If all of those polys are in one mesh my viewport grinds to a halt. If the model is built in way that I can have a bunch of separate objects (not elements) then it's a lot faster. But for me that is 100% of the time, its not on again off again like you're experiencing.
If you have the material editor open (especially slate) that seems to bring max to its knees at times, I'm not really sure why.
As an animator it kills the viewport if I have the curve editor open which I'm not sure if you even touch or not?
It could also be hardware, if you're viewport is set to Nitrous and your video card isn't smoking its going to chug pretty good. Reverting back to another viewport driver might speed things up.
Also anything you have running the background could be slowing it down. I've seen on various max forums that people say using max and doing certain things will trigger their virus scanners to kick on and do some scanning which normally kills things. I think with most scanners you can exempt max from being scanned, which depending on where you are and what you're doing might not be an option...
also, if you are rotating via a camera (scrubbing the timeline of an animted camera) you should have your material editor closed if you have animated textures. max will render out the material spheres for each frame, which isnt neccessary.
I've ran 17 million polys on max with not so much as a slowdown, but sometimes it cripples itself at 10,000 polys with a lot of unwrapped objects. Really makes no sense to me.
I can usually run 1+ mil poly's so long as I have edgeed faces turned off. But breaking the model up into sperate objects as Mark mentioned above, hope this helps :S
Stressed UV's the ones which look like they've been shot into a singularity black-hole across the room.
Basically, ones that overlap in very small part of the UV editor, and which don't untangle, even with high relax values and require you to redo the UV's since they're a lost cause.
Replies
If you have the material editor open (especially slate) that seems to bring max to its knees at times, I'm not really sure why.
As an animator it kills the viewport if I have the curve editor open which I'm not sure if you even touch or not?
It could also be hardware, if you're viewport is set to Nitrous and your video card isn't smoking its going to chug pretty good. Reverting back to another viewport driver might speed things up.
Also anything you have running the background could be slowing it down. I've seen on various max forums that people say using max and doing certain things will trigger their virus scanners to kick on and do some scanning which normally kills things. I think with most scanners you can exempt max from being scanned, which depending on where you are and what you're doing might not be an option...
When I'm working with a really high poly model, I'll change autoback from 5 minutes to 20.
Im not sure but it feels like they destroyed 3ds max since version 4!
New features but still the old shitty code.Atleast it feels like that!
Also, avoid RT lights of the Nitrous, and make sure your UV's are NOT stressed or set outside the 0-1 space.
These right the top of my head kill Max's Viewport.
whats a stressed uv?
Basically, ones that overlap in very small part of the UV editor, and which don't untangle, even with high relax values and require you to redo the UV's since they're a lost cause.