I was excited about new Max release as the next hardcore Max fan. New version of my favorite software is never dull.

Even though the list of the new features is small, I was particularly excited about gPoly addition. For character animation, it seemed like a perfectly good step from the awesome speed introduced by nitrous viewports in Max 2012.

The main thing lacking in Max for a long time was a good way to playback character animation in real time. Even with fairly low poly character, the playback speed was lacking. Especially compared to Maya that could handle large scenes and characters very fast, maybe it’s because it lacks character studio or CAT, but that’s just pointless speculation. Max needed an animation boost and gPoly seemed to be its name.

Alas, that brings me to actually trying Max 2013. All the enthusiasm and greatness Max 2012 introduced was gone. Even though the viewports look similar, as soon as I loaded some of the scenes I worked with in 2012, the difference was noticeable.

Aside from looking worse than Max 2012, 2013 is roughly two times slower in animation playback speed. gPoly may still come through, right? It still might, but for the moment it does absolutely nothing. See the attached picture. If gPoly is added on the top of the stack it does nothing, as manual implies, where as if placed on the bottom of the stack- it either breaks morpeher on the face, or physique on the body or cloth simulation on the clothes. Isolating the character body (10,844 faces) for example (alt+q) and playing back the animation without gPoly, plays back the skinned deformation with 8fps. Putting “turn to gPolly” right above the editable poly ‘improves’ playback to 10fps with no actual deformations taking place.

The black viewport experienced in 2013 is mix map that mixes two mr physical sky maps. The same works fine in 2012 as seen on the pic- or rather it does show it as blue sky where as 2013 shows it as black. Using only one of the mr physical sky maps from the mix fixes the viewport, but breaks the actual render map.

Notice how Max 2013 better approximates shadows, most noticeable around the eyes. Still, the quality looks worse overall with the many breaks in the shadows that cannot be fixed even with 16x quality sample in viewport configuration.

Now for the specifications- the character uses separate body and head both using physique as the binding force to the biped. Head has morpher modifier with 10 morph targets and clothes he’s wearing are a baked cloth simulation within a cloth modifier.
***

So in short, Max 2013 makes bad situation worse by effectively halving playback fps on a mere 10k poly model.In addition, turn to gPoly effectively breaks morpher, physique and cloth rendering them and itself unusable.

To show that not all is bad, mr 3.10 introduced in Max 2013, renders a fast scene even faster. Well done Nvidia. I wish I could say the same to Autodesk.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

	Attachment

I’ve not touched gpoly yet, but your model looks to be a fairly low (i.e. realtime) mesh. The docs seem to imply that gpoly is intended for high resolution meshes, and will in fact give a faster playback on skins with turbosmooth applied (which I assume you maybe already have as the MR render is subD’d) - don’t ask me how that works, GPU magic I guess.

Described here:
http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/...21F-823E-C80E3F725FD8.htm

FWIW, I think Maya’s almost an unfair comparison to make against Max. Maya was built from the ground up on another platform (Unix) as an OpenGL application (DirectX is not so great in windowed environments). No idea what Nitrous is...hybrid? Maya’s codebase is also probably lovely compared to Max’s.

3DS Max 2010/12/13 | Maya 8.5 | MotionBuilder 7.5
Windows 7 64bit | 12GB | i7 980X 3.33 ~4.0 (Overclocked)
nVidia FX 3800 270.51 [8.17.12.7051]
Cintiq 21UX 2010
[3DS since DOS R1]

Pix10 22 April 2012 02:15 AM

FWIW, I think Maya’s almost an unfair comparison to make against Max. Maya was built from the ground up on another platform (Unix) as an OpenGL application (DirectX is not so great in windowed environments). No idea what Nitrous is...hybrid? Maya’s codebase is also probably lovely compared to Max’s.

Well well well.

You know, that one statement really sums up the overall speed and clunkiness of 3ds max.  If u have used both max and maya, you would understand why there is SOOOOO much truth to that statement.  Pix10 NAILED IT!!!!!!!!!!

Intel i7 3820 3.6Ghz 8 CORE HT / CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO / OCZ Vertex4 256GB SSD v1.5
Nvidia EVGA GEFORCE GTX 660 3GB v314.22 (Nitrous in max) / Dual Dell Professional P2311H 23" Displays
ASUS P9X79 PRO / G.SKILL ARES 64GB 1866 DDR3 / Antec…

Have you read the release notes, there are some performance killers in there that are about the fixed:

From Ken’s blog:

“Things to watch for

We are required to release to a fixed schedule, which means that some issues found late in the process are allowed to ship. So make sure you read the readme before you start using the release. We are aware of various performance issues that will affect some, but not all scenes and hardware configurations running Nitrous. The good news is that we have fixed the following issues, but they are not in the release. We are scheduling an update as we speak and I don’t expect it to take more than a month past the release to get into your hands.

