I’m sure somebody here has experienced the same: When adding even one animated map to a scene Max gets extremely slow and real time playback is not possible. I have had this problem at least from Max 8 and now when I’m using 2008 64bit version it’s still the same.

The image sequences I’ve used on planes are either .tif, .tga or .png and they have alpha. Enabling proxy system from asset tracking can not be used because it destroys the alphas. I’ve tried to make smaller proxy files on my own. I have also enabled “don’t animate” from the Material editor and I keep it closed while playbacking. Nothing seems to help!

The problem must be something about how Max uses the memory or how it goes through those image or .ifl files?

Nowadays 2D looking 3D is so common that there must be a solution to this? Please help! :)

just don’t show the texture in the viewport

3Ds Max 2012+Sp2 +SAP, Vray 2.2, Photoshop CS5.1
OS - Windows 7 Pro x64 Sp1
sys1: i7 2600k (OC to 4.2GHz), 16GB 1600mhz DDR3 Ram, MSI GTX 580 (3GB) (295.51), OCZ vertex 2 120GB SSD, Wacom Intuos 3
sys2: i7 2600k (OC to 4.2GHz), 16GB 1600mhz DDR3 Ram, MSI GTX 560 (1GB) (295.51), wacom bamboo

just don’t show the texture in the viewport

And close Material Editor when playing or scrubbing the timeline, that can make a big difference if you have animated textures.

I do find it annoying when animating for a composite job, I put a low-res proxy of the BG footage in the viewport background, and it doesn’t update when scrubbing and playing the timeline. Although it doesn’t put a drag on the playback of the scene, but the BG image freezes. Would be nice if they could incorporate RAM player into the viewport BG for better interactive playback.

Nowadays 2D looking 3D is so common that there must be a solution to this? Please help! 

The type of images I think you are talking about are more commonly done in a compositing program.