LW_How Many Polygons?

[wulfie]

How many polygons can Lighwave handle anyway? I realize this is somewhat dependent on the machine, memory, version etc. So I'm running 8.5, Dual Xeon 3.06, 2 gigs of Ram and a nVidia Quadro 4 XGL graphics card. i'm just looking for a ball park figure.

Thanks all.

Bev

[eross]

I would say : LW 9 cannot handle as many polygon data as previous versions. I have a havy scene (about 4 millions poly) I could load into LW 8.5. In LW 9.0, however : at the end of the loading process I get the messages : "Not enough memory for polygon data", "Polygons treated as faces" / "subdivision level reset to one" bla-bal... And... the Layour crashes... On the same scene, same computer, same LW config.

Bad luck.

eRoss

[BazC]

Sounds as though you're using Catmull Clark SDS and have it set too high, CC SDS produce a LOT more polys than LW subpatch.

I've found that LW layout will handle more polys than 8.5 and remain much more responsive, modeler is about the same as 8.5 but modeler OGL hasn't been touched yet.

I've no idea how many polys you will be able to manage Bev (though a downloadable demo of LW9 should be available soon) I do know that modeler OGL is going to be overhauled later this year and if they can get similar performance levels to Layout it will compare favorably to all the other pro packages. I have a low end machine and I can handle about a milliion polys in Layout, you should be able to handle a LOT more!

[stevecullum]

I switched to running LW32 with XP64 on a 4GB machine and can comfortably render 7,000,000 polys.

[connerh]

LW 9 can handle WAY more polys than 8.5, at least on my system. I'm not certain what its limit is however.

[RedBull]

It depends on your definition of "handle"
Well as posted in another thread, i managed to render 10.4 Million polygons
using APS on a 2Gb machine under LW9 -32bit version.
I could likely squeeze a tad more, so around 11Million is the max you will likely handle on 2Gb of RAM..

But how many OGL poly's you can happily handle will depend more on your machine and videocard. Anyones guess. In both cases a lot more than LW8.x

[wulfie]

Thanks everybody!

And good question Red Bull. By "handle" I meant, "still be able to manipulate." I have 8 characters with their bones and all are moving about.....plus scenery....... So I'm up to around 800,000 polys and the scene is starting to take quite a while to load. I am dreaming of a 64 bit machine and have LW 9 on order but it will be a while before I can upgrade my technology.

[eross]

It depends on your definition of "handle"


Hi, RedBull,

Well, in my case, by "handling", I just mean "loading" this : http://www.erossdesign.com/2004_2005/richelieu/big1.htm, even before rendering it. I can load it in LW 8.5, with which the image of the link has been rendered. My machine, is a laptop : a Dell Inspiron 9100, with a P4, and 2Go of RAM. My videocard is a Radeon 9700. Honestly, I cannot understand why I can load the scene in LW 8.5 whereas LW 9 refuses to do so.
These are the data for this scene ( I just loaded it in LW 8.5, to show you : http://www.erossdesign.com/infos/sc_data.jpg)

while loading, LW 9 gives me the following messages :

while loading parts of the mesh : "Not enough memory for object polygon data"
then, "Replacing the mesh by a null object",
then, The mesh could not be generated at the current subdivision level. Reset to one". BazC : the mesh has been created in LW 8.5, therefore, there is no Catmull Clark SDS in it, and the only subpatch parts are the stabilizer of the ship... not the biggest part.
then, the firt two messages repeat themselves until LW 9 just quit.

Maybe there are parameters to change, or tweak in LW 9, prior to being able to load this scene ?... do any of you have an idea about that ?, any comment or suggestion would be welcomed !

Thanks.

eRoss

[BazC]

Hmm that's a puzzler, it seems to be most peoples experience that LW9 will handle bigger meshes than 8.5 so presumably there is something about this (great!) model that LW9 doesn't like!?

If you could get the file to NT with a description of the problem I'm sure it would be useful. Is it emailable?

[RedBull]

Hi, RedBull,

Well, in my case, by "handling", I just mean "loading" this : http://www.erossdesign.com/2004_2005/richelieu/big1.htm, even before rendering it. I can load it in LW 8.5, with which the image of the link has been rendered. My machine, is a laptop : a Dell Inspiron 9100, with a P4, and 2Go of RAM. My videocard is a Radeon 9700. Honestly, I cannot understand why I can load the scene in LW 8.5 whereas LW 9 refuses to do so.
These are the data for this scene ( I just loaded it in LW 8.5, to show you : http://www.erossdesign.com/infos/sc_data.jpg)

while loading, LW 9 gives me the following messages :

while loading parts of the mesh : "Not enough memory for object polygon data"
then, "Replacing the mesh by a null object",
then, The mesh could not be generated at the current subdivision level. Reset to one". BazC : the mesh has been created in LW 8.5, therefore, there is no Catmull Clark SDS in it, and the only subpatch parts are the stabilizer of the ship... not the biggest part.
then, the firt two messages repeat themselves until LW 9 just quit.

