Vray Proxy rendering speed

[timmatron]

I was just wondering if using proxies will slow down your rendering or not. The reason I ask is that I have a lot of 3d people I am using in a scene. This morning I rendered them as normal mesh objects and they rendered relatively quickly. The problem was that my file size was about 300 mb. So I converted them all to vrmeshes and when I rendered those it seemed to take forever. I'm just wondering if this is to be expected or not and if it has something to do with different memory usage.

Also, a side question...can you control the quality of the proxy preview mesh? They are usually just a really sketchy representation of the object, but for some reason, the proxy meshes for these people are pretty detailed and are bogging down the viewports. I don't want to display them as boxes, because I still need to select and move a lot of them, so that won't work.

Thanks

[muzzy]

Same here,

proxies didn't make my rendering faster.

[jacksc02]

proxies wont make your rendering faster. it allows you to render A LOT more polygons.
I have done a few tests and depending on the location (where the proxies are stored) i.e. network drive vs. local drive you can see a slight difference in rendering speed. Local drive is better.
As for viewport quality, it all depends on the mesh count of the original objects you proxy

[TRGraphics]

The low resolution in the viewport is a problem with trees. Some of the trees I've done the trunk disappears and placing plants around the base of the tree is hard when you can't see it.

I agree with Jack, it's not supposed to be faster. But using proxies will take far less ram and allow you to render huge polygon scenes. Thats the advantage especially for trees. You can render hundreds or even thousands of high poly trees with proxy.

This is one of the best addons vray offers. I put it up there with DR.

Tony

[jacksc02]

i agree tony, it is one of the best features of vray.
I had to render a scene now that was about 16million polys and it wouldnt render so I had to proxy a lot of things in the scene and I got it down to 6 million polys and it renders with no hassles!

[muzzy]

Thanks..

One more question

If you have onyx trees as proxy...

From system rollout Default Geometry option...
Do you use dynamic or static ?

How do you determine the Dynamic Memory Limit ?

[jacksc02]

muzzy it depends on the scene.
If its a large scene that crashes using static switch to dynamic.
the memory limit is something you have to play with. increase the limit until it crashes constantly then back off the limit by 100mb until you can render.
Its not an exact science but this is what works for me.

[dlparisi]

I think Vlado has stated that proxies always use dynamic memory, regardless of the setting in the system rollout. So I think you can set your system setting to whatever the rest of the scene requires.

[TRGraphics]

Yep, that's what vlado said about proxies and displacement. I tried switching to dynamic, but I didn't see a difference on my system.

[natty]

I've done the trunk disappears and placing plants around the base of the tree is hard when you can't see it.

i have found with ealier builds of vray that if you copy a proxy as an instance it sometimes vanashes. Dont know if thats your problem?

[TRGraphics]

It doesn't happen with all my trees, just some of them. They are all at least 400,000 polys so I'm not sure why it happens. This is with the latest build and the original proxy. The instances look the same.

Tony

[DaForce]

natty:
Do you mean it vanishes even from the object lister as well? or it just vanishes from the viewport.

[muzzy]

muzzy it depends on the scene.
If its a large scene that crashes using static switch to dynamic.
the memory limit is something you have to play with. increase the limit until it crashes constantly then back off the limit by 100mb until you can render.
Its not an exact science but this is what works for me.

Thanks, jacksc02

[tricky]

vanishing instances and invisible trunks: I have had both of these issues.

With vanishing instances, I just delete then redo the instance until it does work - must be a bug.

Invisible traunks are a pain, and I don't really have a workaround apart from creating your vraymesh at 0,0,0 then the trunk base is at 0,0,0. You can then tell all your trees to display as boxes and you know that the pivot is exactly where the tree hits the ground.