speed/memory Q's
4 messages in this thread
Hello,
Lofter trouble.
I just upgraded from 486/33 to a 486/100 (DX4) mainly because some of my
objects spent too long in the Lofter. Some of the objects takes 4 to 6 hours to
generate (!). They are panels with up to 100 differnt holes in them. I've
adjusted down all parameters to minimum for the res I need (I think). After the
CPU upgrade it still takes a couple of hours to generate the objects. I have
3DS r2. Will 3DS r3 be any faster? I have 16 meg RAM and there is no "page
faults".
EMS trouble.
I had a line in config.sys something like this: DEVICE=EMM386.EXE RAM ON …
etc. After the CPU upgrade EMM386 reported that it could not get a page frame
address and therefore no EMS memory. Instead of trying to find out whet the
problem was <g> I added the switch FRAME=NONE. Now 3DS starts and seems OK. The
question is: Is it OK for 3DS r2 to work with FRAME=NONE?
Morten.
>>lofter trouble?…
Hello Morten, and YIKES! Lofting panels with up to 100 holes in them??? Have
you considered approaching your problem from a different angle? For example,
do you really need a mesh object with 100 holes, or can you get the same result
by applying a complex opacity map to a simple mesh object? Or, could you loft
smaller sections and then combine them?
I don't know about the relative lofter speed of r3 vs r2, but (in my opinion)
you should get r3 anyway if you are doing any kind of serious work with 3DS
(and it sounds like you are!) There are numerous "must-have" enhancements in
r3.
Also, I'm certainly no EMS answer resource, but since I'm here: I too use
FRAME=NONE (with QEMM). BTW, most of the wizards recommend using QEMM instead
of EMM386.
JKJ
PS: if you would like another data point, email a .LFT file to me and I'd be
glad to tell you how long it takes to loft on a Pentium-66 using r3.
I've continued using FRAME=NONE and everythin seems fine so I guess its OK.
I can't use opacity mapping because the objects are supposed to cast shadows on
a background. (Hey, its 3D! <G>). Making separate smaller objects or turning
off optimization are a posibility, but that gives me a lot more faces and I
already got 160.000…
Morten.
>>lofting panels, the Shadow knows…
Morten,
If you were to use 3DSr3, you could apply an opacity map which will cast
shadows from a spotlight using the new ray-traced shadows. Then your panel
could be as complex as you want and still only use 2 faces (for a planar
object).
Would a planar object be OK for your panel, or does it have to have thickness?
Have your tried Create/Object/GetShape in the Editor to eliminate the lofter
completely? If you haven't, just use the shaper file exactly as if about to
loft, but bring the obj. into the editor in 2D. This should create fewer faces
than lofting. (Make sure to turn Shape/Steps to zero first in the shaper!!)
Just for fun, I made a panel several different ways. (This was a simple
rectangle with 9 rectangular holes):
Lofter (3D): 252 faces
Editor, GetShape (2D): 74 faces
Opacity map (on 3D box): 12 faces
Opacity map (on 2D obj): 2 faces
Since the lofter will make thousands of narrow "slivery" faces for an object
like this, it may also take far fewer faces to simply construct a panel with a
number of overlapping rectangles, spaced to leave the proper holes between.
JKJ
PS, Depending on the scene/animation, there's another way to trick shadows
without actually casting them: make a shadow bitmap and apply it appropriately
to the shadowed object as a texture-mapped material. (Kind of tricky to get
right, though.)