Hagerman & Company, Inc. Technology Bulletin

Ebul 81 - July 2009

By Joy Voltenburg,
Multimedia Consultant,
Autodesk 3ds Max Certified Instructor


 

Autodesk 3ds Max Design Tip

Speed up Revit FBX Renderings in Max Design

I would like to share a tip I got from a great colleague, Jennifer O'Connor.  Some of you may know Jennifer as president of the Northern Illinois Autodesk Animation Users Group in Chicago.  Jennifer, an Adjunct Professor of 3D Technology at College of Lake County and president of 4D Artists Inc., is about to publish her first book - Mastering mental ray for Design Visualization using 3ds Max Design.  Look for it early next year. 

She shared this tip on how to speed up Revit FBX Renderings in Max Design 2010.  I have found it works very well in both 3ds Max Design 2009 and 2010, and can be a tremendous timesaver.  The issue appears to be related to the pre-processing of Multi/Sub-Object materials. If when rendering, your scene takes a long time to pre-process or it appears to hang during the pre-processing stage, this tip is for you. 

Speed up Revit FBX Renderings in Max Design

A simple change in the DesignVIZ options can vastly improve mental ray Pre-Processing when rendering scenes imported from Revit FBX files.

In Notepad, open the file "CurrentDefaults.ini in your local User's files (typically at C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign\2010 - 32bit\enu\defaults\DesignVIZ.mentalray\CurrentDefaults.ini").

Search for the parameter 'DontRepeatRefMsg' and change it's value from 0 to 1.

Four lines down is the parameter 'InvalidateTMOptimization' and change it's parameter from 0 to 1. You should now have:

DontRepeatRefMsg=1
; comment comment comment...
; comment comment comment...
; comment comment comment...
InvalidateTMOptimization=1

Pre-Processing at the start of mental ray rendering should now happen in a few seconds instead of minutes.

You have to restart Max to accept the change. You should also edit the DesignVIZ.mentalray preset at your program installation folder, usually "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2010\Defaults\DesignVIZ.mentalray\FactoryDefaults\CurrentDefaults.ini"

Be sure to do the editing for both x32 and x64 if you have both installed. Editing the INI file in the Max installation folder prevents a change if you choose an option from the "Customize>Custom UI and Defaults Switcher".

 

As a quick reminder, you should always check to make sure you have the latest FBX plug-in installed.  You can easily determine if you are running the latest version by clicking on the "web updates" button at the bottom left-hand side of the import dialog box.  If you are not on the most up-to-date version, you will be prompted to click on a link where you will be able to download and install the latest version.  This plug-in is updated quite frequently, so check for updates often.