Proxy questions

[thomas_bussey]

I have a couple of questions about proxies:

I've read that they're only loaded in to memory of they're present in a particular bucket, but how can this be true when they may have a contribution to lighting/GI in the scene but not be directly visible in the bucket? I can't actually remember where I read this and it could be complete rubbish/ I remembered it wrong.

Secondly, if the above is true, would there be gains from having many smaller proxy's, rather than one big one.? For instance I'm looking at exporting a crowd sim from Tyflow. The proxy export option only allows for one global export, i.e all characters as one mesh. Presumably this would disallow any intelligent culling (if that's even a thing).

Lastly, is there any way of splitting a proxy in to it's constituent elements, or maybe converting to point cached mesh/meshes? I know Vray 6 allows hiding of elements, so would it be a massively inefficient method to just load the whole crowd proxy many times and hide all but one character? Would this load the whole mesh in to memory and then cull what's not required, or does it just load the required sub-element?

I'm not sure if any of these are worth thinking about and I should just export the whole crowd sim in one and be done with it, but I like to think about these things.

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi if you are exporting a mesh geometry it is better to export it in parts to a number of proxies instead of one giant proxy.

[vladimir_krastev]

Lets say you have a crowd of 200 people. If you are using 200 unique models then it will consume the same amount of memory regardless If it is one whole proxy or if each model is a separate proxy

If you are using 10 unique models that are spread around to form the crowd of 200 then it will consume memory for 10 people.

Apart from that if you take one huge chunk of memory at a given time it is worse than needing smaller parts during a longer period of time.
It will be quicker if you could digest the bigger peace but this is not always the case.

[thomas_bussey]

It's roughly 10 unique models, but they are each given unique deformations via Tyflow (actually just the animation sequence applied to the base mesh, but randomly offset by tyflow and transformed around the scene) so I don't think instancing will be possible or using the same VRmesh for each (even if I could work out a way to split them in to individual meshes).

ignoring that is there any way to convert an animated proxy in to a point cached mesh? I'm interested in seeing the difference between using animated proxy and animated mesh.