Have I Been Modeling Wrong My Whole Life?! | 3ds Max

[@rothauspils123]

"Is turbosmooth actually a finisher modifier" I swear when I started Max, this is how I was taught to use turbosmooth. Do your modeling, then turbosmooth at the end.

[@kirilognenov]

Now it all makes sence why converting everything to mesh before doing an animation on a scene would always result in faster renderings, faster scene buildup etc. I love that you tackle stuff like this keep it up 🧐

[@cruzefx3652]

Never knew about that, I'm just beginning to do animations with corona and max, do you know how much of an impact converting makes?

[@kirilognenov]

@@cruzefx3652 Genarally what i've found through the years is that making the models mesh, having less modifiers floting around and even merging models and using less groups makes the entire scene alot easier to parse, render. Also the entire ram usage reduced alot. I always said to myself for sure its turbosmooths and modifiers but it turns out there was more to it :D

[@cruzefx3652]

@@kirilognenov I'll start to do some tests with that, never thought about this being an issue, I always avoided attatching things

[@jangrashei1752]

I work heavy engineering models that often ends up taking several GB hd space, collapsing modifiers and especially ending up as editable mesh saves a lot of space! I highly recommend making it a habit converting heavy "dumb" objects to editable mesh.

[@bond1_mjblosser]

I like using the "Turn To Mesh" modifier on top of Edit Poly/Editable Poly, especially on skinned models, right below the Skin modifier. I kind of get the best of both worlds, I can keep it as an Editable Poly, but get the viewport performance of Editable Mesh.

[@UnKn0wn86]

Weird, I just tried it and seen absolutely no difference. Still getting like 2 fps with a complex skinned character, unless I isolate.

[@bond1_mjblosser]

@@UnKn0wn86 I guess how much gain you see depends on the complexity of the character. On a 50,000 Editable Poly character I get 16fps, but when I add the Turn to Mesh modifier it jumps to 30fps. So definitely a noticeable difference when animating.

[@UnKn0wn86]

@@bond1_mjblosser Weird... do you put under skin mods? I have 120k+ characters, and when I put Turn to Mesh under skin, I actually get an FPS drop from the usual 10-12 to 7-8.

[@changsooeun]

OK... this is actually not true. If your model is poly, leave it as poly. What you do is 2 conversion. Poly > Mesh > Nitrous Mesh. If you dont add Turn to Mesh, it will be poly > Nitrous Mesh.

[@bond1_mjblosser]

But the skin modifier evaluates the geometry as an editable mesh this way. I've been doing this for years and viewport fps stats back it up. Stack order: Skin>Turn to Mesh>Editable Poly. I get a nice fps boost without having to collapse to Editable Mesh. Probably depends on the rig though.

[@cuaker]

Interesting video! I didn't know that EditMesh was more optimized than EditPoly. Thanks! Also, I think your face is hidden in the fifth board game visible on the top shelf.

[@3DRnD]

as i understand, every time you add a modifier a new instance of the same object is created inside of max, for example a scene with one object which have 5 modifiers = 6 objects inside max, so my advice is if you finish modeling an object its better to collapse it into editable mesh and keep a saved copy with all the modifiers as a separate file.

[@WaspMedia3D]

Great explainer! Very important to know when working with poly heavy scenes.

[@nejcskufca]

I would be very interested in seeing some benchmarks on this topic, as I imagine the effect in a large scene is cumulative. I imagine this affects viewport performance and pre-rendering compile times, but what about render times? It could be very handy to know, especially for anyone working with animations. Good job on the technical deep dive!

[@changsooeun]

For static object, , you will not see much difference since Max hold the result as internal cache. Pre-render time could be effected. But, 1-2 second slower wouldn't be noticeable. Animation, yes. I have a scene, the most slow down actually comes from frequent mesh/poly conversion.

[@nejcskufca]

​@@changsooeun Extremely useful information, thank you for clearing that up!

