need guidance on how to have fast viewports

[stayinwonderland]

no matter what set up I've had (admittedly I haven't had amazing hardware but I'm always WAY behind the curve in relation to what should be a reasonable frame rate) my viewports have always been immensely slow above 1m polys. And ugly too.

 

Current set up is 2012 using Nvidia GTX 660. So yeah, not the best but in my current scene for example, I've got all my large-poly-count object set to view as box and if I move my vray camera I get what seems like less than 1 fps.

 

Now, if I max a viewport and orbit around in perspective mode, the frames SHOOT up. I also have degradation on but it's almost like this doesn't count when not in single viewport mode.

 

I also get this thing where everything is super bright and each time I switch back to a viewport I have to set to default lights. Every time. Because it's trying to use scene lighting.

 

Anyway, without getting bogged down in to too many specifics. I gather 2014 is the first version of max that really uses GPU power for viewports, is this the case? and if so, what's not so much the BEST GPU but one that's affordable, and most importantly, talks well to 3ds max.

Edited June 19, 2016 by stayinwonderland

[Francisco Penaloza]

First, 3d Max always have poor view port performance compared to other 3d Software. Yes it does use more the GPU in the latest release but still single core for CPU so if you have a fast speed CPU it really help.

 

2014 it was not one of the faster viewport needless to say. I think 2009 still the fastest viewport

 

2016 seems faster and small test from 2017 seems even better.

 

it is not only about how many polygons you have. 3D max over all does not like many objects, if you can collapse them or XREF you'll have better viewport performance. On 2014 I never used the fancy view port features, just regular shade mode and wire frames, I kept adaptive degradation mode off all the time.

 

At the office we have now Quadros M4000 (the big one not laptop) max 2016 viewport performance seems good actually. At home I have GTX 970 with Max 2016 and 2017 viewport seems fine. At home I have a old i7 OC to 4Ghz and a the office a new Xeon at 3.6Ghz

 

I know I will have a lot of people jumping over me with what I will say now, but whatever.

If you are using Quadro video cards, viewport performance seems more solid, if you zoom really close or far away you don't get lines jittering or fake selection problems. I experience those problem while using the old GTX version, 6xx and 5xx series, I have not experienced those problem with the 970 but I haven't work in large project at home. With the Old Quadro 4000 I never had those problems, when larger the scene the viewport got slower but it didn't show those errors that I used to get with the old GTX 6xxx and 580.

 

When I say collapse object, I mean, if I link or import a REVIT building, I always choose per family, so each mullion of the building is one large mesh, if each mullion import as a separate object, the viewport will get very slow.

I collapse all glass in a single mesh, all mullions in a single mesh, all door, and so on.

 

With the new GTX 1080 or 1070 I hope a better performance on Max 2017, it has faster GPU and a lot of memory that really make a difference.

[Josef Wienerroither]

First, 3d Max always have poor view port performance compared to other 3d Software. Yes it does use more the GPU in the latest release but still single core for CPU so if you have a fast speed CPU it really help.

 

2014 it was not one of the faster viewport needless to say. I think 2009 still the fastest viewport

 

I only quote the - in my opinion plain wrong - statements here, the other things are good recommendations. I guess you have a pretty nostalgic and romantic view on the past performance of the Direct 3d based viewport performance ( eg. the Max 2009 reference). Since Max 2014 and parts already with Max 2013 the Nitrous performance far outperforms anything we ever had in direct 3d mode

 

Nowadays, 3ds Max has the fastest viewport of the major 3d packages since at least Max 2016. This conclusion is a direct result of personally testing those Max releases against current versions of Maya, Modo or C4D.

ArchViz with many objects and unoptimized imports of CAD might be a little special case here, but overall i can state that NONE of those other packages can handle as much individual objects and high polycounts as fast as Max 2017 ( and to a big part Max 2016 ) - period

Again - this is no fanboy-izm - it's a fact.

In earlier days, Maya was faster with it's OGL based viewport, but those days are gone. It still might be faster on large scale animation heavy scenes with lots of mesh deform and control rig evaluation going on though.

As i said, in the archviz field, there are special requirements, and that might slow down Nitrous - but most of the time , slowdown reasons might be tackled be tweaking the viewport accodingly, depending on the curent task.

Edited June 20, 2016 by spacefrog

[stayinwonderland]

Thanks guys.

 

And thanks Josef. Care to recommend any graphics cards that I should be using? nothing too crazy expensive if poss.

[Josef Wienerroither]

Thanks guys.

 

And thanks Josef. Care to recommend any graphics cards that I should be using? nothing too crazy expensive if poss.

I simply would recommend AGAINST a quadro, i'd go for a 1070GTX or a 1080GTX when budget allows. Go for the highest amount of graphics RAM you can get and go with a good vendor, not necessarily the cheapest ones ( so Asus, EVGA etc... should be fine )

One thing to say though, is that with Max 2012 your are on the worst possible spot regarding viewport performance

This was the first Nitrous iteration, and there are really many many situations where this shows by slow and unoptimized viewport performance.

