3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

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3D Studio Max Plugin (Export Script Plugins developed by [gk] and KilaD; Integrated Plugin developed by Karba)
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby neonZorglub » Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:02 am

neonZorglub Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:02 am
Hi Jani,

Thank you for the scene and timing reports.
I'm glad that the main issue of slow rendering is fixed, but also puzzled like you as to where it came from exactly ..
I recreated a heavy scene with animation based on you scene and settings, but couldn't reproduce the issue..
It's likely that some deprecated settings are now automatically turned off when we open the Preferences or perform some action; I'll try to investigate more and add a message / warning if that's the case..

For installing older versions of the Octane plugin, without the installer, I'm not sure it's possible without some Windows permissions.. but you can try:

Basically, you just need to copy 3 files to the 3dsMax folder. (while 3dsmax is not running..)
That's where Windows might forbid you access.. or just ask you to confirm the copy..
To check that first, see if you can copy a dummy text file, to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\ (or the location of your actual 3dsmax)

Note that in Octane preferences, the Tools menu has 'Explore 3dsMax folder', that should open this folder for you.


Using 3ds Max 2020 as an example, the 3 files that you will need are:
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\octane.dat
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\octane.dll
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2020\Plugins\Octane3dsmax.dlr

You can find them in previous versions's installer file
Eg, if you unzip OctaneRender_Enterprise_for_3ds_Max_2020.2.1_-_11.06.exe, you will find
octane.dat and octane.dll in the root folder, and several Octane3dsmax.dlr inside a folder for each of the 3dsmax version
folders '$_3_plugins' and '$_4_plugins' for '3dsMax 2013' and '3dsMax 2013 Design'
up to
$_19_plugins and $_20_plugins for 3dsMax2021
(and $_21, 22.. for latest max2022..)

Not fully sure that this could help, but a tool like elevate.exe can run a batch file with administrator rights, so that could be a way to copy those files..
https://www.winability.com/info/elevate/


Also another idea, could be to install 3dsMax to a non standard location, (eg C:\myMax\Max2020), that you could copy files to without access problem..

I hope that helps
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby Jani » Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:29 am

Jani Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:29 am
Hi neonZorglub,

I appologise for the late response in the matter.

I would like to give you a massive thanks on the guidance of how to install 3ds max plugin without needing to actually 'install' it. It worked like charm! However, this is only because there seems to be a rule in the company to allow standard users to manipulate the contents of the 'Autodesk' folder within Program Files, any other attempt to add/change contents of the Program Files folder requires admin right. Which incidentally brings me to the problem which stems from that:

How can I tell the max plugin of octane to search for the standalone location elsewhere, outside of the usual Program Files/OTOY folder, so that I can update both of these without needing an elevation of rights? - to that end, I can say I've successfully updated Max octane plugin to the latest version (2020.2.3 11.09), and it works, however I still think that the plugin is drawing from the last version of Octane we've had installed, that being 2020.2.1, which is sitting appropriately inside the OTOY folder of the Program Files.

As for my other issue of forest pack taking a long time to update, it seems to have been solved by applying your settings, so a huge thanks for that!

Kind regards,

Jani
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby Jani » Tue May 04, 2021 6:15 pm

Jani Tue May 04, 2021 6:15 pm
Hi neonZorglub,

I realize the thread has gone a bit cold, however I've managed to come across another scene that has the same problem with rendering as the first one - scene geometry updating too slow.

This time round, the problem is still persistent, and I haven't changed any settings so you can see which one is causing the problem.

The files - the log, the scene with settings helper, as well as a video demonstration are available here: [url]https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nAe8vgRy-9NBZ3GsfCJA0uk2qlw4XlJ6?usp=sharing
[/url]

This particular scene is not confidential, so I can share it, however it is quite large so please let me know if you can see where the problem lay from what I uploaded, and if not, I will take the time to upload the whole scene.

Kind Regards,

Jan

//edit: I should add that the scene is light in terms of geometry, has small amount of animation, and a few forest pack objects(not animated), so this one really has no excuses for taking ages to load each frame.
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby Jani » Fri May 07, 2021 9:41 am

Jani Fri May 07, 2021 9:41 am
So I've saved a scene which demonstrates the problem for your viewing.

It is available here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... k2qlw4XlJ6

labeled 'problem.max'

This one suffers even when no actual geometry gets loaded from forest pack, as the first few frames contain no forest pack geometry before an animated shape object starts revealing it.

