Improving Animation Performance using Maya's Profiler

Profiling your animation scene using Autodesk Maya's Profiler tool lets you locate performance slow-downs by recording and graphing the amount of time consumed by each process.

Note: You must have Autodesk Maya 2016 (or more recent) to use the Profiler tool.

Profiling is a process calculating how much time and resources are used to complete certain processes. It is useful for finding inefficiencies that are slowing down your productivity.

You determine when to start and stop recording in 3ds Max software. Your recording is saved as a text file and then loaded and viewed in Maya software.

Graph your events in one of the following ways:

• Category view: displays the activities for different categories such as XGen, Bifrost and Qt. This is the default view.
• CPU view: displays the activities of each of your processors. Select this view to better evaluate multi-threading.
• Thread view: displays the activities of each of your threads. Select this view to evaluate all the activity on a single thread.

Creating a performance profile

To create a performance profile:

1. Open the MAXScript Listener window.
2. Select MAXScript.
3. In the output (white) pane, type SetEnableProfiling(true).

   The word True appears in blue below your text.

4. Perform the task you want to profile (animation playback, load/save, curve manipulation, parameter changes, etc.).
5. In the MAXScript Listener output pane, type SetEnableProfiling(false).
   Note: If you do not stop recording, it automatically stops when the buffer is full.

   Recording stops and the buffer clears.

   The file 3dsMaxProfile.txt is created with the profile information in your temporary directory, C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp.

   Note: The AppData folder may be a hidden directory.

Opening a performance profile in Maya

To open a performance profile text file in Maya:

1. Launch Maya software.
2. In the Window menu, select General Editors and then Profiler.

   The Profiler opens.

3. Click Load, and then navigate to and select your performance profile text file.

Common Profiler tasks

The following table provides a brief overview of tasks using the Profiler.

To...	Do this...
Switch among different graph views: Category view, CPU view, and Thread view	Use the hotkeys 1, 2, 3 to switch among view modes. These options are also available from the View menu.
Navigate in the draw region	Shift + Alt + right-drag up/down to zoom vertically. Shift + Alt + right-drag left/right to zoom horizontally.
Increase the size of the recording buffer	Enter a larger value in the Buffer size attribute.
Show or hide specific events in your draw region	Right-click in the draw region and select among the hide and show menu items.
Isolate or un-isolate a segment	On the segment bar, click on the segment that you want to isolate. Click it again on the segment bar to un-isolate it and return to the default view.
Find an event in the graph	Use the search box.