Backface culled wireframe results in low performance
4 viewports is slower than 1 viewport
Maximize/minimize viewport is very slow
Massive number of textures can cause lag (can be fixed by reducing default texture size)
Large shadowmap can cause low performance (can be fixed by reducing default shadowmap size)

Based on our beta experience, a minority of you will find some scenes running slower in 2013 than 2012 because of the above issues. We’re continuing to work with the beta team to resolve all outstanding performance issues. We want Nitrous to perform better than DX9 in all cases, not just the majority of cases. Nitrous continues to be a huge resource sink as we fine tune it and maximize what it can do for us.”

Pix10 22 April 2012 02:15 AM

your model looks to be a fairly low (i.e. realtime) mesh. The docs seem to imply that gpoly is intended for high resolution meshes

While I have read this, I am somewhat confused as you may understand. If my 10k poly mesh character is playing back with 6fps, what will gpoly do to highres model? Allow it playback at 3fps?

Pix10 22 April 2012 02:15 AM

FWIW, I think Maya’s almost an unfair comparison to make against Max. Maya was built from the ground up on another platform (Unix) as an OpenGL application.

I know this, and both of those should make it run slower- not faster. OpenGL lost the 3d war about 6 years ago. Also, Unix based programs, should in general- run worse on non native platforms-like Windows or Mac. Whereas Max is both Windows native app, and it’s using d3d.

Pix10 22 April 2012 02:15 AM

No idea what Nitrous is...hybrid?

Nitrous is like a game engine run on directx 9.

Pix10 22 April 2012 02:15 AM

Maya’s codebase is also probably lovely compared to Max’s.

That’s about the only thing that makes the most sense. The archaic interface must be there only to scare people away, while the underlying code is neat and tidy…

timd1971 22 April 2012 02:12 PM

You know, that one statement really sums up the overall speed and clunkiness of 3ds max.  If u have used both max and maya, you would understand why there is SOOOOO much truth to that statement.

The thing is, I did tests on both Max and Maya extensively in 2007. Maya was worse in every category- modeling, rigging, animating, texturing, rendering- you name it. The biggest difference was just how much worse was it compared to Max. Now, some 5 years later under the Autodesk umbrella- judging from the online videos alone- Maya seems to have advanced past Max level, while Max was continually neglected past release 9, or so it appears. In online videos it would animate and playback reasonably dense character and solve hair- in a huge scene with a relative ease. That’s just insulting compared to where it was compared to Max, only recently.

However, that’s not the worst of it. Halving the mediocre playback performance from Max 2012 to 2013 is.

Jonathan de Blok 23 April 2012 12:31 AM

Have you read the release notes, there are some performance killers in there that are about the fixed

Thank you for that Jonathan.  I did read it, but none of those affect my scene. None of my objects are using backface culling, I dont have massive textures, I’m not playing back 4 viewports at once and I’m not using shadow mapped lights, nor did I increase nitrous precision above 1x in viewport configuration. Whats more, shaded vs realistic does nothing to improve framerate. In fact, 16x quality realistic rendering in viewport configuration plays back at the exact same speed.

That all tells me that nitrous is doing a great job- really - my frame rates for manipulating scene and overall responsiveness are great. Playing back animations is whats ruining my day. While I remember reading that nitrous isnt very hot for playing back animations in 2012- i was ok with it simply because of the overall improvements 2012 brought. Now, a year later and another Max release and they take the known Achilles heel of Max and accentuate it? And than there’s the gpoly addition that got me excited…

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

eodeo, I think the whole playback thing is most likely solved by something they forgot/was not ready yet, a nice checkbox screen to let the user, along with the new customized views set up for themselves a list of what viewport features they want on and off, and the ability to make user custom view modes. Nit. is great and all but I imagine it would FAR better for most if say for modeling and lighting you could turn on certain features but whenever you press play you get another (like for adaptive degrade)that you can set up knowing your tuning you viewport now for playback performance.

All in all I am happish with the release, while not a beta tester I can see (I think) where things are going and with a few more customization options and some frank +/- talks from ADSK about what things do and cost performance wise to turn on we will be in ok shape.

While there is a way to put in user requests for features, (I’ll put in my laundry list in a few more weeks with 13) One thing I think Max needs for the future is a consolidated an SAVEABLE, shareable user control/customization panel for all things Max with migration settings. One place to turn on and set up pretty much all the user controls. In talking about the above viewport playback above how many different places in max can you set controls for things dealing with interface control? Hint you will run out of fingers and toes LOL.

I’m pretty sure you won’t see any benefit to gpoly unless it’s below the modifiers in the stack. It speeds up deformers, so won’t do anything if the deformers are on poly object, then converted to gpoly after the deformation.

