3dsmax dopesheet is slow and halt?

If you ever experience a halt screen when trying to move/select the key in the dopesheet, disable the Option > Modify Subtree Keys. It should work like a charm after that.

I was mumbling and grumbling about it when I first encountered this but well.. it just I don't understand 3dsmax thoroughly... so let's don't blame 3dsmax and enjoy creative creation again! ^^

How to get maxscript info of Vray Object Properties?

It's very easy, simply pick any object from your scene, and run this:

getUserPropBuffer $

And now you have got the maxscript tag, how you gonna use it? Here's the example:

setuserprop obj "VRay_Matte_Enable" true
setuserprop obj "VRay_Matte_Alpha" -1
setuserprop obj "VRay_GI_VisibleToGI" true
setuserprop obj "VRay_GI_Generate" true
setuserprop obj "VRay_GI_Receive" true

Done!

Easy way to do tree animation

Settings below should give a general soft nice looking tree receiving wind:

1. Noise Modifier
2. X-Y-Z: 5-5-5
3. Frequency: 0.25
4. Phase = Your animation length, e.g. there is 250 frames, the phase = 250.

Easy, isn't it?

If you want to do a strong wind, you can accomplish it by manipulating FFD box control point to bend the tree beside doing just Noise.

Have fun~!

Freaking slow render time?

Tired of waiting for render? Want a faster render to save your day when doing animation? Try these:

1. Disable shadow of IES lights for those barely visible within the view. You still maintain the nice light spot while your render will fly now.
   
2. Use less Vray Plane Light for exterior scene, no matter it is sky portal or normal plane light.
3. Disable Generate GI for all plants & trees
4. Make sure opacity maps are configured correctly and try use lesser of it.
5. Despite losing some photo-realism, using Direct Light with sharp VrayShadow will drastically reduce render time.
6. Choose the right Sampling - however bear in mind that different sampling mode demand higher setting of Noise Threshold & Material/Light subdivision. Don't end up fooling around and get similar render time.
7. Instead of Irr + LC combination, drop out LC if you're fighting tight schedule. The quality is good enough that your client may not have spotted the different.

Cheers~

Bloody slow dope sheet?

Yes, dope sheet in default is bloody slow and I almost wanted to whack him until I found turning off "Modify Subtree" on the top toolbar would definitely gain back its speed and work normally.

Haiz... who the heck enabled that by default? Well.. it doesn't matter now.

3dsmax never start and what firewall does to it?

Have you ever open a 3dsmax that never get into the main interface? You probably have the raysat_server blocked by your newly installed firewall (yeah, especially ZoneAlarm!).

Simply enable it access to your trusted network (no, you don't need internet access for it) and voila! You have got your 3dsmax alive again!

For those who still can't access, halt & crash at loading mentalray.dlz, check whether you have block port 7000 or 7700. Try it, and you could save your life especially during crunch hours.

The evil hair&fur

Working on a simple vray scene, 80% proxies, 38mb filesize, some trees from Evermotion Vol 85. When you press render, DANG!!

Either it halt at the beginning of render or max crashed at the end of it, you scene probably haunted by the evil hair&fur!

After I removed the hair&fur (don't forget remove in the Effects panel as well), the RAM consumption goes down from 6GB to 2GB. Yes, 4GB, it is 4GB!!

The hair&fur when use improperly with Vray, it's really gonna kill. However, it doesn't mean you can't use it at all. Check this solution out, it may save you some time from hunting down the hair&fur in your scene:

Rendering Hair&Fur modifier with Vray