So the problem in this case is both octane viewport as well as max render view related.

Please help, as I need to have this project ready at least as a draft on Monday, and at current pace of rendering that's not possible(due to geometry load being slow)

Kind regards,

Jan
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby neonZorglub » Mon May 10, 2021 10:18 pm

neonZorglub Mon May 10, 2021 10:18 pm
Jani wrote:So I've saved a scene which demonstrates the problem for your viewing.

It is available here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... k2qlw4XlJ6

labeled 'problem.max'

This one suffers even when no actual geometry gets loaded from forest pack, as the first few frames contain no forest pack geometry before an animated shape object starts revealing it.

So the problem in this case is both octane viewport as well as max render view related.

Please help, as I need to have this project ready at least as a draft on Monday, and at current pace of rendering that's not possible(due to geometry load being slow)

Kind regards,

Jan


Hi Jani,
Thank you for your scene.
I checked the slow part of the evaluation step, and it's the call to forest pack start of frame rendering, for each time in the timeline..
I understand it updates and gather all information needed, (even if the objects end up not visible)
Then I request the list of FP objects, and process it, but that's quick..
I tried to remove this slow call in the past, for some cases, but several other issues did appear..
Sorry, there is no quick fix at this point.. I'll need to investigate more in deep..
Thanks
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby Jani » Tue May 11, 2021 9:59 am

Jani Tue May 11, 2021 9:59 am
neonZorglub wrote:Hi Jani,
Thank you for your scene.
I checked the slow part of the evaluation step, and it's the call to forest pack start of frame rendering, for each time in the timeline..
I understand it updates and gather all information needed, (even if the objects end up not visible)
Then I request the list of FP objects, and process it, but that's quick..
I tried to remove this slow call in the past, for some cases, but several other issues did appear..
Sorry, there is no quick fix at this point.. I'll need to investigate more in deep..
Thanks


Hi neonZorglub,

I thank you for the time you take to deal with my issue.

I understand I'm not very aware of the process that takes places each time a frame is loaded, but from my understanding of your post, would it be possible to create a workaround, where you could 'pre-fetch' all the data from forest pack for each frame in the timeline prior to starting the whole render? Then you wouldn't need for forest pack to send update to octane each frame as you'd have that data cached somewhere in RAM. I mean that has to be possible since when you export into an ORBX the animation data from forestpack is retained in that format right? So you don't need any plugin communication past the point of export.

I understand this may be an undesirable solution long term, but at least short term it would allow us to work around this issue.

Kind Regards,

Jani.
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby coilbook » Tue May 11, 2021 8:55 pm

coilbook Tue May 11, 2021 8:55 pm
Jani wrote:I have a problem with something I have noticed for a while now.

Basically, I have a file which has a bunch of simple geometry loaded in. Some of it is animated, but only using simple transforms, and the amount of objects within the scene is relatively low(up to 1000)

The scene also contains several orbx proxies of a piece of machinery which consists of 8 objects, which together amount to 17 million polys. The animation only has 1 animated camera, spread over some 8500 frames.

The problem is this: Octane viewport is smooth, with the animation playing in almost realtime(sub-second geometry re-fresh). So if I set up octane to give me 1 second draft renders, I expect it to take 8500 seconds. However when I press the render button via Max, it loads the scene, renders, and every subsequent frame takes ~6 seconds. That is, 1 second rendering, and 5 seconds while it claims it's rendering, but isn't doing anything.

This problem of the discrepancy between interactive viewport and max's animation rendering has been present over several projects I've had to date, and I have no explanation for it. I feel like I don't even have the tools to properly isolate what's causing the problem. All I've managed to isolate so far is that it is caused by the heavy geometry of the machine. When it is disabled Octane behaves like expected: 1 second renders. When I enable ANY of the heavy parts, it jumps to 6 - 7 seconds. However what's interesting is that it doesn't matter whether I load in 1 or all 8 of the parts, it still takes the same 6 seconds(basically it doesn't matter if the scene contains 4 mln polys or 20). I have tried having the geometry brought in as .octprx proxy file, as well as just linked the geometry, as well as actual geometry. It doesn't matter, even if only one part of that machine is enabled, the time it takes to start rendering a frame is extended by 5 seconds. When I disable everything, and only keep that one piece of heavy geometry, the trend is reversed, and each frame only takes the one second I want it to.

