Is there a maximum bitmap size?  I routinely deal with large bitmaps (aerial photos in tif format) in my work, and some of them won’t load.  When I try and select them as a difuse color map, 3DS complains with an “Image I/O error” and says “Error Reading Tif File”, and “Internal Error”.  If I convert the file to a JPG I get a different Image I/O error:  “Memory Error”. 

It doesn’t seem entirely consistent ,sometimes it will allow me to read some files, sometimes not.  I seem to still have plenty of memory available (3ds is only using about 500meg at the time).  Interestingly the 64bit version doesn’t complain about file which the 32bit version refuses to read. 

What’s going on?  Is there some memory setting somewhere that I can adjust , or am I just out of luck when it comes to using nice hi-res aerial photos on my terrain?  These aren’t insanely large (as far as aerial photos go), for example, just today it’s refusing to open a 15000 x 9500 tif.  Any suggestions?

That image should only use about 135mb of memory if it is 24bit.

The 32 bit is not your friend. Max sometimes complains about memory when there is not enough contiguous memory to use.
If you try loading the file and it fails on the 32 side, try closing max, launching max, and loading again. It it works after a fresh launch, then most likely there was not enough contiguous memory for the image to load.

Relaunching max each time this occurs is silly. That is why there is the Bitmap Pager which you turn on in Customize > Preferences: Rendering tab. See if that helps.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

hi
I have the same problem loading some aerial photos in our 3d city model w/ max 2009.
We have 74 rectangles of aerial photos in JPG 5000*3500px (we reduce it already to try to solve the memory problem)
Max doesnt allow to apply all the rectangles, only about 70%, all the textures together have about 200Mb.
In render time with vray, max only render about 30% of the 70% giving a memory allocation error and warning that subsequent frames may not render correctly .

I think bitmap pager doesnt help enough, and the solution may be the Wavgen plugin.

does the max 2010 have improved a solution for this type of problem ? or i have to buy a wavgen plugin ?

Can you guys help on posting news or your success histories about this ?
Thank you

Ive just installed 3DS Max 2011 32bit and i was having the same problems. 9k res images (16mb 8bit) is the largest of my textures and i got ‘memory error’ all the time.

Closing and re-running 3DS Max fixed the issue.

EDIT: After a little while i am faced with more ‘memory error’ messages for placing large images into the material editor. Is there a proper fix for this.....anyone?  3DS Max 8 didnt have this type of issue, but it seems all other versions of 3DS Max have many more issues than 3DS Max 8 (most stable version imho).

I’ve gotten the same error from a ZBrush GoZ project, my normal map doesn’t want to import properly...D:
I have 2011, and the map did import just fine earlier. haven’t tried to restart max, but will do so soon as my maps aren’t even that big...I did screw around with fumeFX before aswell, so it may have been a memory issue for me…