From: bayard To: Axeman Cc: 3DSMAX@engram.net <3DSMAX@engram.net> Subject: Re: (OXYGEN VX1) Vs. (FireGL1000pro) Date: Wednesday, April 05, 2000 10:33 PM actually, your math is off. If you are running, or at least me, your monitor @1280x1024 your using 8mb in full color mode, than you use another 8 for the z buffer and other stuff, so you are left with 16 mb of texture memory. That would give you, maybe, 32 textures @512 each. I do full res video and high res print, so my textures for main objects/ large objects is always much bigger. I did not say that a viewport image is as good as a full final render, but for test/construction/placement and such, I get plenty done with shaded viewport mode, and I do find that for a majority of stuff it is plenty accurate for aligning bitmaps and such. There have been plenty of times I have felt compelled to do a render and afterwards looked at it and the viewport and found zero difference in texturing accuracy (this is in the early construction stages, near the end, with lots of lights and other stuff... it's time to render for the final tuning...). The more I get done in real-time the better for me. I have done this long enough that I do appreciate things like top quality 21" monitors, powerful, smooth, great looking 3d cards, and really fast computers. If you are charging full rates for your work, you are not hurting for money and can afford to get the right tools. I am a personal pig if I can be. I am happy to buy myself a great monitor, and other gear. Life is to short to fight with crappie tools. I have fought with way to many of them and want to get them out of my life.... So I am ok with a graphics card that has 64mb of ram.... bayard Axeman wrote: > Well, I have yet to see a video card where the viewports look as > good as the renders. If you set max to the highest quality map > setting so it downloads the maps to the card at 512KB then you get > approximately 45 textures to work with before you hit your system > memory. That's taking into consideration that your using 4MB for a > 1280x1024 display resolution. That means you have to have more than > 45 separate objects in your scene using completely different texture > maps to fill up your 32MB card's memory. Seems like you have to have > one hell of a scene or just a poorly designed scene to exceed these > boundaries. I normally use 128KB textures because I don't see a need > to go any higher. That means I can have about 100 textures loaded > before going to system memory. Please correct me if my math is off, > or if my assumptions are totally false. > > -BT > > b> while fairly true about the ability to get along with less... > b> points about the highend cards... > b> they do, nowadays, look so close to a test render that they have actually negated > b> the need for me to do that about 80% of the time. > b> being able to interactively and accurately setup lights and transparency. > b> Being a purely vial artist based person... I feel very happy when I can view the > b> textuerd scene while working on it... gives me a great feeling for what is going > b> on.... > b> bayard > > -- > Subscribe/Unsubscribe at: > http://mail.engram.net/guest/RemoteListSummary/3DSTUDIOMAX > List courtesy of http://www.Engram.net -- bayard Fish Bone Lodge Animation, Illustration, Design and Multimedia Production 5 Star Cuisine, Cocktails and Dancing Nightly http://www.mindspring.com/~fishbone-lodge/ -- Subscribe/Unsubscribe at: http://mail.engram.net/guest/RemoteListSummary/3DSTUDIOMAX List courtesy of http://www.Engram.net