Number of faces

[Agarak]

Guys,

 

Need your help. Not very standard situation.

 

I am commissioned to do visualization for several cottages in a small new suburban village under constructioin. Well, that's not a problem. The problem is that the architect wants to have the models of cottages with as few number of faces as possible (using tricks on bumps, maps, etc). The reason is that the architect wants not only the rendered images to have them in the brochure. She wants the actual models of the cottages, which she will copy/multiply to make all in all forty models to simulate the whole village. And she wants to be able to manipulate - rotate, zoom in/out, change angles, etc - THE WHOLE VILLAGE in the Max working window (without rendering - for that purposes she doesn't need the textures, colors, etc - only geometry) - so that together with the other architects she will be able to see the "form and the mass, and how it looks in general". Well, what you would advise, based on your experience? Advising her to upgrade is not an option, I think, and real-time rendering won't work either for such a big collection... Should the models be created in some other package like CAD and importing into Max afterwards... Any help is very welcome...

[Ernest Burden III]

Its just a matter of OpenGL display and the rendering speed of the computer it will run on. Even a laptop can handle a lot of polys, as long as the screen res is medium. So the first most important information is the target computer. Is it worth her investment in a new laptop with the latest Gforce2Go chip and as much video memort as can be stuffed in there? This could be had for $2000. Or, for in-office display she could upgrade to a better video card for only a few hundred dollars.

 

Then, what is the display engine? If MAX, is it fast in OpenGL? Lightscape is, but I don't know MAX.

[plastic]

no problem with max.

you can use xrefs, or proxy geometry.

or low detail in the viewport, high detail for rendering (optimize modifier).