why so slow??
 

I'm new to Maya and have modeled a building with alot of polygon parts. As soon as I added a couple of file textures to some objects, it became SO SLOW. Every movement I make takes like 10 seconds to process...especially rotate, zoom, etc. I have a brand new IMac so it cant be the computer.

Any tips would be so helpful! I dont have the patience for this...!

Thanks!!

you might want to try deleting the history. I think it's under edit.

didnt help. Also some textures look distorted and objects disappear and reappear. Is this just normal for Maya? Or am I missin something here.....

Whahts the Spec of your PC?

Might be too much for it and the graphics card

^^ yea your computer probally just sucks.

My computer is...

2.16 GHz
1 GB RAM
Graphics Card- ATI Radeon 1600x 256 MB VRAM

Is this bad??

Scratch that.....2 GB RAM .....not 1

Seems ok, but depending on the number of polys you've got it still could slow your PC down. Whats it like with a simple scene?

kk your computer owns mine lol, yea post a wire frame picture can you?

nope, it is in fact that graphics card. ATI and Maya arent exactly the best of friends when it comes to working together, haha


ATI is not good for maya, lol

-Andy:beer:

really?? Does anyone else have ATI and if you do is it slow also??

Whats a good graphics card and how much are they?

Thanks so much for all your help guys.....I really appreciate it!

Nah, ATIs are all that bad. Guess it depends on how many polys youve got.

From my limited research, it is my belief that ATI supports a greater subset of OpenGL 2.0 than does the equiv nVidia card, for example. ATIs have had amongst other things, ansiotropic (sp?) filtering avail for quite a while. I've even got it on this card.

I've got a celeron 2.66 with 1GB ram and the _dirt-cheap_ ATI Radeon 9550 card, running two monitors. I've just tried a scene with 60 (identical) characters in it, for a grand total of 450,240 Tris. All of which are texture mapped with the same image.

In the viewport with both High Quality Rendering and Hardware texturing turned on, I'm getting 2.2 fps. When High Quality Rendering is turned off, I'm getting about 4.6 fps. I can get a 640x480 preview quality software render of the scene in 31 seconds.

The card i mention set me back the princely sum of $51!

Simon.

Yeah, I'd definitely invest in a new card. The Radeons aren't really supported. If this is just for 3D, get a FireGL or a QuadroFX card from ATi or nVidia, respectively. If it's for gamingas well, I'd suggest a higher end Radeon if you must have an ATi, or go with at least an nVidia GeForce 7800GTX. Or, try the card enhzflep mentioned, the 9550. I have to believe it is the rest of the power in his PC doing the majority of the work, so it may work for you, too. The software rendering has nothing to do with the gfx card, though.

Ok, so I guess my solution is a new gfx card....

I would love to hear feedback from other people about the best graphics card for my OS before I buy one....

I guess the consensus is to stay clear of Radeon?

may be a silly question but what size and type are the textures because that could be the problem here.

does it work fine without them?

YES it works fine without the textures....

Example of sizes....one is 450 x 711 pixels..... another is 3045 x 1080...

Is this too big?

About what size should they be?

I TRIED SMALLER TEXTURES AND IT WORKED! THANK YOU! :)

silly me.

But the quality of the texture is bad. Im not very good with photoshop....how do you decrease the size of a large high res photo without any loss of quality???

i havent been in photoshop for a while but i think you go to

image> image size> and then put in the size you want and it'll keep the quality

maybe im wrong but thats my vague memory :beer:

you would think its that simple...! But no....Ive tried over and over again....still poor resolution.......hmmmm....help!

Allo,
You should try turning the texture display resolution down. It is in the preferences options window. I have an ATI Radeon 9550 and it works perfectly fine.

Poor resolution or poor quality or both?

If it's resolution, well unfortunately, that's probably just the way it is.

If it's quality that's the issue, just ensure you're using a format that employs lossless compression. Jpgs would probably be worse than useless if the quality was not set up high.

I personally have something of a penchant for TGAs, though I guess TIFFs would be cool too.

But as far as texture resolution goes, have a look around at Gnomon Workshops. Alex Alvarez has written a great little article on how to determine the appropriate texture resolution for a model. This allows you to get the best out of your machine in terms of actuall viewable quality and speed. (there's no point using a texture with 5 million pixels if the model is never going to take up more than 1 million pixels in the final render etc.)

i`m so glad i could help


we resantly worked with a pro lighter who had worked on all sorts of movies (a vs p, charily and choc factory) and when he came in he told us

1) never have textures over 2048 x 2048 if you can help it.

2) never use jpgs - always tiffs or targ.

3) Never use layied textures from photoshop (saves loads of memory without them) always use flat textures but keep a pdf verson for backup if u need to edit them.

4) if using tifs save without the alpha same resion as the layers.

these little things not only help maya display but also render times in mental ray.

there is also an opton in maya prefs under display for max texture rez. deflaut set to 2048 you might get lucky and be able to do something with that