I think it is for rendering very large images, I don't think you need it.

Essentially I think it splits the image up into chucks and then renders them out. Once it is done it stitches them all together. I could be wrong.

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Yeah

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ALL ABOUT BITMAP PAGERS

The Bitmap Pager can help prevent memory errors when rendering scenes that have very large textures, a large number of textures, or when rendering high-resolution images.

Although the Bitmap Pager is designed to help resolve issues with scenes that require large amounts of memory for texture maps, it should be noted that the use of this feature will increase the amount of time it takes to render a scene.

In addition, some Render Effects are incompatible with the Bitmap Pager. If the renderer needs to page the rendered image, certain effects may return an error message similar to the following:

Can't get image storage. This is due to the fact that some effects need to be stored in one block.

Parameters for the Bitmap Pager:

On - When selected, the Bitmap Pager is enabled and the software creates a series of temporary page files on the drive, which are used during rendering.

Page Size (KB ) - Sets the size of the bitmap page file. If textures are smaller than this page size, the system allocates only the memory required.

Bitmap Size Threshold (KB ) - Sets the minimum size that a bitmap must be in order to be paged.

Memory Pool (KB ) - Controls the amount of memory used by the pager. All pages remain in memory until this limit is reached. When the limit is reached, the pager begins saving pages to disk. Pages that are not frequently used are paged out. More frequently used pages are kept in memory.


Examples:

The following are two cases when the Bitmap Pager should be used, along with the appropriate settings:

The system has sufficient RAM, but you are trying to render a scene that references several large textures, some over 100 MB in size.

Solution: Set the page size to 10 MB and the threshold to 100 MB.
Result: Only images 100 MB or greater in size will be split into pages. For example, a 100 MB file will be split into 10 page files of 10 MB. This reduces the memory demands that the large textures place on the scene.

The system has a limited amount of RAM, and you are trying to render a scene that references many textures, totaling 1 GB.

Solution: Set the page size to 250 KB and the threshold to 500 KB.

Result: All images 500 KB or greater in size will be written to page files on disk, and the system will swap pages based on which ones are referenced by the scene. This reduces the memory demands of the scene’s many texture references.

Note: The size of an image does not relate to the file size of an image, so using compressed file formats will not reduce the memory demands that an image places on a scene. The following formula is used to calculate the raw size of an image:

Horizontal resolution x vertical resolution x number of bits per channel x number of channels = image size (in bits)

For example, a 2,048 x 2,048 resolution RGBA image has a raw size of 16,384 KB:

134,217,728 / 8 = 16,777,216 bytes

Horizontal resolution (2,048) x vertical resolution (2,048) x number of bits per channel (8) x number of channels (4) = image size (134,217,728 bits)

16,777,216 / 1,024 = 16,384 KB

If you saved this image in a compressed format (for example, as a JPEG file) the file size is reduced, but 16,384 KB of memory will still be required to read the file in 3ds Max®.


The values allocated to these settings are dependent on the type of scene. If you have one large output rendering you should configure the BitmapPagerPageSize value to include the size of your output image. For example, if you are rendering an image with a resolution of 2,048 x 2,048, you would set the BitmapPagerPageSize value to 16,000,000 (bytes), as an image of this size occupies 16,777,216 bytes.

However, if you have a scene file that references a large number of textures of varying sizes, you would want to reduce the BitmapPagerPageSize value to include the larger of these textures.

Determining the optimal settings for different scenes may requires some experimentation, and it is worth investing some time adjusting the values to increase memory performance. Optimal memory performance can be obtained by allowing the system use as much memory as it can without swapping to disk.

REFERENCED:
[Link to usa.autodesk.com]
[Link to www.neilblevins.com]

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[Link to www.sharecg.com]

tsk tsk tsk... Maraming salamat...

thx for the info.. this was the question I was about to ask you last week it;s just your busy..

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Started Max last September 2008

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