What's With The Slow Mat Editor Loads?

[Michael J. Brown]

Every blue moon I run across this problem and for the life of me can't seem to pin down the root cause.

 

My Material Editor loads extremely slowly (I'm talking 5 to 10 minutes depending on my material thumbnail spread - 3xs, 5x3, 6x4). Usually this can be traced back to either not having initiated the V-Ray Licence Server prior to pulling up the Mat Ed for the first time. Other times I've found that this can happen if there is some Standard material (or a multi sub-object mat using a Standard mat) assigned to an object that's no logner in the scene.

 

But occassionally it loads slow independent of either of these causes.

 

Can anyone shed some light on this?

[BrianKitts]

typically it means it's having trouble connecting to the license server. Is it local or on a network machine? Is it possbile that the machine your network license server is running on is bogged down or your network is?

 

sometimes when I'm doing vray instruction in our office with more than 7 licenses, we use the VPN to acquire our other 5 licenses from other offices, the machines running on a local network license server can open a material editor quickly whereas the other machines running licenses across a vpn take about a minute to load 16 mat editor slots.

 

vlado had mentioned that they were aware that sometimes it takes a while to load the materials editor if you have a slow connection to the license server. Problem is it checks your license every time it loads each material slot. It was mentioned it was something they need to look into down the line, but I don't think it's a fix that was put into SP3.

[Michael J. Brown]

Thanks Brian. However though I'm using it stand-alone. So no such issues would be relevant.

 

Could it be a display driver issue? I have had to keep switching back and forth between Open GL and Direct 3D because of viewport ghosting issues.

[amer abidi]

one of your materials and/or maps has an invalid path (network maybe?)

Every so often it happens (even if the material DOES show up correctly) max keeps on looking for the path assigned... usually happens when you merge in models/materials modelled/ mapped by others.

 

Run the Asset Tracker to check all your paths are valid and correct, even if it says "Found", check that the path is real and does not point to say drive J:\maps which you dont have on your computer.

[Michael J. Brown]

Thanks Amer. I've never used the Asset Tracker before. Perhaps this will clear some things up.

[Fran]

Make sure the Vray license server is running in the system tray. The license server doesn't necessarily only pertain to network rendering.

 

Oops. Missed the part where it doesn't matter. Sorry.

[Michael J. Brown]

OPEN GL

 

The problem was I was using Direct3D for my display driver instead of Open GL. The moment I switched back, all my problems dissapeared. My Material Editor slots open flawlessly now.

 

The only drawback will be the occassional ghosting of dialog boxes as they're dragged accross the screne and other display issues that sometimes manifest themselves when I use OpenGL on this machine (laptop).

 

But at least I've got my material slots back again.

 

DISCO!:D