Maya Viewport Slows After Duplicating Object

TychoVII

I'm a super Maya noob and I've had trouble finding anything on this.

I have a real-time shader using standard tangent space normal maps applied to an object and I want to duplicate/mirror the object to the other side of my model. After I do that, the high quality renderer slows down considerably even when there's nothing else super taxing happening (like millions of polys). What gives?

Giant Bwomp

it could be behind the scenes stuff, try optimizing your scene and deleting your history before you do the duplicate

TychoVII

Yeah I tried deleting the history of the pieces, then I tried importing the entire mesh from Max (mirrored/duplicates and all) into Maya and it's still slowing down. I even deleted the mirrored pieces afterwards and it sped right up. So the scene is as fresh as it can be according to my limited understanding of Maya, and it's as slow as ever.

It does speed up, however, when I combine all the separate pieces into one mesh. I can't do this though since the model is required to be in separate pieces.

krimzondestiny

Well, if the poly count or history isn't the problem, it may be the Maya renderer you're using. Are you in High Quality mode? Machines with mid to low GPUs and RAM tend to slow down a bit when in High Quality mode. There's no real work around except for overclocking your GPU, which is quite risky. I would NOT recommend it unless you have the cooling technology to support it/know what you're doing.

TychoVII

I'm using the high quality renderer so I can view the normal maps in real time. I've got an i7 processor and 16gb of RAM, and everything else is pretty new, so I don't think it's due to a lack of computer power.

I just don't see why duplicating an object with a normal-mapped material applied and high quality viewport mode on would slow everything down. Does anyone else have this problem?

krimzondestiny

The things in the viewport don't use the CPU, it uses the GPU. Doesn't matter if you have an i7 or an i-95 until you render. Realtime viewing utilizes the GPU, and like I said, mid to low GPUs will slow down when you start bumping up poly count in High Quality.

TychoVII

Oh sorry, I read "GPU" as "CPU". I'm using an Nvidia Geforce GTX 460. It's not state of the art but it's still kind of up there. I don't think that would be the issue would it? It performs quite well in Max anyway.