directX in MAX

[DeathBrain]

Lets you select a viewport shader for viewing Direct3D hardware shaders. Viewport shaders require the Direct3D graphics driver, which uses DirectX. With DirectX shading, materials in a viewport more accurately represent how the material will appear in another application, or on other hardware such as a game engine.

Viewport shaders are especially useful for previewing texture-baked materials :)

[RockinAkin]

I find that DX is generally faster than OGL on my Geforce2 GTS.

But I've heard a lot of people say the oposite, so I guess it just depends on your system.

Try benchmarking your viewports with the same scene, to see which display mode runs faster for you.

[youknowjack]

Viewport shader is one great advantage man.

It supports spectular, reflection, and normal , bump MAP!
Go download the free version of polybump.

Make some normal maps and get wowed as you plug in
the normal map to see low poly model with
HIGH details in real time with lighting on.

Other than that, I would say dx is faster sometimes
since they use cache(for mesh) and triangle strips.

If you hate triangle strips, turn it off in preference.

Reply if you are interested in max's superior viewport
shader that display normal map in REAL TIME.(which
makes MAX the king for game models)

[DeathBrain]

And don't forget this one (http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_3dsmaxCgFXPlugin.html) (DirectX CGFX Plugin), it works well with DX9 in Max 5,1 :thumbsup:

[doimus]

Thanks, everybody!
I asked just out of curiosity, since I'm not a MAX user and work mainly in OpenGL.... but I was wondering about that DX support.... maybe it's finally time to properly use all those DX graphic cards out there! ;)

[gaggle]

Exept if you ask users if they've had issues with DX you'll get a big crowd saying how awefully slow and crash-prone DX mode is.
Some people enjoy DX, some have to use it because OGL mode doesn't work, but for many others it's the exact opposite. I've never been able to use DX for anything for instance, the speed seems okayish the times I've tested it, though noticiably slower than OGL nontheless, but there were also visual glitches that I just couldn't accept (edges drawn where they shouldn't be, lack of updating of a viewport, etc.).

And that viewportshader, sure it'd be neat to have, but for me it ended up crashing or flaking out on me more often than being useful. I can see it's immense advantage if you're making a game and you want the viewport to accuratly reflect the in-game quality, but for the high-resolution texturemaps required for tv and movie production I didn't find it satisfactory at all.
Well.. with that said, I wouldn't mind at all having it available in OGL mode as well though, it is pretty keen after all :).

But.. yeah.. just wanted to mention that there are two sides to the OGL/DX issue :).

[youknowjack]

Yep, OGL mode is faster for me too.
Though Viewport shader is buggy, there are workarounds.
Did anyone went to siggraphto see max 6?
There is a new viewport shader using FX.
But it is still directx only :shrug:

Which reminds me:

I went to the Kaldera show and was surprised that one of the demoer from discreet doesn't know what's wrong with max's viewport shader. He was showing that hi res pirate(anyone seen it?) and bake the hires map out of it.

I went up to him and tell him that max can display normal map in real time.(that surprised him coz he had to render out the low res with a normal map as BUMP) Then we tried it but it didn't work.

He said that he would ask the programmer about it.

Later that day I tried it myself(displaying normal map with polybump) and discover this:

THE MODEL HAS TO BE AN EDITIBLE MESH!

For instance, I have a hi-res model of a gun, a low-res model of it with texture coordinate. After baking out the normal map. Before I apply it to the low-res model, I need to apply an editmesh on top of the stack.

IT WORKS!

Game artists , try it out sometimes. It does a good job at previewing.

JACK

[DeathBrain]

OpenGL rocks my Max :buttrock:

[Dave Black]

I've switch to DX on all my workstations and laptops. For me, max is easily 10X faster when modeling. The caching effect is fantastic.

I've never had any stability problems regarding DX and have been using it since 5.1 came out.

All my hardware runs Nvidia-based chips, and runs intel CPUs. I don't know if that's of any value, but I thought i'd mention it.

DX for us is really the way to go. Give 'er a try.

-3DZ

:D

[glorious100]

And wich version of DX are you guys using? Cause if I try to use version 9 I can't startup max. I have an ATI 9800pro card and latest drivers are installed.

[visualboo]

3DZ: Do you have that really annoying "see through" problem with DX?

If I run in DX (which is a little faster then OGL on my system) and have edges shown, it's like the models are in see-through mode and I can see all the edges on the whole model.

"THIS IS A.... A.......... **CK" ;)

:beer:

[DeathBrain]

Yeap, same here visualboo, i've a lots of artifacts with DX :)
But i think its just like DivideByZero said, it just depends on our system (ie. VGA card ), DX9 compatibility, etc
I still use both of those drivers :)

[walee]

Originally posted by glorious100
And wich version of DX are you guys using? Cause if I try to use version 9 I can't startup max. I have an ATI 9800pro card and latest drivers are installed.

you have to install the Service Pack 1 in order to make DIRECTX 9.0 work.

[walee]

i am running 3DSMAX 5.1 SP1. I have an ATI RADEON 9800 PRO. And obviously it's running way better and faster in DIRECT3D than in OPENGL. I used to have a GeFORCE 2 GTS and it was better in OPENGL though.

With my configuration I just encounter a bug that made my 3DSMAX crash (a crash with no warning : it just closes by itself). When I have 4 viewports in my max window and I try to resize the viewport to maximize only one viewport so that the 3 remaining one look very very small (I drag the resize bar in the top left corner) and then I create on object in that viewport than max simply crash.


I tried everything : reinstall 3DSMAX, reinstall the ATI drivers, the DIRECTX 9.0b none of that would make it better. I haven't tried to reinstall my win2000 yet. Maybe next week cause right now I don't have the time to do it. And maybe that won't solve the problem either.

(i am using win200 SP3, P4 2.3, 1G of RAM)

[gman]

Hey guys

I've been having a problem. I've just installed the cgfx plugin and switched my max driver over to directx 9.0b and i get a 'failed to initialize direct3d' error on boot. Does any body no why this is happening? I want to see how I can use direct3d but can't get it running...

cheers

Greg

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