Slow Viewport Performance 3DSMAX 2011 with complex materials

I have a 3DSMAX 2011 scene (directx mode) with many objects and when I assign complex Vray materials to the objects in the scene the viewport slows down to a crawl: 4FPS. When I apple a simple Vray material the viewport performance is about 40FPS. When I apply an simple Standard material the viewport performance is about 40FPS.

The complex Vray materials uses maps, composite maps and vray blend materials. Since VrayBlendMtl only displays one material there is no visual difference between the 4fps material and the 40fps material.

Is there a way to temporary disable the Vray material or show a different material in the viewport without having to reassign the material to the objects?

Shell material in standard materials may be helpful. It's a material composed of two materials and have very simple viewport and rendering selection checkboxes.
It is normally used in texture baking. It is automatically assigned to baked objects with one slot carrying the original material and the other a standard material with baked textures.
You can choose whichever you want for viewport and rendering.
Nevertheless you'll have to at least click to select all materials one by one to switch between material versions.

Best regards

Turning off the Viewport transparency from Best to None solved it. 4FPS --> 40/50FPS.

Viewport Configuration --> Transparency None

You could also go into display (the tv icon at the very right). Under "display color" change the "Shaded" to "object color" instead of "material color".

But sadly, the best way to bet better performance is to use any other 3dsmax version than 2011.

Good luck!

congrats!
Max have several viewport performance degrading properties. It's a real skill to find out what is causing the lags.

I wish there were a tool that displays at what level each scene element is degrading the viewport performance, like some browsers warn the user when an addon takes a long time to load.

The same will be good for rendering performance as well.

Thanks, I didn't know that one yet.

@Byteman3D: Yea, viewport performance seems to degrade in different circumstances without a clear reason sometimes.

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