 

So i guess if you can't upgrade, you really are in a bit of a bad spot here, regarding VP performance and issues you have to live with ...

[stayinwonderland]

thanks a bunch, you've been most helpful. I'll look into the upgrading option and keep those cards on my radar

[Josef Wienerroither]

Just some of my performance tests i did with Max 2017

All performed on my GAMING card 780GTX ( 6GB on board memory )

sadly captured with 15FPS record rate, but just look at the viewport FPS counter

 

CAD test featuring 112 Mio polys in the viewport ( several hundreds of individual objects ). Viewport stats get displayed after about 50% of the video

 

 

Deforming mesh performance from Max 2011 to Max 2017 ( might be not really relevant for Archviz ). Read the exact FPS numbers and how it evolved in the youtube video's comment section

 

Direct comparison of hires mesh performance Max 2017 and latest Maya version

Edited June 20, 2016 by spacefrog

[James Vella]

Well said josef. The only thing i would disagree with is advising against a quadro... i wouldnt recommend one either hah! More vram for archviz the better, we use titan x and quadro k4000. The titan is faster... only just. Id love to see a comparison of the 1080 against the titan, i know the 1080 is faster but the titan has more vram... again still waiting for a more solid version of lucid or a decent set of presets for massfx but the titan has 10x more cuda cores than the quadro... so its obvious what results could be yield.

 

The quadros still handle large cad data better, just from an observation point of view - the geforce cards handle large amounts of textures, the quadros handle large amounts of wireframes, so if you do alot of cad work its something to consider. I can offer to run some tests if you like in this regard as i have the quadro if u want some benchmarks.

Edited June 20, 2016 by redvella

[Josef Wienerroither]

Yes James, you are right. I it wasn't my intention to explicitely recommend AGAINST a quadro, it's just my personal opinion that the price is not worth it. At least if price is of concern. Additionally there where posts about specific viewport problems only quadro users seemed to report, at least in the earlier days of Nitrous. That might have changed though with recent drivers and Nitrous having improved...

[Scott Schroeder]

I'll explicitly recommend AGAINST a Quadro. I was forced into one at work and I'm not at all happy with it. The good ole GTX 660 outperformed this Quadro K2200 in every aspect. It's buggy, it's laggy, and it's all around terrible for everything. It chugs in wireframe on the same scene compared to the GTX 660. Not to mention how awful this card is in Photoshop and After Effects. So yes, for your a-typical arch viz user you will regret going with a Quadro as your primary card because we just don't only deal with CAD data.

 

I have a GTX 970 at home and it does really well in Max. Though, as a note of caution, even 50 top of the line video cards all tied together can't help you with poor Max file organization and optimization.

[Francisco Penaloza]

I only quote the - in my opinion plain wrong - statements here, the other things are good recommendations. I guess you have a pretty nostalgic and romantic view on the past performance of the Direct 3d based viewport performance ( eg. the Max 2009 reference)

 

One thing to say though, is that with Max 2012 your are on the worst possible spot regarding viewport performance

This was the first Nitrous iteration, and there are really many many situations where this shows by slow and unoptimized viewport performance.

 

So i guess if you can't upgrade, you really are in a bit of a bad spot here, regarding VP performance and issues you have to live with ...

 

I don't want to start an argument of if I am right or you are wrong here, Glade that you are related to Autodesk so we all have the opportunity to have a more direct input to their softwares. I always give my opinion regarding my experience, that for sure will be different than yours.

 

I actually did the jump from Max 2009 to Max 2012, and yes performance was very bad, not at all what was promised. That why my comment.

With 2014 things came back to decent performance and since then things are getting better as they should.

 

Josef and Scott, I would not generalize regarding Quadro video cards, yes they are expensive compared to similar GTX card but remember in most large companies money is really not the main point. That's why Quadro series was created. We live in a time and age that hardware tech advance so fast and we all benefit from it, yes the line between consumer hardware and "pro" hardware seems almost none existent now. But again, there still small difference that only a few people care about and that's why there is a market for it.

 

Sad to heard your experience Scott, but need less to say the K2200 is the IT choise You should make a strong point if they want to go Quadro, it should be at least M4000 or similar.

 

To Andy, it been said that 2012 is not best viewport performance. If you can't upgrade Max, try to get the best video card your budget can buy.

I would recommend a GTX 970 (good money performance ratio), but with the latest release of 1070 I think that's the smart choice to do. Other than tat, as mentioned, try to use every trick to optimize your scene to get the best out of your hardware.

 

 

Cheers.

[James Vella]

Lol yes id advise against a k2200 aswell ? id love to see some nvidia flex tests with the new 24gb m6000

 

Even 2x titanx couldn't come close in my opinion, as vram cannot be stacked ... so ur still stuck with 12gb... whatever that really means in terms of power.

