Mesh, Editable Poly, File Size

[craigmonroe1]

I was researching ways to reduce file size and found that converting everything to mesh, as opposed to editable poly, reduced the filed by a good chunk.

 

My 25MB 160k scene was reduced to 15MB after a mesh to poly conversion. I upped to poly count to 227k (back to editable poyls) and it jumped to 34MB. Everything was converted to meshes a final time and the file was down to 21MB @ 454k.

 

What the...? I'm assuming that this is an old trick that I'm just discovering? Does everyone convert their stuff to meshes when done? And why on earth would the file be smaller with way more detail when saved as a mesh?

[Jose Negrete]

Have you tried the compress on save feature in the preference settings - files tab?

[craigmonroe1]

I have tried it before, but not with this particular file. Are there any risks like file corruption by doing that? Do people usually convert to meshes after finishing the modeling process?

[Jose Negrete]

I keep the file compress setting on and I dont usually convert to mesh.

[craigmonroe1]

Ok, thanks.

[Nic H]

yep i normally smash things to meshes when done

hate keeping stacks intact - save incrementally and go back and get them if needed.

more important to have light, navigable files tbh

[Josef Wienerroither]

What the...? I'm assuming that this is an old trick that I'm just discovering? Does everyone convert their stuff to meshes when done? And why on earth would the file be smaller with way more detail when saved as a mesh?

Edit Mesh is the simplest data structure for geometry in Max ( well there is even an lower tech internal one called "TriMesh" but thats not visible to the enduser) . Edit mesh holds only pointlist, edgelists and triangle lists and some properties, without any intelligence at all

Edit Poly is a more complex datastructure: it holds info about adjacent edges and other stuff, hence you can select edge loops/rings etc. Essentially this complexity is required to make all the great editpoly editing capabilities possible. Thats the reason why that datastructure requires more memory, is slower to display and increases the files size too

Usually you can convert to/fro editmesh/editpoly, with some rare exceptions, where this introduces geometry changes ( eg. you can't have 3 polies share one edge in edit poly, which is perfectly possible with edit mesh. Edit poly simply splits the geometry for you if it sees such a case)

 

Other than that: keeping the modifier stack intact is good if your edit is not final, but carries some potential danger that something might break later on, eg when selections down the stack get changed etc.. So it's always a good advice to collapse the stack if you are done making big changes to the geometry...