I’m not sure if Physique is supported. If you can, try skin instead. That does work with gpoly. I think morphers will work if you also convert all the morph targets to gpoly, but I’m not sure about that. gpoly does change vertex order so that will break morphers unless the targets also change the same way (so converting them all to gpoly should allow the targets to be reloaded).

You also have what looks like a very high res shadow from the sun. That’s known to be slow. Try turning the shadowing off and see if that makes a difference. Also any other viewport effects like AO and lighting from the background.

CARL_BRAUN 23 April 2012 03:32 AM

I imagine it would FAR better for most if say for modeling and lighting you could turn on certain features but whenever you press play you get another (like for adaptive degrade)that you can set up knowing your tuning you viewport now for playback performance.

My model has really low number of polygons, built specificaly so it can playback near real time. In previous versions of Max it was always usable. 13fps May not sound like much, but its decent. 6fps Max 2013 plays back, makes it unruly.

Whats worse, is that no viewport setting makes it play back faster, so it’s not nitrous’ fault, but Maxes internal.... whatever viewport problem. Using d3d, and not nitrous, boosts fps to a steady 7, while using wireframe mode in d3d, takes the playback close to max 2012 nitrous levels at 11fps.

CARL_BRAUN 23 April 2012 03:32 AM

I’m pretty sure you won’t see any benefit to gpoly unless it’s below the modifiers in the stack. It speeds up deformers, so won’t do anything if the deformers are on poly object, then converted to gpoly after the deformation.

I know this, I was just making a point that it’s not working anywhere in the stack, while it works better at doing nothing on the top of the stack, as placing it on the bottom breaks physique, morphs and cloth. I’m not sure what it isnt breaking- maybe skin- but I don’t use skin as it feels needlessly complicated compared to physique.

robinball 23 April 2012 04:55 AM

You also have what looks like a very high res shadow from the sun. That’s known to be slow. Try turning the shadowing off and see if that makes a difference. Also any other viewport effects like AO and lighting from the background.

The same settings work fine with 2012. Also, it’s not nitrous nice lookingness that’s causing the slow playback- its whatever’s under the hood. As I’ve said already above (I know its long) using shaded non realistic view does nothing to improve fps. Using wireframe boots fps for a mere one fps.

Also, I have 100+fps while orbiting, panning and zooming so that all tells me that nitrous is doing bang up job at keeping everything looking good while providing ample fps in Max 2012. In Max 2013, doing the same brings the fps to low 20. However, its still workable. Its whatever’s transforming the vertices that’s causing the major slowdown- or so it appears. In either way, Max 2012 is several times faster in both navigating the scene and playing it back. Also, it looks better as it shows background better than the blackness Max 2013 does.

edit- actually Max 2013 has much higher detailed shadows. Could be by higher by the same factor as it is slower. Too bad there aren’t any real controls for how big the shadow map is. The quality control in viewport settings does next to nothing when lowered. It does however, improve the shadows nicely once increased- without causing additional fps nerf.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

I get the impression that this is just the new direction of max - screw character modeling and animations. They have made no effort whatsoever to improve the situation and it has been progressively been getting worse, starting from 2012 it just became unusable because its so damn slow. Just too bad they didnt give us any heads up like “hey, your work has no future in this software so go find something else”, instead they have been feeding us false promises to keep us lingering around a while longer like the greedy corp that they are.

Anyway.. save yourself the grief and migrate yourself to another package, its just a shame that AD owns nearly all of them so cant really stick it to them either.

I’m sorry you feel that way Mr_Stabby. I expressly said that Max 2013 has some issues, while 2012 is working like clockwork. I too felt that Max was drifting away for the 2008-2011 (Max releases) period, but with Max 2012 Autodesk has done almost everything right. I’m certain that the blunders 2013 is experiencing are going to be fixed soon. I’m here only to voice impressions of the current release.

Max might not be the fastest when it comes to deforming vertices on an animated character, but it sure is the best way to go about animating one. Think there’s a better way? Try Max CS/CAT and than try something else.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

Just to put things into perspective my models are 3-10k polygons before subdividing and rigs around 100-200 bones with a few scripts around the shoulder/pelvic areas and around a dozen hiIK’s, if i animate the character in max 9 and play it back everything works smoothly in realtime, i can assess the motion without any need to render it or create a preview. Trying to do the same in 2012/2013 is a nightmare, just sliding the timeline marker to the right place takes half a minute even if there are no keyframes set, if i hit play i get around one every 60 frames displayed, moving the controllers takes forever since the motion becomes crazy choppy. I’d say that qualifies as completely unusable, there is no redeeming it with any feature since the core functionality i need is broken. Now in 2012 you could revert to d3d and still get around half the framerate of max 9 but in 2013 they broke that too so now its as slow as nitrous which is why i label 2013 the worst release ever.

If you think there is anything good about these releases as an animator then you just haven’t gotten to the absurdly low limit of their capabilities.