I am making a maxscript to visualize some MRI data that I have.
Right now I turn every slice into colored boxes, but this is very heavy and memory intensive. (ignoring pixels under a threshold)
It's interesting though because i can voxelize it with a blob object (metaballs)
Anyway, it really chokes on 128x128 images, much less 512x512. |
The trouble here is the amount of single nodes, not their complexity. Creating 128x128 = 16384 objects means that you create that many base objects with their scene nodes. If these objects were ONE object with the same number of polygons, it wouldn't be a big deal.
The obvious solution is to use something that gives you separate boxes, but as a single mesh. It is called Particle Flow
😉 Basically, instead of writing a MAXScript to create boxes, write a Particle Flow Birth Script operator to place particles with the desired properties at the locations from the scan. Assign a Shape operator set to Box. If you want to color each particle, simply set a Mapping channel via the Birth Script or a separate Script Operator to the desired value (in the 0.0-1.0 range, so you might have to divide by 255) and enable Vertex Color shading for that channel in the PF Source inside the Particle View. To render, add a Vertex Color map to the material of the system via a Material Dynamic operator.
Instead of using a Birth Script, you could use a regular Birth set to the desired number of particles, then use a Script Operator to modify their positions and colors based on the MRI data. Might be simpler...
