MAX has the ABILITY but not the STABILITY

[Grey]

I hear that complaint a lot, though I've only touched on Max. I know virtually nothing about it other than it's reputed abilities and notorious instability.

perhaps you should try this:

http://www.3dfortherealworld.com

A more stable piece of 3D software you'd be hard pressed to find :D

[Fielding]

Thanks Grey. What app do you use for 3d?

[Grey]

I use several.

Cinema4D and Rhino are my primaries, however.

UVMapper and BodyPaint3D for setting up mesh UVs.

[Fielding]

You are very fast by giving answers very quickly. Yes I looked at the site you gave. I think it is a really professional program. Does Cinema 4D has Nurbs? just curious.

[Mahlon]

Running Max 4.2 here, pretty much full time regular modeling and animating without very many crashes at all. Not using particles or Nurbs or patches regularly, though.

Could you be more specific as to when max crashes or what operation you are doing at the time? That would help maybe pinpoint a problem. Also, computer specs are helpful in undestanding what might be causing crash.

Mahlon

[Fielding]

For example one day when I pressed the a menu name, it crashed. When I am changing the color of the Quads, it did again. Also it shows me a dialog like this:

Maxccp.icon
Autoretry(checkbox)
Something like this

[Grey]

Cinema4D does do NURBS in a limited fashion. They're good for quite a few things. For istance, if you needed to model a pillow or a sheet to look natural with folds etc, I'd use them.

But being used to RHINO as I am, I find any other NURBS modeller to be very limiting.

[Fielding]

Is Rhino really veryyyyyyy good in modeling? Everybody tells this.

[dvornik]

That's an unusual error. I don't think you can blame it on max. Max crashes sometimes but not just like that. Post your specs (video drivers, OS, max drivers, max service pack, antivirus soft). Try support.discreet.com hardware forum for more advice.

[Fielding]

128 MB RAM. 20 GB Hard disk. 32 MB TNT2 also Windows 98, PC Cilin. Heidi. But I cant blame, i just complain.

[urgaffel]

You computer isn't really up to par. Sorry to say it, but that's the way it is. Windows 2000 and at least 256Mb ram is preferable. The more ram the better of course.

*edit:

Oh yeah, how much space does windows have for it's swapfile?

[dvornik]

Get win2k (or some would say XP) if you are serious about 3d. And upgrade your box when you can afford it. Here's a good FAQ on what you need to run max:
3DLuvr Techzone FAQ (http://www.3dluvr.com/content/techz/maxfaq.php)

[Grey]

If you're software supports OpenNURBS, rhino is the best solution there is for solid modelling.

If your software does not support OpenNURBS, you can convert the nurbs to meshes.

Rhino has the best Boolean operations I've ever seen on any modeler.

[dvornik]

Grey, it's just something I was trying to find out. I really like solid modelling and booleans methodology, but I don't have any experience with it. So Rhino is good for it? Check this tutorial (electric image?) - can you work in a similar way in Rhino?

Cristóbal Vila's tutorial (http://www.etereaestudios.com/sentinel_tutorial/sentinel_tutorial.htm)

[Grey]

I can't seem to find the tutorial, but let me explain how Rhino's booleans work (I had a hard time with any other boolean simply because Rhino's are so very different).

Imagin a NURBS solid of a cube made up, of six nurbs patches.

You take a nurbs Shere, which is also a solid, and perform a boolean on it.

My understanding is that Most platforms are like Cinema4D, which can animate a boolean moving from point a to point b and have it cut out an area of a model animated in real time.

Not so in Rhino. The cut-out actually becomes part of the model itself instantly. The NURBS surfaces get "trimmed" and joined at the edges where the boolean occurred.

[Grey]

BTW, I figured out that web page (it's late, I'm tired). and it looks like this tutorial would be easily followed in Rhino, though I think that may be an Amapi tutorial... not sure

[dvornik]

Thanks, I'll get the trial version and go through tutorials. Looks just like what I had in mind.

[Cadillacs57]

Originally posted by Fielding
128 MB RAM. 20 GB Hard disk. 32 MB TNT2 also Windows 98, PC Cilin. Heidi. But I cant blame, i just complain.
u have your answer right there, win98 is not that stable, i think that win98 is the problem and not 3d studio max, also you should get more ram, at least 256

[Grey]

hmmm...

Just out of curiosity, wasn't Max desinged to run under the Win NT OS? I've heard (second hand) that Max isn't ever stable under Win9x or ME.

[dvornik]

Correct. Max 4 is certified for Win2k. It works well under XP pro though ( there are some issues).

In my experience 98 isn't stable by itself, without any programs installed.

[edit]
Try disabling the automatic virtual memory management - make it fixed to 500 MB or 1 GB or smth - it solves some win98 problems sometimes.

[dvornik]

Oops.... Max forum? Was it something I said?

[Fozzie]

I think that you nailed the problem right on the head, computers made from cheap parts and running and 9x/Me OS is always going to cause you problems.

Other possible problems include...
- System temperature
- Drivers
- Current BIOS version
- Bad RAM
- Corrupted HDD
- 3rd Party Plugins

On my end, I have been running Max for many years here and aside from the occassional screw up it has been rock solid and allowed me to get my work done without problems. So my personal feelings on this post is that I wouldn't go blaming the software for something that is caused either elsewhere inside the system (or even outside).

Foz

[Iain McFadzen]

It's true that anyone running Max on Win98/ME deserves all the instability they get, but that doesn't alter the fact that Max is significantly less stable than it's competitors on scenes of comparitive complexity. A couple of animated high poly characters + a bit of scenery + some necessary* 3rd party plugins (such as shag or simcloth) = a whole world of pain.

*Discreet tout Max's large array of 3rd-party plugin as both a selling point and an excuse to not develop their own systems, but they also blame 3rd-party plugins for much of Max's instability. They can't have it both ways.

[akewt]

my two pennys worth

if you go to win2k with only 128mb your gonna get freezing alot. especially if you want to run photoshop aswell. win2k needs its ram baby!

[Das]

I've rarely had Max crash at all, and it always manages to save my work in progress before dying.

I do keep my work partition pretty clean though.

For me, Lightwave is the trouble-maker. It doesn't crash, but gets this buggy attitude after a while, where objects sent to Lightwave from Modeler don't render, surfaces reset themselves, Lightwave reverts to meters when I set it to inches, etc. Oh, and Lightwave won't run under XP for me at all (closes itself instantly). Really irritating.

Different systems have different issues, I guess.

[show]

i agree with whats being said here.
my brother tried to run max under a similair hardware and os setup and he too had problems like this.

with win2k and 256mb ram i found max was quite stable until i got to 70k polys in a scene. The use of any plug-in at this point almost guaranteed a software crash.

Max is very popular and i think the most appealing thing about it is that you will very very rarely be stuck for learning resources and related articles. Its stability is its biggest down factor though :(.
I wonder if there has been a significant improovement with max 5 ?

[agades]

On Win2k with 256MbRAM I have crashed my Max4 ONLY ONCE. It was unreasonable work with a lot of particles heavily instaced with complex objects with animation. Really often I work with polycount near 1 000 000 and few plugins in scene (landscaping). It takes the time, but no stuck. Of course, using Photoshop WITH IT in the same time can be a little amoral. Well, I don't work with MaxNurbs. Until this thread I was sure about Max stability. For sample, Maya4 stucks once per 2 days (my Maya:annoyed: ). Win98 has problems with latest versions of many progs.

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