topic Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed in 3ds Max Forum

Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

ldotchopz7FPNL — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 22:24:41 GMT

I am working on a model that uses the morph targets, these are added to the morpher modifier and placed under the skin modifier in the stack, it works perfectly but when morpher is turned on the playback speed drops from 80fps to 6fps.
The model is 88k polys, not extremely dense and plays back very fast when morpher is not enabled.

is there anything to help with the viewport playback speed?

Thanks

Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

Diffus3d — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 04:04:58 GMT

Try removing the zero weights from the skin modifier. Note that the limit does not need to be 0, sometimes .04 or something does the trick. That should speed things up a little. (But, you did say it's already fast without the morpher so it may not have much of an impact, worth a shot though.)

Typically the morpher is just applied to the part that needs morphing, but it's hard to say without a screenshot or more information the best way to help. There's not much reason to apply a morph to an entire object instead of just part of the object. (And we don't have to attach everything anymore in realtime or in high end, so all 1 piece is sort of weird in the modern workflow.)

Of course I made a lot of assumptions here, don't have much to go on. Maybe 88k IS just part of the object, in which case I can't even imagine what it looks like. I would lose my mind having to sculpt phonemes for 88k polys. (I'm picturing this all as a character, but I could be wrong.)

In your advanced parameters rollout of the Morpher modifier, what is your Approx. Memory Usage? Is it maxing out? Is there a turbosmooth on top slowing things down even more? Any extra info might help.

Best Regards,

Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

ldotchopz7FPNL — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 21:37:04 GMT

It is a model of a toad so it's not in seperate pieces, so i cannot choose where is morphs, or am i misunderstanding you?

My approximate used is 6716kb.

there are no other modifiers on top to slow it down.

Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

Diffus3d — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 22:20:46 GMT

I should have recognized your name before, sorry. I remember this model from our previous thread. Is it lagging when in 4 up view or also in 1 up view? 6,700 kb doesn't seem like that much to me, so it's a little surprising. I wonder if you pin the morpher to the modifier stack and unselect the model if it also lags. (Like, is this related to selection + morpher or just morpher?)

The problem from my limited understanding is that since the morpher is using every vert as part of the definition, it's got a copy of the model x the number of morphers. So the poly count goes pretty high under the hood for deforming, even when not in use. Hopefully someone with more knowledge about it will post in this thread. Even then though, it shouldn't lag is so much unless maybe it's single threaded, I'm guessing.

Maybe this article has something that might help, but I have my doubts. I googled for a while to try to find any threads about lagging morpher and I couldn't find any, so it may simply come down to something specific with your setup, or the poly count is just in the upper levels for the Morpher. When the morpher was originally made, 65k verts on a model was considered crazy high. It's no excuse, just an observation. As a workaround if the only morph is the throat, perhaps setup a single loop of it while it's lagging, then turn off the morpher and duplicate keys as needed. That's not a great workflow, I know. I apologize in that I have little suggestions here. I truly hope someone else does.

You might try turning off the viewcube or using a different display driver in 3dsmax. Beyond that, it's kind of a lot of polys for a typical morpher, at least from what I've seen in my travels. Or, perhaps it may be necessary to make a low poly version of the model that has maps baked from something high poly like this to handle displacement to get it back into this shape. That's not what you want to hear though, and I admire your ability to skin something this dense in the first place. Hats off to you. If you do go that route, you can transfer the skin from your 88k model to the new one in seconds with skin wrap, so it's not a total loss. That's my best suggestion if all else fails.

Best Regards,

Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

domo.spaji — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 10:21:56 GMT

I cant believe you have 80 fps with near 90 k polys skinned, animated mesh!?

Can you upload some video of that?

Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

ldotchopz7FPNL — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 12:17:33 GMT

Thanks for the detailed response, I tried some of those things and nothing seems to help, I will put it down to a limitation of 3ds max. Hopfully we get some updated modifiers in the future!

Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

ldotchopz7FPNL — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 12:21:39 GMT

Lool Sure! This is not my animation, just the CAT default walk cycle for your benefit.

(view in My Videos)

Re: Morpher and Skin modifier slow playback speed

Diffus3d — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 08:41:49 GMT

That's amazing. The deformations are crazy smooth, which I'm sure took a while. You have the patience of a render artist.

Best Regards,