Proxies and RAM ?

[bernhard]

Hello friends !

Can someone tell me, if the VrayProxies need more RAM for render process than using a regular poly mesh ?

It's kind of interesting.

I've made a test render today, rendering with the regular poly mesh, about 140.000 polys.
Memory Used: P:421.6 V:628.1

After this, I've used the proxie mesh for rendering, and I've got the following datas from the render dialog scene statistics:
Memory used: P:509.0 M V:745.7M

thx for every little help,
bernhard

[Candelero]

in short: generally , you do proxies in order to save memory, as the geometry is read from the file and only uploaded in the RAM when needed.

Best regards,
nikki Candelero

[Da_elf]

one of the things to look at is a scene with 1000 poly trees and a scene with 1000 proxe trees. check to see how bit the file is. remember that when you open a file it uses ram, the bigger the file, the more ram.

[DaForce]

Odd, was it just the one tree?

Often with only one proxy the mem may well be the same or a little higher I would expect.
Its when it comes to hundreds of trees, instead of having to load them all into memory at the beginning of the render it only grabs the mesh info as the bucket hits the proxy.

Do note that proxies will be slower tho. How much depends on how well you use them. So if your scene renders fine without proxies I would not suggest you use them.

[paulison]

yeah i don't know why you would use proxies if you only have the object in your scene once.

Could the extra memory usage when a proxy is used once be due to the size of the actual vrmesh file being larger than the comparable bit of geometry within max?

the extra memory usage you have noticed wouldnt be enough to cause most people too much concern though

[dominiquelaksmana]

hi everyone.
don't mind me asking my question here,
is it better to copy instance a proxy, or to arrange it first then proxy alltogether?

[Shimakaze]

If you arrange them first and then proxy all of them at the same time you'll just create one very large proxy file which will take up as much memory and even slow down the renderer. In general instancing is always a good idea whether you use proxies or not.

[dominiquelaksmana]

thanks for the answer.

[DaForce]

Yeah one big proxy will slow the render down up to 2x
Instance proxies will still have a render time hit but only around 5-10% at most I would say.
But the memory usage will be alot less.

So yeah single proxy and instance is the way.

[bernhard]

Hmm...

Thank you for all your replies, I really appreciate that much.

I've uploaded my scene file, before using the proxy mesh, so everybody can see the basic poly mesh.

Here to download: http://www.bernhardrieder.com/ask/Clock.zip

I've prepared the scene file for using a proxy mesh by attaching seperated poly objects, so that I do have at least one big poly mesh.
Using a multiply subobject material.

Here is the mesh render, please take a look on the scene file statistic, showing the RAM.



compared, here is the proxy render - see the RAM statistic:

DaForce:
Odd, was it just the one tree?
Often with only one proxy the mem may well be the same or a little higher I would expect.

Okay, so does it mean, I don't need to be worry about the RAM datas in this example, because it's just one mesh ?
It confused me a little bit, that the proxy example needs more RAM.

By the way, I am not sure if P: stands for Physical and V: for Virtual... but I was thinking about this way, please let me know if this is o.k.

Another image, I would like to show you, is this viewport preview:


I don't know, but after converting the poly mesh into a proxy mesh, I've got this scattered preview... is that usual ?

The sphere, and the teapot looks good, but the clock looks weired.
However, I really would like to know more about the proxies, because I would need to use this fantastic feature for a very huge scene file, with a lot of ploys - and I don't want to run out of RAM in the render process.

Thank you for all your comments, explanations and suggestions,
bernhard

[dlparisi]

not sure what the P: and V: stand for - never bothered with it as I usually use process explorer to keep track of my memory usage.

As for the proxies and their viewport display, that is correct. Proxies only display every nth face of the mesh (although I'm not sure what percentage this is). The sphere and the teapot have more regular geometry so it's just that the faces that aren't showing up share an edge with one that is so they look more normal. If you look closely I imagine you'd be able to see some missing edges too.

[Buck]

not sure what the P: and V: stand for - never bothered with it as I usually use process explorer to keep track of my memory usage.

physical and virtual

[DaForce]

yep, P physical V virtual

It doesnt suprise me that a proxied version of a mesh is larger as its got more information. However its when you combine man of those proxies (instance) that it shines.

When you load up your scene with say a hundred of those lamps the memory usage will be MUCH lower than if you had it all mesh. So dont worru about it (the slightly higher memory usage) with just a single mesh.

And i never trust max's memory display, I always use task manager to see the mem usage, be sure to turn on the virtual memory size in the task manager as well.

[bernhard]

Process explorer and Instances ?

@dlparisi:
What exactly do you mean, you use process explorer to keep track of yur memory usage ? sorry, couldn't follow you......


@DaForce & Shimakaze:
about instances... so you mean, if I do have 50 trees, and all the trees are just clones of the first tree, I should use the first tree as my main tree, and all other 49 trees, should be instances from the first original tree, instead of copieng this tree 49times...... right ?

Thx a lot for all your help,
bernhard

[dlparisi]

Sorry, as I was typing it I meant to include a link but forgot. Process Explorer is just a more advanced task manager, http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...sExplorer.mspx