Rapid texture iteration (max -to- PS update time.)

konstruct

OR how to make max and p.s. not sh*t themselves when using a 2048...

anyone have any helpful tips/workflow advice?

right now I have a model displaying normals in viewport, and that alone makes it chunk (especially when I hit undo). (Ive heard of another method of making normals show in viewport besides the metalbump 9 business and the dx-display/normal bump thing, but I cant seem to find any info on it anywhere.)

I have a gig of ram, which I figure might be a factor, ( I imagine it could be "THE" factor?)

But what I`m ultimately looking to do is speed up the update time, cause now it sits at 30-40 seconds to update the .tga I`m using in max. (could the file type be causing the slow down?)

any help on this would make 3d fun for me again :susp:

IronHawk

man what is your hardware specs? sounds like you don't have enough horsepower. loved your Maxx model btw.

konstruct

thanks man! Its been taking me WAY to long to make though- gotta sped up the workflow...

dual core 2.13GHz
1 gig ram
geforce 8800 gts
and some BIGASS fancy light up fanz in dat bitch! :poly128:

IronHawk

hardware wise that 1gb is the bottleneck. Sounds like you know that though. Gotta love those fancy fans too.. I've got some pretty Zalman ones myself haha.

XP can handle up to 3gb before it says no more and an extra gb deffinately improve performance. Can't say it will get you where you want to be but again that is a bottleneck for you right now. XP will take more if you enable a switch but its a mixed bag there. 64bit OS will handloe more ram.

I'd say try some more ram myself.

Good luck!

MoP

It should speed up if you stop using the default Max viewport shader display.

What version of Max are you using? If it's Max 2008 or above, then it ships with a custom fx shader called StandardFX.fx
You can apply this shader by changing the material type from "Standard" to "DirectX Shader", then browse to that .fx file from the material editor. Ben Cloward has a tutorial for that.

If you're on a version older than 2008, then it might not have that shader, so try out Ben Cloward's 3-light normal map shader or JIStyle's skin shader, both of these support normal/diffuse/specular and some other stuff.

All of them are faster than the default Max viewport shaders, and you should notice a great improvement without having to buy any more RAM etc.

Neox

well 1 gig ram is a bottleneck anyways, having more wouldn't hurt

Eric Chadwick

Another benefit to using Ben Cloward's or J.I. Styles' shaders is they properly solve tangentspace normal map seams. The ones that ship with Max do not, for some strange reason.

Jonathan

1gb of RAM, wow, didn't know people used such things still.

Mark Dygert

agreed, 1gb ram, ouch.

Also check nvidia for newer drivers. I know for the Quadro line they have a 3dsmax specific performance driver. I'm not sure it exists for the Geforce line... but worth checking into while you're there.

IronHawk

I should have also asked if your computer becomes sluggish overall and you notice more drive activity then usual. This would definitely indicate a problem with RAM.

Clowards shaders work great. I used them on my old rig with 1gb ram and an athlon 2200. I had to monitor my RAM on that rig cause I would hover at 88 - 97% with max and ps open at the same time working on models with a 1024x texture.

Heres a good article on ram and virtual memory. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223

The end of the article goes over how to identify a bottleneck.

konstruct

Damn I love you guys :P definatly going to do/try all of the stuff you guys are talkin about.

...even buy an ass ton more ram.