I have 3Gb machine… and my model only go up to 4 mil polygons.
Is it normal?
Thanks
Thao
Whether ZBrush can utilize more than 2GB of RAM will depend on your operating system but also bear in mind that the OS will be using some of that 3GB. The other thing to consider is that if you have a model of 4 million polygons subdividing to the next level will take it to 16 million polygons as the number of polys is multiplied by 4 each time.
What is your setting in Preference>Mem?
Andreseloy
as marcus already mentioned, the next “step” would be 16 million polys and thats not easy to handle. afaik win xp 32bit can only handle something like 12 million polys.
the only way to get more polygons is HD Geometry. (or maybe a 64bit OS)
hmm winxp 32 bit here… (vista etc at home)
but i can handle up to 40mio polys.
i set my preferences like in zb2 … mentioned by aurick, theese gave me a nice working baseline. i also included auricks multithreading script to start up zb with multithreading operations, placed the high and normal priority buttons on my shelf (ctrl and drag&drop the desired button to the shelf).
you should work nice with followin settings:
mem 1400 (rest is for windows and other api’s)
undo both to 4
max poly to 50
startup script as follows:
[VarDef,MultiThreadingInited,0]
[If,!MultiThreadingInited,
[Iset,Preferences:MultiDraw,1]
[Iset,Preferences:MultiRender,1]
[VarInc,MultiThreadingInited]
]
[PD]//ZBrush default ZScript
simple copyn paste over the existing startupscript. please make a copy before!
you ma raise the mem settings A BIT, but i would suggest to use 1400, even if you got 3gig. with this way you give windows and an other app a little bit more space.
negative is doin an undo (ctrl+z) it takes a while to regather the infos and compacting mem again, sometimes it disturbs your workflow more than dealin with less polys… you have to decide ;D
happy zeebrushn
regards
k0s
Thanks for this.
It really did help alot.
I can even HD sculpt alot better;)
I do NOT recommend MaxPolysPerMesh being set at 50 on a 32-bit machine. I don’t recommend going higher than 12, and 8 is honestly better.
Trying to make your computer do too much is the single biggest cause of crashes on ZBrush 3. Just because a setting CAN go to 50 doesn’t mean that it SHOULD be set there. ZBrush 3 was designed with forward compatibility in mind. It can support 256 processors, too, but there aren’t any systems out there with that. Yet.
In ZBrush 3, your MaxPolysPerMesh affects you in two ways. The most obvious is that it specifies how many polygons your model can reach with regular subdivision levels. But that’s what HD sculpting is for: to let you go higher without negatively impacting your computer or performance. The other way that the setting affects ZBrush is when you’re doing HD sculpting. The MaxPolysPerMesh setting determines how many polygons will be displayed for editing while HD sculpting is active. So if you have it set to 50, ZBrush will ALWAYS display 50 million polygons at a time when HD sculpting, even if it can’t comfortably work with that many.
Scaling MaxPolysPerMesh back to a more reasonable number will increase overall performance and reduce the likelihood of crashes.
Also, that startup script is no longer necessary with ZBrush 3. Z3 has multithreading turned on by default.
eww did not know that about HD thanks aurick
lol now a ifeel stupid if you hold alt over the sculpt HD button it says that.
grin … same here…
besides that hitting the hd is crashin my zb down. (with standard preferences). but it is good to know!
errm well 128proc were introduced at a show from a-desk 
was amazing to see that sink 
i felt a little bit like 10 years ago, as i was sitting in front of a SGI onyx.
mfg
k0s
My computer is a XP 64, Opteron Dual Core 2.2 with 4 GB Ram and I never could up to level 7. My model have 6.3 million polygons and changing mem, maxpoly or wherever I can’t get level 7. I made a test in my work with Zbrush 2 and I got the same amount of polygons, level 6 - 6.3 million polygons. 
HG Geometry is not part of my workflow.
My config of Mem
Compact Mem = 1400 (default 256)
Doc Undo = 4
Tool Undo = 4
MaxPolyPerMesh = 26 (default 8)
I get an error:
Insufficient Core Memory
Loeck main mem in list_out
Object:
Please email us…
And ZB3 crash, crash, crash… into a ditch!
DocChaos, how did you make that magic?
With a 64-bit operating system and 4 GB of RAM you can set Compact Mem to about 3500.
Even so, keep in mind that level 7 for your mesh would be about 25 million polygons. That is a lot for non-HD modeling. Do you have any other programs running in the background when you try to do this? Have you made sure to defrag the drive that ZBrush is installed on? Does that drive have a LOT of free space?
I only want level 7, 25 million polygons, to make some displacement tests with maya because the model with level 6 have some aparent faces (It is not smooth), but maybe level 7 is not necessary. My computer is Raid with 1 Tera (6 HDs) and 400 GB free.
Programs in the background: Messenger, Kaspersky anti-virus.
If it isnt smooth without 25 mil polygons, then perhaps you need to retop your mesh. Often it isnt that there are too few polygons, but that they are not in the right places.
Y’know… it’d be nice to have a separate slider for SculptHD so we can set how many polys to create when going into HD instead of filling up RAM to the max. ZB felt like it just ate a whole cart of Hot Dogs.
Btw, in x64 with 4GB RAM, I suppose, it wouldn’t be very good to make zb handle 25 mil, seems the most it could handle is about 16 mil, wouldn’t it, aurick?
What is the rule of thumb for ram to maxpolypermesh in Z3, btw? In Z2 it was Maxpolypermesh is 2x free RAM (that is the ram you got left after OS and other stuff hog your memory) with your suggestion for 3gb set to 8 to 12 it’s perhaps around 4x free RAM?
Hi ghonma. Actually my model have 6.3 million polygons - level 6. Level 7 is my dream.:lol:
guys this is my system specs and i have max polys per mesh at 50
and i have compact mem to the highest i d ont remember exactly but i think its like 5400.
intel 2 quad core
8 gigs of DDR3 RAM 1333mhz
with a 8500gt video card
Vista 64 bit
im sculpting 14 million polygons without going to HD mode.
very comfortably.
i was debating whether or not to switch to vista.
but it seems to work really great.