Slate material editor, sluggishness and how to avoid it...

[branskyj]

Hi all,

I just like many other have become a victim of 3DS Max Slate material editor sluggishness. At work we use 3DS Max Design 2013 and with heavy scenes (lots of polygons and materials) the slate material editor becomes unusable in terms of speed (sometimes it takes 5-10 seconds to acknowledge any change- color, reflection, refraction). Do that 20-30 times and you want to poke your eyes out

 

I have noticed that Max 2013 handles a little speedier the slate material editor than Max 2012 but still the problem persists (in spite of having all the latest updates)

 

My question is what exactly causes that slowness- is it the sheer number of materials in a given scene, or is it the use of more complex materials (multi-sub objects), or is it large size bitmap images or is it all together?

 

Can you please give a recommendation? I love the concept of the slate material editor and normally keep all of the materials in it (20-30 sometimes stacked inside). I suppose I can keep only few of them inside and replace them with new ones when needed but then what is the purpose of it?

 

Thanks for any help.

[Corey Beaulieu]

It's a stupid fix, but if you hide geometry (shift+g) before you edit materials, the editor acts much faster. even on heavy scenes. In other Scenarios, you can isolate the object you are working on and it will be just as fast.

[branskyj]

Well shame on me- I didn't even know these shortcuts. That's useful and I will try it tomorrow. Really hope Max 2014 (two months away I believe) will fix the issue though.

Thanks a lot Corey

[Nic H]

2014 is 2 months away?

lol

[branskyj]

No, I meant 3DS Max Version 2014 is coming in two month, not the actual year

I believe Max releases it's new versions every April, or am I wrong?