Assigning Core Power in 3DS Max

Cdawilliams

Using Mental Ray Renderer - Where is the option to see how many cores 3DS Max is using to Render? And, to assign more Cores if not using all. I know where to find it Maya, just struggling to locate in 3DS Max.

Currently using i7 3930k 6core - Overclocked to 4.1ghz.

Ace-Angel

Mental Ray will automatically use all the cores available, it's Scanline which doesn't use.

Also, you can't configure these options in Max last I checked.

r_fletch_r

Yup. max just takes everything that it can. If its not using all your cores the rendering task your doing isnt threaded. Its funny generally the complaint i allways hear about max rendering is it makes the system unresponsive.

Frankie

If you wanna know for sure just check task manager. Shift+Ctrl+Escape.

go into performance and see if all your cores are 100%

if you want a core free to do other stuff go back to processes, RMB on the process and do set affinity and untick some.

If you want to do this on startup you can start the program from cmd with "start /affinity (n) program.exe" where (n) is a hex mask

cptSwing

^ will give that a try, thank you. I for one would like to tell max NOT to use all my cores

Ace-Angel

r_fletch_r wrote: »

Yup. max just takes everything that it can. If its not using all your cores the rendering task your doing isnt threaded. Its funny generally the complaint i allways hear about max rendering is it makes the system unresponsive.

Don't forget when Max ends up flooding your RAM, fun time for a nice reset :poly124:

poopipe

you can stop it using as many cores as you want but that isn't going to stop it eating your memory.

when rendering with mental ray I find the best use of my time is to go and do something else..

Frankie

If you're using all your memory on every render you do you need more memory. Simple as

sprunghunt

Frankie wrote: »

If you're using all your memory on every render you do you need more memory. Simple as

if you're not using all your memory on rendering you're not trying hard enough

cptSwing

Frankie wrote: »

If you wanna know for sure just check task manager. Shift+Ctrl+Escape.

go into performance and see if all your cores are 100%

if you want a core free to do other stuff go back to processes, RMB on the process and do set affinity and untick some.

If you want to do this on startup you can start the program from cmd with "start /affinity (n) program.exe" where (n) is a hex mask

hah, i had forgotten about your tip, researched it myself, wanted to come back here victoriously and post the solution.... self-ninja'd.

thanks again, i can now confirm that it's working exactly as planned