Turn to gPoly Modifier

The Turn To gPoly modifier converts geometry to the hardware mesh format used internally by 3ds Max. This makes it unnecessary to convert the mesh from editable format to the internal hardware format, resulting in significant performance improvement when deforming the mesh. The improvement is most noticeable with high-resolution geometry.

• Make a selection. > Modify panel > Modifier list > Object-Space Modifiers > Turn to gPoly

Tip: You can convert an object to gPoly format permanently with the Convert To Deformable gPoly command on the Modifier Stack right-click menu.

Procedure

Example: To use gPoly in character animation:

1. Animate a medium-to-high-resolution character mesh with Biped, using the Skin modifier to apply the skeleton motion to the mesh.
2. Open the Statistics panel and turn on Frames Per Second and Show Statistics In Active View.
3. Play the animation in the viewport and note the FPS display.

   If the viewport displays a high FPS value (say, above 50), the mesh might not be of high enough resolution to take advantage of the gPoly feature. In such a case, apply TurboSmooth to increase the mesh resolution.

4. In the modifier stack display, click the mesh item at the bottom (Editable Poly, Editable Mesh, or similar), then apply the Turn To gPoly modifier.

   The modifier is added to the modifier stack directly above the mesh item on the stack. This is an important point: To improve performance, the mesh must be converted to the gPoly format before the Skin and TurboSmooth modifiers begin to work on it.

5. Play the animation again and note the FPS display.

   The displayed value is significantly higher than previously.

Interface

The Turn To gPoly modifier has no modifiable parameters. For usage particulars, see the Procedure, preceding.