Why is the new Material Map Browser so slow!

[Devin Johnston]

I truly hate the new Mat/Map Browser, it takes way to long to open or close material libraries I guess because it has to render each material preview while it's opening those libraries. Does anyone know a way to speed this up?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Hey Maxer, Are you referring to actual Browser, and not the new material editor? If so...

 

Mine feels like it is quite fast and nice. I am actually happy with it, and I am not easy to please. The link is to a video of it opening and closing. The material editor takes awhile to load because I have a handful of 30megs site maps in the slots, but after that I am up and running smoothly.

 

As a side note, I seem to have disabled the node based material editor, and I would like to get that back. Though maybe this is why it is running fast, because it is not being used with the node editor?

I did do a little tweaking around, but I don't think I really changed anything. I will test it on one of our unmodifiedmachines to see if it runs as fast as what it does on mine.

 

I couldn't get a decent compression on my screen recording so I just uploaded the video with little compression. It is 281mb's.

http://www.phase22.com/misc/cgarchitect/MatBrowser.avi

[Devin Johnston]

Your browser is much faster than mine, when you open the browser I see all of your material previews are just teapots do they eventually render to show the material or do they stay teapots?

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Maybe that has something to do with it. I always use an icon instead of a material preview, even in the old style browser. Loading the materials for the preview has always been slow for me, so I am used to never doing it unless necessary.

 

What is odd, even if I tell it to use an icon instead of teapot, it never actually renders.

 

I know there is a way to turn off the new material browser, and simply use the old one instead. I do like how the new one pre-loads my libraries so I don't have to locate them.

[Devin Johnston]

The older version wasn't super fast but it does seem to be faster than this version.

[Shaun Hamm]

to get the old/faster material browser back

 

from this thread http://forums.cgarchitect.com/61029-max-2011-where-did-select-material-go.html

 

You can revert to the old Browser if you want. Close 3ds Max/Design, search for the SME.ini (in XP64, C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\2011 - 64bit\enu\plugcfg), and set: Code:

ShowMtlBrowser=0

UseOldMtlBrowser=1

Launch Max and when you launch the Material Browser (Render > Material/Map Browser or hotkey M) you should get the old Browser. If you then enable the in Slate Browser you can actually use both at the same time.