Trying to create a shimmer screen

I'm having issues trying to create whats called a shimmer screen, a shimmer screen is basically a screen that is made out of little metallic balls (generally made out of chrome) that are stacked to a certain height and are a very short distance apart so it gives a see through look but not enough so it still has a degree of privacy.

Because im making this screen out of tiny spheres, and in honesty alot of tiny spheres but im using a lot of spheres because the company that produces these screens make the spheres tiny, some even smaller than an inch. So when i model this screen my pc is slowing down to the point where is locks up and freezes.

Is there anyway to model this effectively where my pc won't slow down? or have i answered my own question when i say "im using alot of tiny spheres"

anyway hope this makes sense because it did in my head

What are your computer spec's?

As for the sphere's, I'm assuming you made one and the rest are clones of the original, correct? If so, when you make each clone, be sure to choose Instance.

Also, how many segments are you allowing in these sphere's? The fewer the better.

ive had my computer custom built from a PC company, its basically been built for power, as far as im aware it should need an upgrade as it was built a couple of months ago.

yeah, i was creating 1 sphere then copying it on the required path then copying upwards roughly 4000mm high. Last time i attempted this it came to just under 50000 spheres, so im figuring that was my biggest problem, having so many spheres.

I havent tried lowering the segments though, i was just using the default sphere when i click on the primitive and sticking it in my model. ill give that a shot and see how i go, thanks!!

ive had my computer custom built from a PC company, its basically been built for power, as far as im aware it should need an upgrade as it was built a couple of months ago.

Ok, but I'm trying to find out what processor you have, how much RAM you have and what video card. These things will determine what you can and can't do.

If you're using the default sphere, then you probably have 32 segments per sphere. 32 x 50,000 = 1,600,000 poly faces. That's quite a high poly count for Max. Even if you decrease the sphere segments to 24, 24 x 50,000 = 1,200,000 poly's. That's still pretty high.

You may need to split your scene up into multiple files and then Xref each file into your final scene for rendering. For example, if you have 4 curtains, each curtain would be in its own Max file and would contain only 12,500 sphere's each. This would be much easier to work with than trying to do the whole thing inside one file.

what i got is -

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9650 @ 3 GHz

Ram: 8GB

System Type: 64 - Bit

Ok, your computer spec's look ok, but you didn't list your video card?

With that high poly count I would still suggest splitting up the scene into multiple files and then xref them all together for rendering. This is a technique that I use quite frequently and it works very well for complex scenes with high poly counts.