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2012 - where's the nitrous speed?


cgrant3d
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Presumably there are quite a few of you using 2012 in production by now. I'd like to move to 2012 for production but from what I'm seeing in real-world files the performance difference is dramatically *slower* in 2012.

 

I opened a file that originated in Revit (though everything has VRay mats), has 2200 objects, 380K poly's & 33 materials. Not huge by any means... It's all static geometry with default lighting - only thing animated is the camera...

 

However here are the frame times I'm getting when I disable "realtime" in the viewport config and play through an animated camera.

 

2010

shaded: 37s

wire: 13s

 

2012 (nitrous)

realistic: 190s

shaded: 180s

wire: 178s

 

That's roughly 5X slower in shaded mode and 13X slower in wireframe. Good grief. Obviously this can't be what everybody sees because all I ever hear about 2012 is how fast nitrous is. Thoughts?

 

System is a freshly ordered Dell Precision T7500, 20GB, Quadro 4000 & Win7.

 

...

 

[EDIT]

Resolution found - issue was VRayScatter dramatically reducing viewport performance in 2012. http://forums.cgarchitect.com/67046-2012-wheres-nitrous-speed.html#post336604

Edited by cgrant3d
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I hate to be devil's advocate here, but what do you mean by, "disable 'realtime' in the viewport config"? Are you in realistic mode, because there is no such thing as "realtime" mode? You can enter shaded mode to get quicker frame rates, but I would argue that you are comparing apples to Volkswagens.

 

2010 to 2012 3ds Max doesn't even seem fair to compare... Back in 2010 you've got ProMaterials, going from Revit to Max, but that depends on which Revit version you're coming from. Current Revit versions are using/exporting Autodesk Materials, and 2010, I believe, was using/exporting ProMaterials. Variables = Material Type, Software Versions (both Revit and 3ds Max), graphics drivers, possibly among others.

 

I'm sure a little more information on software versions would make this an easier comparison, but, no, I would say that this is not what everybody is experiencing with Max 2012. Others, please help me put my foot in my mouth :^) .

Edited by matthewgriswold
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I hate to be devil's advocate here, but what do you mean by, "disable 'realtime' in the viewport config"? Are you in realistic mode, because there is no such thing as "realtime" mode? You can enter shaded mode to get quicker frame rates, but I would argue that you are comparing apples to Volkswagens.

 

2010 to 2012 3ds Max doesn't even seem fair to compare... Back in 2010 you've got ProMaterials, going from Revit to Max, but that depends on which Revit version you're coming from....

 

Oops - was in a bit of a hurry to post and so didn't clarify the important details...

 

I meant to say I disabled "real time" playback in the "time configuration" dialog - not "viewport config"... The reason being things felt "slow" in 2012 so I wanted a measurable, consistent comparison. So by animating a camera in a production scene I was reproducing what we'd actually experience in a standard project. Disabling "real time" ensured no viewport degradation would come into play that'd skew the results...

 

Oh and I shouldn't have even bothered mentioning it was from Revit. We use VRay so none of the materials are ProMats/Autodesk mats (personally I can't stand either - even if I was to use MR I'd dump those). I even did a test where I applied a Standard mat to everythign (just in case it was a VRay shader problem) but it didn't affect the time much at all...

 

FYI - I edited the original post to include the time in 2012 for "realistic" as well.

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I just made the move from 2011 to 2012 and believe me I was very happy to me moving away from that monstrosity. I've only used 2012 on one real project so far, total vert count is 4.1 million which is about average for my scenes and FPS is 1.75. I'm using a Quadro 6000 with Vray 2 and all service packs and hotfixes are installed, so far performance is a little better than 2011 but considering the hardware I'm using I should be seeing a massive improvement. I'm experiencing what I'll call hiccups for lack of a better term, when I go to close the VFB or material editor it takes about 5 seconds before the command executes. When I use region zoom I'm seeing a few second delay also, these are new problems that weren't there in 2011. I've been having problems with Max ever since I moved over to Windows 7, I believe Autodesk and Nvidia are trying to work around problems this OS has brought to the table and unfortunately they don't seem to be able to.

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I just made the move from 2011 to 2012 and believe me I was very happy to me moving away from that monstrosity.

 

Haha - yeah we skipped 2011 entirely. Used it a few times but found it to be slower and clunkier for everything we do. I had hoped moving to 2012 we'd see some significant improvements - especially since nitrous is multithreaded. Actually speaking of threading - are there still problems 6 core machines? I thought that'd been worked out but the new workstations ore Dual 6-core Xeons w/hyperthreading.

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are there still problems 6 core machines? I thought that'd been worked out but the new workstations ore Dual 6-core Xeons w/hyperthreading.

 

From what I've seen I'd say no they haven't fixed it and I don't know if they ever will. I spent about 6 months going back and forth between Autodesk and Nvidia trying to figure that problem out. They both blamed the other for the performance problems but in the end no resolution was reached and I haven't heard a thing from them since. The entire experience has really soured me on both companies but I believe Microsoft shares some responsibility for this as well.

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From what I've seen I'd say no they haven't fixed it and I don't know if they ever will. I spent about 6 months going back and forth between Autodesk and Nvidia trying to figure that problem out. They both blamed the other for the performance problems but in the end no resolution was reached and I haven't heard a thing from them since. The entire experience has really soured me on both companies but I believe Microsoft shares some responsibility for this as well.

 

Devin, Install the latest HF/SP for Max and the latest NVIDIA driver. This particular issue was fixed, but you might be occurring a different issue still. For most, I'd say 90%, the driver and SP resolved the viewport performance problems in 3ds Max 2011.

 

Chris, when you simply rotate the camera or perspective view how is the performance? You might be seeing an issue with animated cameras.

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I tracked down the problem - the plugin VRayScatter from rendering.ru ... Presumably it's not nitrous optimized or something along those lines. In 2010 my shaded playback w/VRS was 37s and w/o was 32s - not a huge deal one way or another. However in 2012 shaded playback w/VRS was 180s and w/o was 16s! Crazy. So to set the record straight on this project I'm seeing a 2X improvement (in 2012 nitrous) in shaded but only half speed in wire - I'll see if changing drivers can improve the situation...

 

The unusual thing is speed wasn't affected by hiding VRS - it was still dragging the performance down. I had to disable the emitters or remove in order to see reasonable performance. Also worth mentioning that MultiScatter (which is the current MR/VR scatter tool as opposed to the older VRS) does *not* suffer the same performance problem in 2012.

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I'm experiencing what I'll call hiccups for lack of a better term, when I go to close the VFB or material editor it takes about 5 seconds before the command executes.

I thought was just me and my humble Quadro 580. It works nicely but this 5sec halt on the VFB and on the Material Editor are reaaaally annoying. Any solutions for that so far?

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