Maybe there are parameters to change, or tweak in LW 9, prior to being able to load this scene ?... do any of you have an idea about that ?, any comment or suggestion would be welcomed !

Thanks.

eRoss

Hi Eross, nice Model!
Hmmm, it sounds directly related to memory or the lack thereof.

When loading the scene in Layout 8.5, check in the Windows task manager how much memory is used and is free.. LW9 may use a little more memory for some stuff, although i must say in most places it usually uses a little less.

Yes i'm not happy about the double error message....
(when your out of memory they take a long time to repeat twice)

One tip i can give you in LW8.x or LW9.x .

When loading Layout.exe, Layout will open in a maximized window.
If you hit the Minimize window icon in the top of the screen, LW minimizes
and it also releases around 30Mb or physical ram.

Maximizing the window again will still keep it using only around 4Mb of ram instead of the 38Mb or so it was using when it first loaded.
Essentially you can gain another 20 or 30Mb or RAM over the default startup,
by simply minimize and maximize the Layout window.
(this may be enough to do the subdivision on the parts required)
Also check and make sure that any extra services and tasks are disabled to ensure maximum memory is available.

Having said all of that, looking at the 8.5 stats panel pic...
It's using a LOT of object memory, but still there seems to be plenty of render memory still left.

Are you using a standard default subdivision settings in LW9
Display Subpatch 3 and Render Subpatch set to Per Object Basis?
(if so just try lowering display to 0 for testing)

Hmmm, meanwhile i do a little bit more testing to see if there is a real problem.

[eross]

Hi RedBull !

Thanks for taking some time to reply, for your help and suggestions.
Your tip about Maximizing/Minimizing LW window, does not help a lot in this case I'm afraid, but it's good to know !
... And YES, this model, the first battleship I modelled, is badly designed, with way too much polygons, using a LOT of memory, as you say... Having said that : My current subdivision level in LW 9 is set to 2, both for display and rendering, which is reasonnable, and the fact that it takes a lot of memory does not change anything to the fact that IT LOADS in LW 8.5... and NOT in the brand new LW9-that-can-handle-so-many-more-polygons-than-the-previous-versions. Needless to say, I am VERY dissapointed to see for myself that the promise of "more polygon handling" in LW 9 compared to LW 8.x, seems to work for everbody... except me. But : I'll try to do some testing, just like you in order to figure out why this happen, and also, perhaps the best for me to do : re-modelling the ship (Arrrgh !!) properly !

Thanks to you all, anyway

eRoss
http://www.erossdesign.com

[nutman]

OK, I tried the following with Modeler [9] x64
I made a tesselated sphere with 240 segments (roughly 1million polys) and copy/pasted a few times at different locations on my view and while I was pasting the 11th modeler became sluggish and on the 12th it crashed without trace or reason.
I was in Quad view with Smooth Shaded on all views (Top, Left, Front, Persp)
Until the 10th sphere rotation and zoom in/out on all views was smooth

At the same time I was monitoring my CPUs and GPUs
Opterons showed no sign of stress whatsoever but the GPUs heated up like crazy (from 29C all the way to 73C in a few seconds)

What does that tell you?

Oh, by the way DO NOT even think of buying a 7950GX2 until the nvidia drivers get a little better (and they have a final release)

Hardware used: 2x Opteron 280, 8GB ram, 2x 7950GX2 (I already had them in my system to see if they work better than my Quadros.
Software used: Windows XP x64 (no pagefile) , Lightwave [9] x64, Task manager and NVidia classic control panel to monitor hardware.

My verdict (no one asked me but whatever) it all boils down to the GPU.

EDIT: nice model Eross

[eross]

Hi All !

I evently found a solution to render the Richelieu in LW 9.0 ! It seems that LW 9.0 is able to render the scene, BUT, that it is not able to LOAD it entirely, AT ONCE ! My battleship is made of the 8 different layers (hull, guns, forward superstructures... ) Thus, I loaded the scene into LW 8.5, and clear the 2 heaviest layers, and saved the scene. I loaded it back in LW 9.0, which was OK this time. Then, I separately loaded the 2 remaining layers, and parented them again to the other parts, which, to my surprise, was also OK for LW 9.0. The mesh was then completely re-assembled. And, endeed, I was able to render the scene, even with a resolution multiplier of 200% !
.. that's a stange way to do so, but at least, it does work !

Thanks to you all for you reply (and thanks for the comments about my model !)

Cheers
eRoss
http://www.erossdesign.com