Massive 3D project using GrowFX

[3DMK]

Sorry if you have already mentioned, but I could see - how/what did you use to scatter the planting? Forest etc. Did you proxy the trees? 4.5 gig of ram for a 5k image with heavy planting seems far fetched with me scenes! Your input would be very interesting.
Thanks,
Mark

Hi Mark,

I used Forest Pro to scatter the plants & trees ---- there are approx 35,000 trees & plants scattered.

Yes ... YOU NEED to use Proxys on a scene like this.....I don't think there is a computer on the planet that could render it with out using Proxys

The size of your image doesn't affect your RAM usage too much on a 5k image as long as you are not using lots of render elements.....if you're worried then use Vrayimg format if rendering high res as it uses far less RAM

Hope this helps
Jamie

[m_hinks]

Cool, I use Forest too. Its very clever, the more I use the more I like! Rendering a golf course with it right now.

Interesting you say use proxies, I have not found any benifet in using proxies as Forest seems to make its own proxy objects with normal tree meshes. What do you think?

Also interesting about the vrimg files. I just rendered a 720p frame with 10 or so elements, lots of forest trees, displacement etc. About 14 gig of Ram is used for a .exr save through the Vfb. Then tried saving as vrimg not into memory and only reduced the memory a small amount, not enought to concider using it. I'm not sure if I'm doing something stupid, but I had always thought it would save a lot more.

Just on a side note, hopefully others will find it of help/interest, if you use the forest pro material to change colours etc, you cant put your image together with elements, the colour change does not seem to be made to the elements. Very annoying as it means we cant use it, and have had to buy a new plugin from Vizpark I think.

Anyway, weekend!!!
Mark

[3DMK]

Interesting you say use proxies, I have not found any benifet in using proxies as Forest seems to make its own proxy objects with normal tree meshes. What do you think?
You Have to use the Forest TOOLS utility to get Forest Pro to make it use the Vray Proxys!!!! [Goto - Utilities -Forest Tools] Look at the Forest Pro documentation to get more details on this

Also interesting about the vrimg files. I just rendered a 720p frame with 10 or so elements, lots of forest trees, displacement etc. About 14 gig of Ram is used for a .exr save through the Vfb. Then tried saving as vrimg not into memory and only reduced the memory a small amount, not enought to concider using it. I'm not sure if I'm doing something stupid, but I had always thought it would save a lot more.
If your render window is saying max is using 14gig then that is the total memory usage ...not the image that is being output. A 720P frame even at 32bit is only around 20mb, so It wouldn't make much difference on a 720p image even with lots of elements....although if you were to render at 4k or 5k for movies and have lots of elements or a large format print render like 10k or 15k -all at 32bit floating point ,then you would notice a big difference.

Just on a side note, hopefully others will find it of help/interest, if you use the forest pro material to change colours etc, you cant put your image together with elements, the colour change does not seem to be made to the elements. Very annoying as it means we cant use it, and have had to buy a new plugin from Vizpark I think.

Unfortunately It only works with forest pro material....which I never use so I am not sure of your problem in re-compositing.....i usually randomly select some trees & give a different material for variation.


Hope this helps

[m_hinks]

You Have to use the Forest TOOLS utility to get Forest Pro to make it use the Vray Proxys!!!! [Goto - Utilities -Forest Tools] Look at the Forest Pro documentation to get more details on this

- I have had a look but I can not see anything relevant, nor on their website about it. Would you mind sharing a screen grab of the option you refer to. I really like the idea that I'm not using the most efficient method att he moment, and the memory usage is going to be lower!!! Very intreged.

If your render window is saying max is using 14gig then that is the total memory usage ...not the image that is being output. A 720P frame even at 32bit is only around 20mb, so It wouldn't make much difference on a 720p image even with lots of elements....although if you were to render at 4k or 5k for movies and have lots of elements or a large format print render like 10k or 15k -all at 32bit floating point ,then you would notice a big difference.

- I see what your saying, I will have to make some tests when I get a chance. I am guessing that if I render a 5k with vring file them memory usage will be very similar to the 720 exr through the Vfb, as the 14gig or so is the scene requirement, not the fb and elements. And indeed you could add many more elements without any real increase.

Unfortunately It only works with forest pro material....which I never use so I am not sure of your problem in re-compositing.....i usually randomly select some trees & give a different material for variation.

- I see, so you think that if you use the forest pro material, not just the forest colour, it will effect the elements. again very helpful, I will have to check that. But to be fair the plugin from VIZpark called colour extract does a very good just and works with elements correctly. I'll prob stick with that for now.

Again, thanks for your input, very interesting. Cant wait to try them out now, sad!

