objects. Also, and I'll check this too tomorrow, I have a feeling it happens more frequently if I'm running two instances of Max, one idling with a relatively small memory footprint like 2gigs and I start rendering on the other instance of Max, that being about the same size as the first scene and the whole system often freezes up for minutes at a time which I never had with Windows 7 after learning you can manually change the CPU affinity for Max.. So I alwayd made sure I had at least 2 cores free so I could use Photoshop etc.Setting both instances of Max to low CPU affinity was always a safe way aroung any hiccups in W7 even when they were massive scenes but with W10 setting lower affinity does nothing at all performance wise. Max chokes and struggles like it was running every bit of CPU power at maximum and I have to wait 10 minutes give or take to get Task manager to force shut down Max. So yeah again FP but then I wouldn't rule out Windows 10 playing a part in it either. But enough idle talk, I hope I can be of more use tomorrow :)

[maru]

Ok, waiting for this to evolve. :)

It would be great if we could move the discussion to the support only, and we would just post the solution here once it's known.

[vkiuru]

Ok, waiting for this to evolve. :)

It would be great if we could move the discussion to the support only, and we would just post the solution here once it's known.

Yeah had to stay awake yet another night so the tests will have to wait. I did update to FP 5 alpha and some other things to try out. Anyway I'll continue this topic with your support team once I'm rested and report here if anything helpful surfaces.