material editor SLOW - i think its a CORONA issue?

[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!