Is there any way I can find out what is it doing during those 5 seconds? Are there any tools I have to see what needs optimized for me to do this? Why is octane realtime viewport not affected? It shows the same animation. Everything in the scene is set as 'movable proxy'. Gosh even an orbx export of the whole animation renders this no problem in standalone.

As this is not the first time this happened, is it possible to have a function built in that allows to have an animation render directly out of the interactive viewport? That would at least give us a guarantee that if a client needs to see a draft we can give it to them within the day.

Also, is there a way to have octane report to me if something is taking too long? Like if a single object is causing a delay of several seconds, or if there are any other delays which make what should be 1 second frame take 10.


Another issue I experience, but only lately, and I don't have a lot of time to investigate, is forest pack. When there ale multiple forest objects within the scene, even when they aren't animated, octane takes a few seconds to re-load the scene when using an animated camera. Even when nothing else in the scene is animated, or anything else enabled other than forest pack, it still causes a geometry re-fresh. This didn't use to be the cause a couple of versions back I think. This also happens in both, the 3ds max native animation render as well as octane viewport.

When I export forest object as orbx, and load it back in, it doesn't have that problem, but the Vram footprint for an orbx loaded back into max with forest data is a lot higher than using forest pack on it's own. Is there a way to fix this? Or at least find out what's causing the problem?

Lastly, can you tell me if there's any way I can revert to an older version of the plugin that doesn't require a re-install? The problem I have currently is that we've installed 2020.2 - 11.5 but I have a scene which we need to render and it contains animated texture transforms for opacity maps, which this particular version has managed to break. To install the new version it would take us to go to IT, and wait for a rather lengthy process for them to update the software for us, since we don't have admin rights(yeah I know.. big company). Is there a way for us to do this manually without requiring admin rights? Even if it's just for reverting to a previous version? For example, octane standalone doesn't delete it's previous versions and we still have access to those.

Many thanks for taking your time to hear my plea. I hope you can resolve at least some of these issues.

Kind regards,

Jani



Turn off UPDATE STATIC GEOMETRY and set itoo forest render mode to legacy if you use one. All animated objects must be set to movable proxies. Next frame should take 1-2 sec to evaluate
If you are using phoenix fd fire make sure create fire lights is off in phoenix rendering tab
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby Jani » Wed May 12, 2021 10:05 am

Jani Wed May 12, 2021 10:05 am
Hi coilbook,

You may note from the video I posted in the thread I already have static geo off for the rendering.

As for the forest pack objects, using legacy doesn't update forest animation, so that's no use to me. Basically I have an effect where a road is appearing in the middle of the fields gradually, which means I have to gradually make the forest pack object occupying that patch disappear. So far my tests with legacy forest pack have lead to animation not updating, though I suppose there might be another brute force setting for that(like octane scene persistency set to clear all nodes on render, or broadcast render frame change, or w/e).

Point is that this isn't the first time I've hit this brick wall with forest pack, and I'd like to know what causes that. Is it when forest pack has too many objects? Is it when there are too many forest packs within a scene? Is it if a forest pack is getting loaded in from an external file?

As a demonstration, I'm adding a video here where you can clearly see octane absolutely smashing an animation with forestpack, with 4000 animated elements, in real time. So there's no excuse for it not to be able to handle 10 times as much, even if there was a few seconds delay.

Here's the demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kVdhT_ ... sp=sharing


So please, let's try to be constructive and analyze where the problem is coming from :).

Kind regards,

Jani
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby coilbook » Wed May 12, 2021 1:26 pm

coilbook Wed May 12, 2021 1:26 pm
it looks like with direct mode you can use animated itoo mesh but then octane rebuilds every single itoo object in the scene. So octane treats animated itoo as static object rebuilding it every frame. We need octane to treat animated itoo as movable proxies. I hope they can fix it because we have animated cars as itoo and now we have to wait 20-30 sec every frame.
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Re: 3ds Max standard rendering slower than octane viewport

Postby Jani » Mon May 17, 2021 2:58 pm

Jani Mon May 17, 2021 2:58 pm
Hi neonZorglub,

Would you be able to please provide some sort of an ETA when we can expect this issue resolved? I don't want to push anything, but it'd be nice to know when we could see some progress, roughly speaking - i.e. would it be weeks or months?

Also, are you planning to integrate forest pack into octane's own scatter engine? Maybe using the native solution might give faster/better results?

Kind regards,

Jani
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