How many polys can 3ds max handle?
polycounter lvl 10
I know it depends on your system and ram, right? Just like zbrush I guess. I have a 32bit XP that has 3GB of RAM and a core2duo. What would be the maximun polycount my system can handle before max crashes? (In zbrush I think I can go up to 10mill polys). I'm starting to mess with hard-surface stuffs and I'm kinda surprised about the polycount that I'm getting, much bigger than I expected hehe. Thanks in advanced guys. 
Replies
Polycount on Max depends on RAM...for example my system can handle 60-100 million polygons (smoothly)...and I have 8 gigs + 64bit.
32bit + 4 gigs ram = approx 30 Million polys (second system)
if you work on hard surface stuff you'll most likely use the modifier-stack - symmetry, smooth, shell, push, various tranforms,...? that will add REALLY quickly and render your scene unstable.
in short - don't do it! break up the scene, use proxies for geometry (and textures!) whenever you can and save early and often.
Remember the difference between the geometry count in Z-Brush and Max. Z-Brush is normally counted in polys so if you have 10 million polys in Z-Brush its often almost 20 million triangles in Max V_V.
100million tris in max? ill believe that when I see it.
my workcomp with 32bit system and 4gig ram can barely handle 1 million.
The amount of RAM is definitely going to be your limiting factor there, if you've only got 3GB and consider that probably close to 1gb of that is being used up by system and other processes, only 2gb to use on Max is gonna fill up pretty fast with lots of geometry.
I think you need to talk to your tech department and... kind of let them know that they're doing it wrong.
4 gigs in a 32 bit system? Are they trying to mock you?
HA, never gets old
Yeah and a 32 bit system can only handle 3 gigs of ram so if you have 4, your pc is only using 3 gigs AND it should only be telling you there is 3 gigs in it.
I've pushed 26 million tri's in the viewport before using bounding boxes for the viewing mode and being very, very patient. Was just testing stuff really when this topic came up before but yeah I managed to bake an AO and normal map with r2t mental ray too.
E. g. What renderer and how it it set up, number of lights, what kind of shadows, number of objects, instances vs individual meshes, size and number of texturemaps and so on. Plus the question if you can get it to render in a reasonable time with the means at hand.
Now with 64bit and a lot of ram you are far less limited concerning the data size but time has still to be considered.