So I downloaded the sculpt branch from Graphicall, and must admit that I am quite impressed: when I switched to sculpt mode I was able to work smoothly with 6.2 million polys…! The opengl display is completely smooth on my system (i7 @3.6, 12gb, 280gtx) at that level. So the multi-threading seems to work nicely.
However, when I return to object mode the opengl display is extremely laggy - does anyone know whether the devs are planning to implement the same speed to the ‘normal’ object/edit opengl view in 2.5?
No, I did not - it does make a difference (about twice as fast now); compared to the sculpt view update it is still way slower. In sculpt mode orbiting the view is completely smooth, while in object mode the view updates twice a second now. Still, not too bad, seeing that other apps like c4d can’t keep up with that anymore (tested same object in Cinema4d).
that’s because sculptmode redraws just the area you sculpt.
It has no logic to keep this high-res switched on outside of sculptmode.
By the way, I guess with your system configuration you could probably go with ZBrush up to 50m polys or so, but just guessing, since the hd resolution in zbrush isn’t limited by memory. So the achieved 6 m polys is nice, but I can do 10m polys on my pentium m with 2gb ram with zbrush or 3d coat.
Personally i think sculpt mode will greatly benefit , by the hiding of polygons (you dont lost hide while browsing levels ) and the copy of HD feature making only the are that is on the brush visible. That should free up load of resources for insane polygons counts. And before making the whole mess visible, instead automatic normal map and lowering the mesh level .
No – when you’re rotating the mesh, as he said he is, a full redraw is necessary. So I’m really not sure why the speed difference; possibly just a better organization of data in the sculpt VBOs.