Need help bringing heavy object to 3ds max

Wintersun

Hello there guys. Recently we got a Catproduct file that we're supposed to bring into 3ds max and work on it. the file was exported in different formats(stl stp iges) yet it was very heavy for my machine to open it (16gb of ram). so then I searched a lot and found out we can use autodesk showcase to import the model and since it has fbx exporter, we can export it as fbx and use polycruncher to optimize it and then import it to max and work on it there.
I've encountered numerous problems since. Polycruncher batch optimizing has been so much help for our company For so long but this time as the model is in different meshes I can't use weld option in pre optimizing and so the optimizing can't do much. the model isn't very heavy cause it has only around 1.4M polygons but I think because it is in like 2000 meshes max almost crashes opening it and polycruncher can't optimize it since the neighbor elements aren't in the same mesh it can't weld them and the optimization can't do much. after optimizing it just brings the mesh from 1.4M to 1.3M even after 9 levels of reducing.
Okay sorry for the long post, any suggestions on what can I do?

Bartalon

If you have ZBrush, it should be able to handle 1.4m points no problem, and you can do welding and decimation in there as well as send your model straight over to Max or export as an OBJ.

Noors

I'm not sure what you're asking. From what i understand, you have now the model correctly imported in Max, and since everything is detached, you can't optimize a lot. Max should handle 1,4M tris and 2000 objects easily.
May the objects be attached, welded and optimized ? This really depends of the structure of your file.
stl stp iges are CAD formats (NURBS). I don't know Showcase and its options. Max importer sucks, I know moi3D and deep exploration do a good job for CAD to mesh conversion, with options to control the number of tris.

Wintersun

Well Thank you for the quick replies.
Bartalon I forgot about Zbrush I will try that thank you.
Noors Yea you see the problem is max can't handle it, I don't know why, but showcase could, although very slow, but it could. so I used the free trial of showcase to import what parts that I needed and export it as fbx for 3ds max. yet it can't handle it. it can't open it. and if it could... imagine trying to select all the objects attach them together select all vertexes and weld them together. YOWZA! it could take forever when it can't even handle importing it. I will try those moi3d and deep exploration hope they are free or atleast lowcost . Thank you both hope the methods mention solve my problem. I have wasted a lot of time already.

SonicBlue

You can try with MeshLab an its Quadratic Edge Collapse Decimation.

The software is Open Source.

GlowingPotato

In maya you can exporte using maya alembic and then import using GPU cache, to easily import a mesh with more then 10 million polygons (depend on your GPU cache size.)

Idon't know if max have something similar to this.

Wintersun

Thank you all for the responses. Actually I worked it out this way : first I converted the fbx file to obj using the autodesk converter. Then I used Zbrush and welded vertices there were about 20K unused vertices and like 550K overlapping. It came down to 500K polys and max could easily handle yet I have surface normals problems, they are randomly flipped and I'm trying to unify them. the unify normal in normal modifier doesn't do anything.

Wintersun

Actually this script did the trick. now the faces are almost unified.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/unify-flip-normal-polygons

Thank you all for the helps I appreciate it very much.