Material Editor performance issues

[pokoy]

Build 2015-01-19, max 2014, win7

I have made some benchmarks on a scene with 25 mills polys and around 250 unique materials. Note: the numbers represent what I am experiencing since around September/October, the sluggish material editor rendering reported for the same build iin the Daily Builds thread are probably a different issue (maybe max version).

Times for opening the material editor with 24 samples:

- MatEd preview quality 1 - 65 seconds
- MatEd preview quality 3 - 68 seconds
- MatEd preview quality 5 - 71 seconds

So preview quality has only a really minimal time penalty, the material editor in general is just slow. Since this used to be way better with build before September, I think something went wrong along the way.

Some more testing:

On a clean scene, it renders very fast (unlike the other reports mentioned above).
Once a large model is imported that carries a lot of materials (20+ mills polys, approx. 200 materials), material editor rendering crawls. A simple color change on an unused and material (bare CoronaMtl, no maps used) takes 4 seconds for the update in the material editor (!). Let's face it, it is unworkable.
If I delete all materials from the model - so there are no materials in the scene but the geometry remains the same - material editor rendering goes back to almost normal, it seems to be only a tad slower.

From this behavior it's quite clear that the number of materials in the scene affects material editor rendering. I'd like to hear how it behaves for other with fairly large scenes and a large number of materials.

[cecofuli]

Yes, as Ondra know,  I had the same exact problem in my last working files. Very big, with a lot of material.
Try this: collapse the meshes in one, two or three big mesh and see what will happen.

[pokoy]

I really can't this would take me hours on this model.

Did you try? I'd think it produces a Multi/SubMtl with lots of submaterials, will it get better then? Did it work for you?

[Ondra]

Can you upload me the scene?

[pokoy]

Unfortunately not, I know how much easier it would be for you to track this down.

I think it may be possible to quickly generate few thousand objects with 300 unique materials assigned, unfortunately that's beyond my skills. But I think it might trigger the issue without the need for the production scene.

[Ondra]

ok, can you try to generate it? I was never able to get such slowdown in any of my (syntetic or real) scenes

[cecofuli]

I really can't this would take me hours on this model.

Did you try? I'd think it produces a Multi/SubMtl with lots of submaterials, will it get better then? Did it work for you?

Yes, I have tons of books, with high quality textures.
Just attach the books. So, I had one big mesh with one big multi-sub object material.
I saw immediately a better performance in the MEdit. Ok, not fast as I wanted, but usable.

I suggest you my RAW solution just as a "TEST". To see if it could help you. =)

[pokoy]

ok, can you try to generate it? I was never able to get such slowdown in any of my (syntetic or real) scenes

Bummer, as I said it's above my mxs skills... If it helps, the materials are mostly BlendMtl, that might be part of the problem.

Cecofuli, can you maybe help out and provide Keymaster a scene with the books?

[Ondra]

ok, any scene where the problem happens would be appreciated.

Are you using interactive or not? Are the materials simple ones? Is the CPU at 100% or not during most of that time?

[cecofuli]

The complete scene is 550 MB+ 1 Gb Proxy and textures! I have to clean the scene.  But, after that, I don't know if the problem will exist again.
Unfortunately, today I'm very busy! But I'll try
About your questions, Ondra, I'll answer you as soon as I can!

[pokoy]

It has nothing to do with IR whatsoever, it's the general MatEd rendering.

Materials are fairly complicated, yes. Let's say every material uses 3-4 procedurals, I have around 50 textures ranging from midres to highres, most of these materials are nested within BlendMtls.

You could say 'no wonder it's slow with that heavy material setup', but it was a lot better in the past and got worse and worse with each build since around September when the first IR iterations surfaced in the daily builds.

As for CPU usage, some dailies rendered the MatEd with 3-5% (that's one core on my PC), some where going up to 90-100%, the latest uses approx 5%.

[Juraj]

My issues with latest daily builds (from January), but which I compare against 7.1 and SOA Special build from October, because I didn't use any between are absolutely abysmall.

It has nothing to do with scene or material, the Corona Material editor itself is extremely slow/laggy in my 2015 3dsMax. Even the most basic material lags in newly open scene without any geometry at all.
I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with 3dsMax itself, because Vray3 stays completely fluent, which is why I had to convert my current commercial project to it (which makes me really unhappy because this is interior...).

To reproduce it, all I have to do, is open 3dsMax, open Basic Material editor (kept with default Vray mats), Switch renderer to Corona, and bum....wait for 50 seconds ? Then switch any of that material to CoronaMTL, any wait few seconds for any touching of anything.

It happens on all 3 workstations.

[Juraj]

I attach screenshot of performance, I am doing nothing else in meantime, just staring at it, and it goes from 10 to 100perc. and back, 3dsMax frozen.

THE same happens when I simply switch materials to Corona, another 50+ seconds of freezed 3dsMax.

[Juraj]

A simple color change on an unused and material (bare CoronaMtl, no maps used) takes 4 seconds for the update in the material editor (!). Let's face it, it is unworkable.

Exactly. Which makes me wonder if anyone is actually using these daily build for something ? Or actual commercial work ? There is no way to work with this at all. This can't be some random error on my part.

Some UI stuff is least of my issues.

[pokoy]

As it is now, shading a large scene is a major pain. I am facing shading of a huge scene in 4 weeks and I'm not sure how I'm going to accomplish this.

For me, certain things introduced in the daily builds (GGX and IR in particular) are a must have so reverting to 7.1 isn't really an option. I certainly hope it gets some attention now and can be resolved, fingers crossed...