Introduction
Have you ever noticed purple and red bands on RPCs, or RPCs that dissappear when rendering with Autodesk Viz or 3ds Max? As memory depletes, you may notice that odd things begin to happen to your RPCs at render time. These errors are due to a problem with the way texture data is handled by these applications when memory is depleted. Because of these host application limitations, reducing memory consumption may be necessary in order to complete your rendering.
The following tips will provide some ways the RPC Plug-in technology can help reduce memory consumption.
Billboarding
One way to reduce memory usage is to turn on billboarding for an RPC or group of RPCs. With this feature enabled, only the first frame of the image sequence is loaded.
A 3D RPC will behave like a 2D RPC when this feature is enabled. This works great for RPC People or Trees that are in the background of a scene.
Many times when memory errors have occurred, changing some of the RPCs in the scene to billboarded will allow the scene to render error free.
The billboard option can be enabled by selecting the RPC and toggling on the billboard option in the RPC Parameters. This feature can also be enabled from the Mass Edit dialog.
Changing the RPC Filter Type
It is possible to change the Filter Type used for the RPC during rendering. This value can be modified in the rpc.ini file found in the /plugcfg folder of 3dsmax and 3dsviz, using word pad. The filter types include summed, pyramidal and none.
The values are:
FilterType=1 for summed filtering
FilterType=0 for pyramidal filtering
FilterType=2 for no filtering
Summed filtering memory consumption is 4 x the size of the bitmap. Pyramidal uses 1.33 x the size of the bitmap. No filtering adds no additional memory usage over the original texture size. Selecting a filter type that consumes less memory will reduce memory problems
that affect the RPC when memory is depleted from the 3d application but be aware that this can also affect the quality of the rendered image.
Note: The rpc.ini file is found by default in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\9
in Max 9 or later versions.
Recommended Usage
Use Summed for close up views of RPCs.
Use Pyramidal for RPCs when the camera will not be zooming in.
Use None only as a last resort.
For additional assistance using RPC Technology, please visit www.archvision.com or contact our live Support Team Monday-Friday 9am-5pm.
(859)252-3118 ext 103
Copyright 2004 ArchVision, Inc
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