[Itoosoft]

You Have to use the Forest TOOLS utility to get Forest Pro to make it use the Vray Proxys!!!! [Goto - Utilities -Forest Tools] Look at the Forest Pro documentation to get more details on this

- I have had a look but I can not see anything relevant, nor on their website about it. Would you mind sharing a screen grab of the option you refer to. I really like the idea that I'm not using the most efficient method att he moment, and the memory usage is going to be lower!!! Very intreged.

Forest Tools is not needed in any way to use proxies. It is only a tool to convert the elements to stand-alone objects (meshes, proxies or whetever else, depending of the object assigned in the Geometry rollout).

About meshes or proxies, you can use any of them directly on Forest. The plugin converts internally both to native instances of VRay, and (in most of cases) there are not significative differences in the render performance or memory footprint, because only one copy of each model is stored at memory at rendering. I copy here from other post, a summary about pros and cons between both methods:

Objects:

- The geometry is loaded in memory while all rendering time (only a copy by tree model). This takes more space on the max file, although you can fix it using XRefs.
- Any geometric object can be used as source, including parametric and animated objects (Onyx, GrowFX or other Forest object).
- The animation samples are generated on the fly, allowing to create endless animations, but this may be slow depending of the type of object.
- Some Forest features as Tint by Element only can be used with objects.

Proxies:

- The geometry is loaded/unloaded from disk dinamically (only the main copy of the model, not every instance !), when it is required by the current rendering bucket. This optimizes the use of the memory, but usually is slower.
- The proxies doesn't take space on the scene, but they must be created manually before rendering. Also you must take care to make them visible to all render nodes.
- You can store the animation in the proxy file. Usually is faster to load the samples from disk, than generate them at each frame.

Unfortunately It only works with forest pro material....which I never use so I am not sure of your problem in re-compositing.....i usually randomly select some trees & give a different material for variation.

- I see, so you think that if you use the forest pro material, not just the forest colour, it will effect the elements. again very helpful, I will have to check that. But to be fair the plugin from VIZpark called colour extract does a very good just and works with elements correctly. I'll prob stick with that for now.

About Forest Color and elements, it should work. If not, please post the case in the Forest Pro forum and we will check it. The difference between Forest Material and Forest Color, is that one is a Material and other a Texture map. Usually the material is used for billboards, and the texmap for 3D objects, that's all.

[m_hinks]

Forest Tools is not needed in any way to use proxies. It is only a tool to convert the elements to stand-alone objects (meshes, proxies or whetever else, depending of the object assigned in the Geometry rollout).

Ok, thats clear now. I was confused!

About meshes or proxies, you can use any of them directly on Forest. The plugin converts internally both to native instances of VRay, and (in most of cases) there are not significative differences in the render performance or memory footprint, because only one copy of each model is stored at memory at rendering. I copy here from other post, a summary about pros and cons between both methods:

So lets say I have a scene with one forest object, scattering 20,000 objects using one vray proxy tree, and another scene scattering 10 objects with the same single proxy tree, (all other settings identical etc) your comment above would suggest the memory usage will be the same? I will try on Monday!!

About Forest Color and elements, it should work. If not, please post the case in the Forest Pro forum and we will check it. The difference between Forest Material and Forest Color, is that one is a Material and other a Texture map. Usually the material is used for billboards, and the texmap for 3D objects, that's all.

Ok, I'll check but I'm 99.9% sure from memory, in fact i'll make that 100% as I spoke about it with others in the studio, we are definately not getting elements effected by the forest colour changes. I'll try to strip the scene down and send next week. Can you PM me the best email address?

Thanks for your feedback, I did a test with a 5k squ. forest yesterday, one proxy tree, and used 3gig ram! Very clever. Must of been over 40,000 trees, and many million polys. I wonder what V4.0 will bring us, your point releases give so many features.

[m_hinks]

Funnily enought, I have just upgraded to the newest version of Forest, and it seems the issue with the render elements is now fixed!! They appear to be working as expected. Must only be with the older versions that had the issue as last wek we definetly couldnt get them working!!

Out of interest, does Forest use vray proxies when converting normal mesh objects, or does it make its own type of object regardless of if you choose a mesh or proxy?

[Itoosoft]

Funnily enought, I have just upgraded to the newest version of Forest, and it seems the issue with the render elements is now fixed!! They appear to be working as expected. Must only be with the older versions that had the issue as last wek we definetly couldnt get them working!!

Probably we fixed it some time ago... i don't remember, there are tons of changes with each release.

Out of interest, does Forest use vray proxies when converting normal mesh objects, or does it make its own type of object regardless of if you choose a mesh or proxy?

Normal mesh objects are converted to its own type of object, and proxies are rendered directly.