[@whiteghost8244]

Default Box has 12 polygons when you show statistics (7) although we knew Box has 6 polygons. the polygon count changes upon stack like you mentioned mesh modifier or poly modifier. Mesh modifier shows double the polygon number than edit poly modifier. Although we check polygon count on big scene using show statistics 7, we can't get the exact polygon count because each object might be editpoly or editmesh. I think that's because mesh uses face count instead of polygon. One thing that I like about mesh is having auto edge option that is look like SketchUp viewport. SketchUp Viewport only shows structural edges or hard edges that look very clean in viewport and my boss like it (SketchUp). When I shows 3ds max viewport to my boss, she confuses the edges that are not structural (hard) and not necessary for viewport checking. These are some infos that might relate to your video. Also, if you have solutions for this ( especially showing to non 3D people ), let me know. Thanks!

[@changsooeun]

If object is mesh, every triangle is poly/face. A quad in mesh is just 2 triangle with 1 edge is hidden. If you convert it to editable poly, a quad is 1 polygon. Thats how the data structure works.

[@Kreative3DMedia]

Arrived late again...on top of the zombies cover, as reported below. Anyway, I really love how you dig deep into subjects that are always overlooked, even if they cross our mind all the time we use max...and ask those questions that we usually never dare to ask 😅

[@anujraghav]

Edit mesh can have non-manifold geometry whereas edit poly cant . create simple plane with 2 length segments and 1 width segment , apply edit mesh and extrude the center edge . now try to do same with edit poly or apply editpoly on top of edit mesh ...it will detach the extruded plane to create manifold geometry

[@IskanderVFX]

Interesting, never thought about it, I almost always end up turning everything to edit poly

[@tionanima]

If there was a plugin that displayed a letter P = editpoly and a M= edit mesh next to the modifier in the stack that would make managing this so much easier

[@RenderRam]

I was thinking the same thing, I mean over time you'll learn what is what, but it would be very practical

[@koberko]

I think that if you have a stack of modifiers, it doesn't matter if you add turbosmooth at end; It still has to keep in memory all previous states (and edit poly being one). So in my opinion (I haven't tested but will), Editable Mesh only has better performance if you collapse everything to it in comparison to collapsing to edit poly. Point of having stack of modifiers is that you can go back to any of them at any time and change some things, but that also means that Max has to keep in memory all previous states to be able to "go back". And every single stacked modifier, adds up to RAM usage. Now, again, this is my logic about it, so will need to test it out ;-) Now, as for viewport performance, that's a different thing; for that it might be beneficial to "end" with edit mesh. But also, need to test it out.

[@hotlineoperator]

A topic that should be explored more is parameterized modeling, i.e. changing values ​​generates 3D models. These values ​​can come from external sources. This is key to modeling large entities or models with a lot of detail that is slow to do manually.

[@frankyhp]

I wonder if today does it really matter? I mean, for creating proffessional work, we all have very powerful computers... I don't know in what situations this conversion tax really slows the scene... Maybe when you are working with forest areas or something similar, but scatters manage this very well with instances.

[@changsooeun]

If you only model, it actually doesn't matter that much. But, if you animate, it matters..

[@CGIwarmup-ox7kl]

To me, open subdiv slows my pc with the data channel modifier. I prefer turbosmooth for switching back and forth to see end result...

[@loganfoster7911]

Use Mesh if you are rendering. Use Poly for everything that is about mesh manipulation.

[@Foxtrop13]

goddamned taxes are everywhere

[@adiiiiii1]

I thought the only difference was in the Modify panel. But recently I found out that if I convert my model to Editable Poly and export it to Blender , it won't triangulate ngons well, so they usually show as empty polygons. With Editable Mesh I had no issues so far. So compatibility with other software might be the difference as well.

[@changsooeun]

This is because each program have different way to triangulate polyons. In mesh, a face is always triangle. So, there is no chance that can change. If a polygon has 6 edges and especially not flat, each DCC could generate different triangle for rendering.

[@adiiiiii1]

@changsooeun yes, but I was pointing out how Editable Poly and Editable Mesh behave differently in this case.

