All posts related to V2
By rusteberg
#330229
short story: have particle system within max emitting 'smoke'.
when doing initial simulation tests (by itself), rendering performance had no problem.
when doing animation test with object (to emit smoke), had no problem.

when the two were combined in scene... Problem. (each involving 'default sky dome') *(granted the base object-whale contains no key frames for this test)

i've tried just about everything i could think of, considering displacement has been turned off with and without motion blur. separating particle system intersection from object. hiding object(s) from global illumination, reflection, cast shadows, receive shadows, etc.

considering i exported the (tested) frame to .mxs and it still seemed to have performance issues when rendering directly from MXS, i figured i'd post it here opposed to the max plugin section.... hell, i even tried drinking a beer and that didn't help.

below are visual examples to clarify problem... would greatly appreciate any help, and or, feedback to this described problem. hopefully this make sense... thanks in advance!

here is particle setup. you'll see that i added "negative" frames... tried with frame count starting at zero and still slow.
Image

object mesh with modifiers...
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object eyes have mesh that use position script to attach to base object... (just trying to give as much info as possible here in case of error considering there was an internal max error earlier when position constraint could not locate vertices due to "re-smoothing" and completely botched a previously saved file that required re-applying a new skin wrap modifier to address the issue)
Image

with everything as presumably planned. (the big problem seems to be during the .mxi writing process. even though i tried setting the .mxi write process other than "automatic" within the console... voxelization happens within a second)
Code: Select all
Voxelization 
[08/September/2010 17:56:24] Start Rendering 

Start writing MXI file... 
End writing MXI file... 
[08/September/2010 18:22:14] Benchmark of 0.595. Time: 25m49s. SL of 1.00 
[08/September/2010 18:22:14] Time left: 14h34m11s 
Start writing MXI file... 
End writing MXI file... 
[08/September/2010 18:25:51] Benchmark of 0.603. Time: 29m27s. SL of 1.13 

Image


with particle system emitter completely separated from object (granted, there is an emitter within the cigarette material, but even without emitter layer, results are same):
Code: Select all
[08/September/2010 19:53:26] Start Voxelization 
[08/September/2010 19:53:27] End Voxelization 
[08/September/2010 19:53:27] Start Rendering 

Start writing MXI file... 
End writing MXI file... 
[08/September/2010 20:16:45] Benchmark of 0.659. Time: 23m18s. SL of 1.00 

Image


with just "smoke" emitting particle system:
Code: Select all
[08/September/2010 21:25:58] Start Rendering 

Start writing MXI file... 
End writing MXI file... 
[08/September/2010 21:26:17] Benchmark of 47.262. Time: 19s. SL of 1.00 


Image


with just mesh:
Code: Select all
[08/September/2010 21:40:44] Start Voxelization 
[08/September/2010 21:40:44] End Voxelization 
[08/September/2010 21:40:45] Start Rendering 

Start writing MXI file... 
End writing MXI file... 
[08/September/2010 21:40:47] Benchmark of 368.640. Time: 2s. SL of 1.00 


Image


for all instances posted, here are render settings (although i've tried multiple variations and all containing both particle system and object seem to have the same performance issue):

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here is the same frame exported to studio:

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here is the result from rendering from studio. note that MXI had yet to be written, and voxelization happened at same rate.

Image


hopefully i'm overlooking something simple.... either that, or i'm off my trolley.... btw, the materials are not that complex at all.
thanks in advance for any help. hopefully this makes sense............
User avatar
By m-Que
#330257
What happens if you turn off the alpha channel to that smoke material?
Still slow???

THE REAL ANSWER: Maxwell is unbiased, physically correct render ---> Whales don't smoke ---> there you have it...
#330264
Mihnea Balta wrote:What happens if you hide one of the two elements in Studio and render? Is it still slow?
will try.
edit: tried it, and it still had same effect as before when rendering out of max.
Bubbaloo wrote:Did you try turning off "Use Max Instancing"?
yes, initially it was off, but had no effect either on or off.
m-Que wrote:What happens if you turn off the alpha channel to that smoke material?
will try with both objects having default gray mat and see what happens.
edit: thanks, m-Que. this seems to be what was bottlenecking everything.

here is the material that was causing everything to slow down (shown above, this took around 25minutes to write mxi)
the bsdf is a default lambert
Image


with this material, the mxi file was written quickly and sl 1 occurred within 16seconds with this applied to smoke and both elements visible at render time.
... seems something did not like the opacity coming from layer masking, preferring opacity to come from transmittance.

Image
Half Life wrote:Did you try hiding the particle system from GI?
yes, that was one of the first things i tried. i also even turned it off from casting/receiving shadows and even reflection visibility-with no luck.
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