Xref - include in render & exclude in viewport

[pietervanstee]

Hi,

We're working on projects with different people where we devide the files into different sections.
They're all linked in one main file, however not all the xrefs need to be loaded all the time,
some are already finished and it would work much easier if they didn't load when opening this main file.
What we're trying to achieve is not loading the xref, but having it rendered when we submit the jobs to the renderfarm of for a local test.

Is there any way this is possible, or are there other easier workflows for collaborating on large projects?

Thanks

[Vizioen]

Natively, I haven't found anything useful either. Xrefscenes are incredibly low on the feature list, found myself experimenting with a lot of different things too. Even hide to camera (set by layer) don't work, he always keeps forgetting the layer settings. You might want to give http://smartrefs.com/features/ a try though. Never tried but you can load proxies instead for the viewport and enable the real deal in the renderer.

[pietervanstee]

Hi Ashley,

Thank you for your reply. I have been looking at smartrefs in the past but haven't got the time to try this out.
Might be worth giving a shot.
Any chance you've got experience with containers? Might be an alternative for smartrefs, but seems to be tricky too most of the time :s

Also is there a possibility to load a scene without loading the textures or only some textures. Often we've got an xref for the interior with lots of textures which are only needed at rendertime, loading those to open the file takes a very long time

Thanks

[Vizioen]

Ah yes I forgot about containers, might also be something worthwhile to try out in your case, it has his pro's and con's (it's tricky, although it's been a while since I used it) and you can set a proxy.

About not loading textures. Normally only the textures that are displayed in the viewport are loaded. So if you disable those that you don't want to load your scene might load faster. Also be sure to purge your scenes with sceneprune or similar to get rid of animation layers (unless you specifically made them) as these creep up out of anywhere and bloat your file(size) and loading/saving times.

[pietervanstee]

Might be a good solution then to try the containers then. I only had difficulties to load the same container in an other file because it would be a great ease if we could load for example the vegetation and lighting and have access to make some changes when working in different files such as the main file as well as the exterior.

About the textures I’m not so sure, as I have arranged for ex 12 fully detailed interiors, all with proxies in different layers which are always turned off (render hidden geom is on). When loading the file with only the shell of the main building visible I can see all the maps getting loaded as I see my memory going up above 20Gb which takes well over 10-15min to load for the first time. No problem if you have only one file to work on and if there are no crashes in the file

Animation layers are being cleaned regularly, any chance there is a way to find out where they exactly come from?
Thanks