[@changsooeun]

@@adiiiiii1 Yes, this is why you better export as mesh all the time.

[@sajeevan26]

It’s clear now 😊

[@jd3d_cgi]

I would have thought that the efficiency of the modifier played a stronger role.... also, I never realised this because I always right click - collapse to editable poly.

[@changsooeun]

If stack is all poly, it doesn't matter. Max interally caches the result of stack for viewport. Essentially collapsing.

[@laurynasdvareckas7654]

hmm in some tutorial i heard that each editpoly is a copy of the mesh. from experience that does seem true. if it is, adding so many modifiers to save the conversion tax, might be counterproductive. Very helpful video non the less. I know more about modifiers and edit mesh now, Thank You ;)

[@RenderRam]

Maybe it was my tutorial also, where I talked about how modifiers reference each other, therefore duplicating the weight of the model in the stack kzbin.info/www/bejne/n6XKamh5oNSMY68

[@amit.chippa]

I learned something new today. I never knew this technical information. On the other hand, does this also reflect in the polycount? Turbosmooth has more polycount than OpenSubdiv. Can this have any relation to Editable Mesh and Editable Poly?

[@RenderRam]

Mesh is triangle based, Poly is quad based Meaning 1 quad polygon in editable poly will show up as 1 face, where that same quad will show 2 faces in mesh

[@hotlineoperator]

Also what model format is faster when embed them to other models in large amount, like shatter natural elements. Also what model format is faster to animate, what is faster to render, and maybe what model format create large files and require more memory to operate? Needs more testing this one is.

[@WaspMedia3D]

It's going to depend on a few factors (like available ram and usage) - but what I would do is use edit poly for modeling, edit mesh for simulations, animations that morph (i.e. characters) or when optimizing for large scenes. It shouldn't matter for rendering, except maybe in a polygon heavy animations that change the topography (morph) of an object over hundreds of frames there may be a small difference. I haven't really tested this but this is a logical conclusion based on the differences.

[@hotlineoperator]

@@WaspMedia3D I have use max so long that its part of my process try to optimize all models small as possible, otherwise large scene gets heavy.

[@WaspMedia3D]

@@hotlineoperator Yeah scene optimization is something that isn't talked about enough or explained enough - many users, myself included (long time ago - 15+ year max user here) tend to struggle with performance when starting out, strictly because they don't really know that optimization is an extremely important (and lesser known) part of working with Max (and 3D in general). You tend to learn it slowly over time. Good to see Vjeko covered this topic here and I hope he has more vids on general optimization in the pipe.

[@hotlineoperator]

@@WaspMedia3D Same here. I think that I have start with version 1.0

[@RenderRam]

I was working in field of 3d for TV commercials for 13 years with 99% of projects being animations, and we had one rule there - "If you render time per frame is over 1minute, something is wrong with your scene." So I gathered a few scene optimization tricks, and tutorials for those will follow!

[@Chromer.]

Bind "Editable poly" to any key and enjoy

[@armonts]

And when you have time for all this things to figure out ? :)

[@RenderRam]

oh man... hahaha, don't ask :D

[@chipshopstyle]

Never trusted Edit Poly ever. Or Editable Poly. Good old edit mesh whenever poss!

[@naxosCG]

Another strange behavior : Put a turbosmooth onto a mesh or poly, put 2-3 interations, then "Isolate display". If you put some poly-oriented modifyer on top (EditPoly for ex.), the geometry is totally fucked up. If you put mesh-oriented (EditMesh for ex.) no proble... until next turbosmooth or stuff like that...

[@naxosCG]

Turbosmooth with isoline display + editMesh is smooth, but all vertices are here, not all edges... Try extruding some curved faces...

[@RenderRam]

That's where I developed the hate for Isoline display

[@maxgordon3194]

we need a whole i n depth detial 3ds max reference volumes like we used to get back in the day. autodesk is turning shit

[@ConceptualVision]

Your face is on your shoulders.

[@SaeedRamzan-qy4hb]

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