Max 5.1 locking up while doing uv's (joan of arc tut)

[Vivii]

First of all I'm not a complete noobie to max .I have fiddled with it for ages but never really done anything really detailed. After seeing the Joan of Arc tutorial I decided I was going to improve my work.

So far I've done all the modelling/ assembling etc and been through the uvm mapping bases sections. During the uv mapping of the sword however my systems continues to lock up. This has corrupted my files quite a few times. Sometimes I can get back to where I was resave it. Can't get any further without it crashing out doesn't always crash during the exact same operation but fairly close.

I've got a 1.9 atlhlon xp
512mb ram
256mb ati radeon gfx card

am I under spec'd? or could the crashing have something to do with max/settings?

any help would be appreciated.

Vivii

[jbw]

It might have something to do with your hardware but it's more likely the file has become corrupt in Max. I haven't done the Joan of Arc tut but i have (quickly) read through it. Is it just the sword that is bothering you. Try saving that out to a seperate file (using save selection). Then try merging that new sword file to a new scene, save and then try the operation again.
Merging forces max to re-build the file and sometimes irons out these rediculous corruptions.

ta,
jbw

[Vivii]

thx jbw

think it must be some of my hardware. hasn't crashed too much today. Pc must of needed a decent rest since it had been on for a long time. I have done as u suggested and it only crashed twice. 1 of those time where while rendering aswell. I'll have a fiddle with my hardware shortly.

thanks again for the help

Vivii

[kuman]

uv unwrap is a pretty heavy module to open up in max.

if you already have textures applied to the object, try resizing those textures down for your unwrap.

otherwise i'd say you're dying for more ram. its tough to run max on 512