working with lots of proxies

[super gnu]

ive noticed that once you start getting a lot of instanced proxies in a scene (forest for example), even though they are essentially placeholders, the selection tool slows down to near unusability.

i have maybe 2-3000 proxies in the scene, based on 4 instances.

if i try to select anything in the scene, i have to wait about 5 minutes for the selection to be made...even if im just clicking on a single object. its infuriating... anyone got a clue why this is?

id imagine that there wouldnt be much more to process than if it was a scene with 2-3000 dummy objects in, and i dont get ANY delays if i try that.

any ideas? is it a bug?

[Candelero]

try setting the preview of the proxies object to show only with their bounding box, like _show as box_

Best regards,
nikki Candelero

[super gnu]

ahh unfortunately ive had them displaying as bounding boxes from the start... im not suicidal enough to try and view 3000 trees in mesh preview mode!

[gilpo]

What viewport driver are you using? What kind of video card do you have?

[super gnu]

i have a 6800 gt, softquadro'd with the maxstreme driver. not the newest card, but handles the main file with no proxies in just fine, and thats huge. get no selection delays in that file either.

the scenes that cause problems are gonna be xreffed in, so literally only contain proxies.

[studioDIM]

I've well exceeded 3k proxies in a scene, and never had one issue with speed, especially if they're set as BB preview.
Still, when you click-select in max, what happens is that max raycasts into the scene, selecting the first object first, the one below it second and so on.
Depending on the location of the proxies at the time of selection, it might take a zillion years (say you have 1k of them on top of the other in the front view, for example.).

Does the issue remain if you hitbox-select, or create a selection set and use that ?

Lele

[super gnu]

i have the same problem if i window select, select from the selection rollout, select via selection set, or click select.

it also seems to be affecting the non proxy objects... i had a scene that was fine, but once i merged 2000 proxies in, even though they were actually hidden, i now have to wait 1 min plus to click select a simple box, which at the time is isolated.

bizarre.

[studioDIM]

sounds really bizarre to me.

try and see if typing "gc()" in the maxscript listener, followed by a keypad return helps any.
Also try the command "freescenebitmaps()" in conjunction with the one above, to see if it's a memory limit issue (maybe too much RAM usage by materials and textures, or something similar...).

Lele