Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 1064

TIP When you use placeholders, 3ds Max always calculates buckets in Hilbert order on page 6276. When the mental ray renderer is low on memory (as defined by the Memory Limit setting), Use Placeholder Objects enables it to increase available memory by deleting object geometry from the scene database. This can dramatically reduce memory usage, but with a possible cost in rendering speed. Memory Limit The mental ray renderer keeps a count of the memory it uses at render time. If it reaches the specified memory limit and Use Placeholder Objects (see preceding) is on, 3ds Max discards the geometry for some objects in order to allocate memory for other objects. If Use Placeholder Objects is off, or if after deleting geometry more memory is still needed, the renderer releases texture-map memory as well. Default=650 MB. TIP If you'd like to use a different Memory Limit setting on a regular basis without having to change the value manually every time, store the value in a rendering preset on page 6114 and then be sure to load that preset before rendering. Use mental ray Map Manager When on, maps are read from disk and if necessary, translated to a format that the mental ray renderer can read. When off, maps are accessed directly from memory, and translation is unnecessary. Default=off. Following is a complete list of differences between turning this option on and off: When on: ■ mental ray reads textures directly from disk (mental ray is able to flush textures out of memory when memory is low). Also, textures are loaded only if needed. ■ mental ray uses its built-in pyramid filtering system. These pyramid lookup tables can be flushed out of memory when memory is low. ■ Texture formats not supported directly by mental ray are read by 3ds Max and sent, before rendering begins, as binary data to mental ray. When off: ■ 3ds Max reads the textures from disk, and then sends individual pixel colors to mental ray as they are needed. mental ray Renderer | 6319