Terrible IR regression with latest Forest pack 7.3

[Angel 1=2]

Hi guys,

As the  subject shows,  experience really, really slow  interactive render viewport regression/update with your latest version and corona 7.
That has been an issue in the past with ever since  version 7 was presented and was forced me to switch to earlier version 6 as the "automatic" camera clipping just does not work well.  For some reason version 7.1.2 was  way smoother than 7.3.
As far as can see  version 7.3 you enforce every single FP to use "aumatically" cameras for clipping.  That's terrible decision, especially considering  the clipping features with Forest pack are known for years for bringing huge viewport /fps regression.
How come the clipping is automatic now? What is the point? It might work for fairly simple scenes, but do you understand what nightmare it becomes when one opens a scene  with 20+ Forest packs for revision?

Going to switch back to previously working version, which did not give so much trouble and will write if experience the same issue!

[Angel 1=2]

Update:

Afterter 1 full day of dealing with the forest pack objects, switching between 3ds max 2020 and 3ds max 2022, and FP 7.1.2 and FP 7.3.0. here is the experience

- the  scene behaves equally bad regardless of FP version
- the real culprit in relation to corona camera  interactive rendering regression is not the amount of objects or scatters but  the " Limit to visibility" being turned on within "Area" settings of few FP scatters with  several million objects. Also encountered that if  the latter is turned on, the FP lister showcases different number of objects  for the specific object selected, like jumping between those numbers.

Attaching link to the problem. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kAS9EX9_sURNqB7Htvz-nsCuP5OmWtSP/view?usp=sharing

Have also noticed that  FP 7.3.0 gives a message within camera settings " If empty, camera is selected automatically from render view". What does this mean - FP picks up the camera automatically  and clips or  does not clip if  no camera is present.

For the record - the project has been initially done with FP 6.x.x and 3ds max 2020. Resurrected after two years and with new software version same scene  behaves rather different.

[Paul Roberts]

Hi,

Thanks for your comment - sorry to hear you are facing issues. You can disable the camera clipping feature completely by turning off the Limit By Visibility option from the camera rollout. When it is enabled the current behaviour is that it will select the active view unless a specific camera is selected, in which case clipping is locked to that camera. Because of known issues with IR modes, there is also a separate option at the bottom that allows you to disable culling completely for this render mode, or to select which views are used for clipping.



I hope that helps a little,
Paul

[Angel 1=2]

Thanks Paul!

So basically these two options work together and have to be turned off if one aims at working with IR?
 ...Or keep the Limit to visibility off and have Enable in Viewport ON, to speed up the specific FP(generates less objects).

Is there any way to bring any of these two options inside the FP lister.
It is rather tedious process to go through all the scatters and turn on any of these features, especially when in many cases  we have to merge objects from other scenes, usually done in the past with different options being active in relation to the Camera clippings.

[Paul Roberts]

If you have limit to visibility off, you shouldn't need to touch the enable on viewport option as no clipping should be taking place anyway. On the other hand, if you do want clipping for final render, but not while you are previewing interactively you would enable Limit to Visibility, and disable Enable on Viewport/IR. I hope that makes sense. I'll add the idea of adding these options from lister to our wish list. You can quickly enable/disable these options using the following maxscript one liners.

With Forest Objects selected

To turn off limit to visibility

Code: [Select]

for obj in selection do if (classof obj == Forest_pro) then obj.camlimit = off
To turn off enable in IR/viewport

Code: [Select]

for obj in selection do if (classof obj == Forest_pro) then obj.camviewport = off
I hope that helps,
Paul

[Angel 1=2]

Thanks for explanation!

Actually, just checked the ForstPack toolbox script which has both options and one can control them there fairly easy.

Thanks once again!