[3ds Max] Symmetry + Turbosmooth file-size problem

Dubious_Fellow

Hi,

I'm working on the High-poly for a large model. It has a Symmetry and Turbosmooth modifier applied. The Turbosmooth has 3 iterations applied, and the model totals 30 million polys. The Max file size is 340mb, and although a little laggy, can be worked on in Max just fine.

I collapse the stack by deleting the Turbosmooth, converting the Symmetry to an Editable Poly, then reapplying the Turbosmooth, before converting to an Editable Poly.

This last step takes an hour (converting the Turbo to an editable poly). The model now has 16million polys (also 16million Tri's), and its file size has rocketed to a staggering 2.27gb.

This is now pushing my computer to its limits. Every action results in a minute's lag... Whats going on - why has collapsing the stack resulted in this mammoth file? 

Swordslayer

Modifiers are procedural so only the base object vert/face info plus the stack info is saved, the rest will be calculated on the fly. When you collapse it, all the new verts positions (3 floats per vert), map verts (dtto for each map channel), vertex normals info (calculated/specified/explicit), selection info, mapfaces, face SG info, vertex weights, edge weights and so on and so on will have to be stored in the file.

Dubious_Fellow

Swordslayer said:

Modifiers are procedural so only the base object vert/face info plus the stack info is saved, the rest will be calculated on the fly.

Thanks for the clarification. I've given up on that workflow (maybe wouldn't be an issue if I had an industry spec machine?). My lowpoly is symmetried so I'm hoping Painter will accept a symmetried highpoly for the normal bake.

-thanks for the scripts btw!

Swordslayer

My pleasure, thanks for using them