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How to Improve Performance 1099
sections for a rail shaped like an ’S’, because the
curvatureismoreconstant.
• If a U loft or UV loft doubles back on itself
unexpectedly, make sure that all the c urves are
going in the same direction. Click Reverse to
change a curve’s direction. Use the Start Point
spinner to align the curve’s initia l points.
How to I mprove Per formance
These are tips on improving the per formance of
your NURBS models.
• Avoid using point curves and point surfaces.
These are slower than CV curves and CV
surfaces. Use the point forms only when you
need them for construction; for example,
when you use Curve Fit to create a curve that
interpolates specific points.
•Usethenonrelational stack (page 1–1116)
feature in conjunction with the Shaded Lattice
toggle to improve performance while you
animate your NURBS model.
• Use Transform Degrade to hide surfaces while
you are moving, rotati ng, and scaling NURBS
sub-objects . The shortcut
Ct rl +X toggles this
option.
Yo u c a n u s e
Ct rl +X in the middle of a
transform, to turn on degradation if things are
happening slowly.
• Tur n off the display of dependent surfaces
whileyouarecreatingnewdependentsurfaces
or moving, rotating, or scaling NURBS
sub-objects . The shortcut
Ct rl +D toggles
dependent surface displa y.
• Trim holes only when you need to. For example,
when you connect an arm to a torso, you don’t
need to create a hole b eneath the arm, as it
won’t be visible anyway.
You can also speed up performance by turning
off the Display Tr ims toggle. The shortcut
Shi f t +Ctr l +T toggles trim display. The trims
still appear in renderings.
• For symmetrical models, create only half the
geometry, and then mir ror it. You can then use
a blend (page 1–1183) surface or ruled (page
1–1193) surface to connect the two halves.
• Restart 3ds Max when performance begins
to slow down. If your NURBS model needs
to page, then working with it for a long time
causes performance to slow. If you notice this,
save your work, close 3ds Max, and then restart.
• Convert point surfaces to CV surfaces whenever
possible.
• When you use texture surfaces, use the Edit
Texture Surface dialog (page 1–1230) (click
Edit Texture Surface on the Material Properties
rollout (page 1–1149)) to rebuild the texture
surface with the minimum necessary number
of UV rows and columns.
• U lofts are faster than UV lofts.
• Every type of surface is faster if you can make it
independent.
•Setthesurface approximation (page 1–1239) for
viewports to use the lowest possible resolution.
Set the renderer to use higher resolution, and
turn on View Dependent for the renderer
so objects far from the camera render more
quickly.
• You c an customize and save surface
approximation (page 1–1239) presets b y
using the Surface Approximation utility (page
1–1245).Thisutilityalsoletsyousetsurface
approximation values for a selection set of
multiple NURBS models.
Animation, Textures, and
Rendering
These are tips about animating NURBS models
and using textures with animated NURBS models.