Saving Disk Space by Reducing File Sizes in 3DS Max

Every 3D artist has experienced the annoyance of their computer workstation crashing. This is particularly frustrating when you haven't recently saved the file and you could potentially lose a whole day’s worth of work. It's therefore vital that you save your work regularly in iterations where you keep 'old' versions of work to refer back to if necessary. If, for example, your working file became corrupt a fast and easy way to recover most of your work is to refer back to the latest version of that file. Another advantage of keeping iterations of your work is that a client may change their mind about an aspect of the project, the floor covering in an architectural visualisation for example, and decide that they preferred the timber boards over the latest floor covering. In this situation bringing in the material from the old version of that file might only take a few seconds, whereas recreating that material from scratch could potentially take far longer. Keeping old versions of the file that you're working on will more than likely save you time in the long run. Maintaining an archive like this of old versions of work can very quickly eat up large amounts of disk space, especially when working with large, complex scenes. It's a good idea, because of this, to always keep file sizes in the back of your mind throughout your workflow.


Vertex Count

File sizes are heavily related to the vertex count of the scene. You can view the vertex count for a scene by enabling the statistics in the viewport. Reducing your vertex count will reduce the file size. It is possible to have two objects with the same number of polygons but differing vertex counts or vice versa. A box, for example, has 12 triangular polygons and 8 vertices while six planes arranged as a box shape together also have 12 polygons however you will notice that they have 24 vertices. This is because the polygons in the box share vertices while the six planes do not. Generally speaking though optimizing your scenes polygon count will also reduce vertex count and therefore file size.


Editable Mesh, Editable Poly or Primitive Object

It won't always be possible to keep assets as primitive objects but when the opportunity arises it is a good idea to leave objects in their primitive state. This can save large amounts of disk space, particularly when working with highly segmented objects. A box, for example, with 100 length, width and height segments saved in 3DS Max 2009 will have a file size of less than 200Kb. This is a relatively small file due to the fact that primitive objects work by inputting the parameters for that object into an algorithm. The file containing the box primitive has to store the values for the length, width and height parameters as well as their respective number of segments. This is only a small amount of information, hence a small file size. If we were to collapse that object down to an editable mesh the file size escalates to over 5Mb and if we were to collapse it down as an editable poly we end up with a file size of almost 9Mb. That's about 45 times the size of the file containing the original primitive object. The reason for these blowouts in file sizes when collapsing to either editable mesh or editable poly is that the file now has to store the X,Y and Z coordinates of each vertex. The editable poly file size is larger when compared with the file containing the editable mesh because it contains more options and parameters. When the added functionality of the editable poly isn't needed consider converting to an editable mesh instead.

Work with these concepts in mind during your daily workflow and you will see a reduction in general file sizes allowing you more efficient use of your disk space.


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