 

The cost isn't much in comparison... its $5k for the m6000... you simply cannot get a 24gb gtx card

 

Again... keeping what's said in this thread in perspective, anything more than a 970gtx will be absolutely fine for most current operations, max still doesn't fully support the features we need to take advantage of the flex tech (from my experience, id love see to what other people are doing in regards to cloth sim and soft bodies and fluid)

 

Edit. I agree with *Scott, most of the time it comes down to good organisation, optimization, proxies and good workflow. Also understanding limitations like the realisitic viewport, great for placing your sun for shadows in viewport, but not much else. These things change aswell between max versions so its good to review your limitations every release as tech gets better and u dont get stuck in old ways with previous notions... like "quadros suck" (not having a go at anyone here its a common topic)... as i would have agreed 2 years ago. Now i have a different perspective

Edited June 20, 2016 by redvella

[Nic H]

i went from a gtx580 to a gtx980ti and it seemed like a decent a leap in terms of performance. however without benchmarking i cant tell if its in my head...

this is using max 2014

 

i think the new 1070 *looks* like pretty good bang for buck?

[Chris MacDonald]

I've been working on a k4000 and it's okay. Nothing that the current generation of gaming cards couldn't absolutely thrash though.

[Josef Wienerroither]

I don't want to start an argument of if I am right or you are wrong here, Glade that you are related to Autodesk so we all have the opportunity to have a more direct input to their softwares. I always give my opinion regarding my experience, that for sure will be different than yours.

How do you come to the conclusion that i'm related to Autodesk ? I'm not related to them at all, except that i'm a Max user since 2000 and a Max beta tester. And yes, maybe i used too strong wording of you being wrong, so sorry for that.

But there are so many nostalgic Max users out there who worked in the past on their lowpoly, undemanding scenes and still have those in their nostaligc memory as pinnacle perfomance. And they compare that with nowadays demands and while blindly loading unoptimized scenes with millions of polys and thouseands of unorganized nodes, and maybe having those slow like slug Autodesk Materials applied to each of them...

Edited June 22, 2016 by spacefrog

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well, I guess that because sometime you write as 'we' worked on this or we will release this or try that. To me it sound like you are part of the testing or end coding. Well my mistake.

 

My critic to Max viewport is because , even tho we used to do 'simpler' models but some way I am ways involve in master planing so it is always a struggle to do millions of trees cards buildings and so on. Then Autodesk promote x2 or x5 or x10 times faster viewport and in reality, maybe it is a two? or give you mroe problem you didn't have before. When all other software around had better performance. Softimage, Maya, even when MODO came out I was really impressed how consistent viewport performance was.

Thankfully nowadays thanks to hardware and better coding Max is having a very competitive viewport in my experience. Little test on 2017 look very promising, tho needless to say all those highlights roll overs just kill the viewport when you have large scenes.

 

As a long Max user I learner the hard way to optimize everything and yes this play a big part in better viewport performance.

That's why I do not believe in the BEAM-topia of REVIT-3DMax that they try to sell us. it is not that easy.

[Josef Wienerroither]

Softimage, Maya, even when MODO came out I was really impressed how consistent viewport performance was.

Thankfully nowadays thanks to hardware and better coding Max is having a very competitive viewport in my experience. Little test on 2017 look

Try to repeat your tests nowadays with really polycount heavy scenes or many nodes. See Modo's performance fall apart, making the whole scene unmanageable, Softimage's too ( but thats clear as it has'nt been updated for years ) and even Maya struggle due to the high poly count.

Try to not only pan the viewports but try to edit a 10 Mio poly mesh in a multiple nodes scene ( if you are patient enough to wait for the node selection to catch up ) . Of course each application has areas where it shines compared to others, but raw viewport performance in Max 2017 is currently unbeatable, be it Maya, Cinema or Modo

 

If you build a million tree billboards using single nodes, every system will fall apart. Or if each one has a seperate material. There are cetain rules to apply to make best use of the GPU. Similar to the rules one has to obey for game engines, and the Max and Maya viewports are far nearer to a game engine than they were 5 years ago...

 

BTW: I don not understand the Beamtopia REVIT - 3ds Max reference - whats that about ?

 

BTW2: i cetainly never said "we" are working on something, maybe "they" are working on something or a "problem'" is worked upon...

 

Last Edit:

I try to step back a bit , as rereading my post again i think i start to sound like a fanboy

Edited June 22, 2016 by spacefrog

[Francisco Penaloza]

ha ha I think we already hijacked this thread any ways

My first comment I meant to point to Max 2014 and not 2014, never edited the comment maybe I should. So my major complain to Max viewport was for Mas 2012, again its been getting better, I agree with that.

 

It was not Beamtopia, but BIMtopia, typing on my phone always create a misunderstanding. My point was, that optimizing scenes is very important, as you mentioned too. Hard labor that has to be done if you work in large or complex scenes. the BIMtopia comment refer to Autodeks publicity that you can use one click to export from REVIT to Max to get high quality renderings in no time.

 

When in reality, it is not that easy. any ways, enough of this I guess

Cheers.