8

28 Chapter 2: Viewing and Navigating 3D Space
Tip:
If your scene mysteriously disappears and only
displays as boxes when you rotate your viewport,
youhavepressedthe“o”keyonthekeyboard,and
unintentionally tur ned on Adaptive Degradation.
See
Rendering Method (page 3–896) .
Controlling Display Per formance
3ds Max contains controls to help you adjust
display per formance: the ba lance between quality
and time in display ing objects.
Depending on your needs, you might give up some
display speed to work at higher levels of rendering
qualit y, or you might choose to maximize display
speed by using Wireframe or Bounding Box
display. Which method you choose depends on
your preferences and the requirements of your
work.
Display Per formance Controls
You use displa y performance controls to determine
how objects are rendered and displayed.
Viewpo rt Preferences
The Customize > Preferences dialog’s Viewports
panel contains options for fine-tuning the
performance of the viewport display software. See
View por t Preferences (page 3–874) .
How Objec ts Are Rendered
The Adaptive Deg r adation panel on the Viewpor t
Configuration dialog dy namical ly drops the
rendering level on display performance. You set
the parameters controlling the tr ade-off between
display quality and display speed.
How Objects Are Displayed
To see and modify an object’s display properties,
right-click the object, select Properties, and go
to the Display Properties group box; see
Object
Properties (page 1–111)
.Theseoptionsaffect
display performance much the same way as
viewport rendering options. For example, turning
on Vertex Ticks for an object with a lot of vertices
will slow performance.
Note: Display Properties are only available when
the By Object/By Layer togg le is set to By Object.
Toseeandmodifyhowobjectsaredisplayed,you
can use
layers (page 3–704) .Youcanthenquickly
control the visibility and editability of similar
objects from the quad menu.
Which Objects Are Displayed
One way to i ncrease display speed is not to display
something. You can use the Hide and Freeze
features on the Display panel or quad menu to
changethedisplaystateofobjectsinyourscene.
TheHideandFreezefeaturesalsoaffectfinal
Rendering and Video Post output. See
Hide
Rollout (page 1–53)
and Freeze Rollout (page
1–54)
.
Setting Adaptive D egradation
Adaptive Degradation dynamically adjusts your
rendering levels to maintain a desired level of
display speed. You have direct control over how
much "degradation" occurs and when it occurs.
Active and General Deg r adation use the same
choices as the viewport Rendering Levels panel.
Active Degradation controls rendering in the
active view por t while General Deg radation
controls rendering in all other viewports.
The selected levels determine which rendering
levels 3ds Max falls back to when it cannot
maintain the desired display speed. You can
choose as many levels as you want but you are
advised to choose only one or two levels for each
type of degradation.
See
Adaptive Degradation (page 3–999) .