Out of memory during baking error (3d max)

[alexk]

I keep getting this memory error while trying to bake from high poly to lowpoly, even after a full cpu restart with no other programs running. I have 2 gigs of ram, intel duo core 2.66ghz cpu. My high poly is about 3.7 million tri's, could that be the problem? In my baking settings I have active Light Tracer and Enabled Global Supersample with Hammersly and quality at 0.5 I'm not sure how to troubleshoot, this is a screencap of my error :(

http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/9858/nomemoryzq7.gif

[artstream]

3.7 MILLION TRIS??? Inside of MAX??? That's insane!

Try XNormal for the bake or there are a few work arounds in Zbrush for such a thing (I'm assuming you got your HP from a sculpting program).

[alexk]

yes 3.7 million and it doesn't even look good because I'm such a noob. Heres a slightly offtopic question. When I sculpt stuff in Mudbox, how much should I subdivide stuff? like say a prop? When I was trying to sculpt my prop, it looked nasty at the lower levels so I kept subdiving, but maybe its just I'm not experienced enough using the brushes properly...?

[Popeye9]

you might try importing your high res in without texture coordinates. I have had some success bringing really high res models for baking into max and have no probs. Gone as high as 18 million tris in max 64 bit with no prob. With texture coordinates on the high res it didnt like the same model plus the file size was a lot bigger

If Mudbox is like Zbrush you should have evenly spaced quads for your base mesh. It will help so that you dont have to divide so high to get smooth results.

[perna]

3.7 MILLION TRIS??? Inside of MAX??? That's insane!


No, that's weak.

Max2009 handles 25M tris realtime in the viewport on my old and not so good video card on 4GB 32bit XP.

For GI rendering I max out at 10M, but that's entirely without trying out any fancy scene/render optimization stuff.

Just FYI.

[Murdoc]

25 mil? what I can barely get 300k to import/run properly on similar specs, no idea how it would handle 10 mil let a lone 25 (though I saw some of those epic renders, no idea how they got that in max running well)... maybe something is wrong with my software...hehe

[alexk]

just an update, I've kinda found a solution to my problem.. I think I had one of my raytracing settings wayyyy to high :) I'm baking fine now, thanks for the replies

[Mark Dygert]

1) you probably subdivided way too much, bust it down a level or two and see how it looks, if there isn't that much of a detail hit, try using that.
2) You can break it into seperate pieces and export each piece and bake them separately.
3) Be wise with your sub divisions and pieces and you'll avoid these types of problems in the future.