8

Animation, Textures, and Rendering 1101
• Trim holes only when you need to. For example,
when you connect an arm to a torso, you don’t
need to create a hole beneath the arm, as it
won’t be visible anyway.
You can also speed up performance by turning
off the Display Trims toggle. The shortcut
SHIF T+CTRL+T toggles trim display. The
trims still appear in renderings.
• For symmetrical models, create only half the
geometry, and then mirror it. You can then use
a
blend (page 1–1184) surface or ruled (page
1–1194)
surfacetoconnectthetwohalves.
• Restart 3ds Max when performance begins
to slow down. If your NURBS model needs
to page, then working with it for a long time
causesperformancetoslow.Ifyounoticethis,
save your work, close 3ds Max, a nd then restart.
• Convert point surfaces to CV surfaces w henever
possible.
•Whenyouusetexturesurfaces,usethe
Edit
Texture Surface dialog (page 1–1232)
(click
Edit Texture Surface on the
Material Properties
rollout (page 1–1150)
) to rebuild the texture
surface with the minimum necessary number
of UV rows and columns.
• U lofts are faster than UV lofts.
• Every ty pe of surface is faster if you can ma ke it
independent.
•Setthe
surface approximation (page 1–1241)
for viewpor ts to use the lowest possible
resolution. Set the renderer to use higher
resolution, and turn on View Dependent for the
renderer so objects far from the camera render
more quickly.
•Youcancustomizeandsave
surface
approximation (page 1–1241)
presets by
using the
Surface Appro ximation utility (page
1–1247)
. This utility a lso lets you set surface
approximation values for a selection set of
multiple NURBS models.
Animation, Textures, and
Rendering
These are tips about animating NURBS models
and using textures with animated NURBS models.
• An easy way to animate a growing sur face is to
put a
curve point (page 1–1222) w ith trimming
onacurve,thenanimatetheUpositionofthe
curvepoint,andthenusethiscurveasthe
rail of a
1-rail sweep (page 1–1205) .Asthe
trimmed rail grows, s o do es the sweep surface.
(You must trim the curve before you create the
sweep surface.)
• If you see gaps between surfaces in rendered
images, increase the value of Merge for the
renderer in the
surface approximation (page
1–1241)
settings.
• Ifatextureslidesaroundonthesurfaceduring
animation, this is because you are using the
default Chord-Length parameterization of the
texture sur face. Select the surface, then on
the
Material Properties rollout (page 1–1150)
change the parameterization to User Defined.
Now the texture should stick to the surface
better.
•Don’tusethe
UVW Map modifier (page 1–905)
to apply a texture to an animated NURBS
surface.
• If a surface seems to glitter or jump around
as you move toward it in an animation, this
is because View Dependent tessellation is on
(on the
Surface Appro ximation rollout (page
1–1241)
) s o the tessellation is constantly
changing. Usually View Dependent creates no
visible changes, but if it does, turn it off.
• If a surface seems to glitter or jump around
while it changes during animation, this
is because the tessellation is changing as
the su rface animates. Changing sur face
approximation (on the Surface Appro ximation
rollout) to Regular fixes this in all cases.