Loading a 3d model in OpenGL

Question

i have been trying to load a 3d model in opengl. i have been successful in loading a small model which has 2000 vertices now i am trying to load a model which has 350000 vertices using the same loader but it simply does not show up. i am using the loader from http://www.morrowland.com/apron/tut_gl.php and this is the function where i render the 3ds model

 void C3dsLoader::Render_3ds()
{

for(int i = 0; i < m3DModel.numOfObjects; i++)
{

    if(m3DModel.pObject.size() <= 0) break;                     

    t3DObject *pObject = &m3DModel.pObject[i];                  

    if(pObject->bHasTexture)                                    
    {                                   
        glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);                                

        glColor3ub(255, 255, 255);                              

        glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, TextureArray3ds[pObject->materialID]); 
    } 
    else 
    {
        glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);                               

        glColor3ub(255, 255, 255);                              
    }

    glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);                                      

    for(int j = 0; j < pObject->numOfFaces; j++)
    {

        for(int whichVertex = 0; whichVertex < 3; whichVertex++)
        {
            int index = pObject->pFaces[j].vertIndex[whichVertex];

            glNormal3f(pObject->pNormals[ index ].x, pObject->pNormals[ index ].y, pObject->pNormals[ index ].z);

            if(pObject->bHasTexture) {

                if(pObject->pTexVerts) {
                    glTexCoord2f(pObject->pTexVerts[ index ].x, pObject->pTexVerts[ index ].y);
                }
            } else {

                if(m3DModel.pMaterials.size() < pObject->materialID) 
                {
                    BYTE *pColor = m3DModel.pMaterials[pObject->materialID].color;

                    glColor3ub(pColor[0], pColor[1], pColor[2]);
                }
            }

            glVertex3f(pObject->pVerts[ index ].x, pObject->pVerts[ index ].y, pObject->pVerts[ index ].z);
        }
    }

    glEnd();
}

}

i am using 3ds format. why is this so?

Answer 1

You may be running out of memory on the card

Anyway display a 350K triangle model using old style glVertex loop, and especially changing the colour on each vertex is going to be very-very slow (as in several seconds per frame)

Before you do much more I would learn about vertex buffer objects. You may also need to reorder your model triangles to minimize the number of colour changes