Proxies and RAM ?

[Shimakaze]

Proxies also has the (in my opinion) huge advantage of not slowing down max while working, because as far as max is concerned it's just a helper object (assuming you don't use the display mesh functionality). If you instance the original meshes then Max still has to display them in the viewports even if it doesn't need to use much extra ram. Well, I suppose you could display them as bounding boxes but that's no fun!

The automatic mode does sound like a really good idea though. But I'll still be using proxies

[rcollett]

Anyways, I think I could do the following: add another Geometry mode "Automatic", which would make an estimate of how much memory a mesh will take along with its instances. If this is above a certain threshold, it will create a dynamic mesh for it. Otherwise, it will create static geometry. Along with an option to explicitly specify the geometry type for a mesh, it should make the workflow somewhat easier, I think.

Another feature that might work, is a check box in the VRay Object Properties so that we can tell VRay that an object is to be treated as dynamic without having to make a VRay Proxy. That would really help me a lot.

-Ray

[DaForce]

Shimakaze:
If your just using proxies to speed up your viewports thats abit of a waste as it will be slowing your renders as well.
But if you need the ram saving feature of a proxy then thats all good, otherwise you may want to a look into alternate methods so you can get your rendertime back.

[Shimakaze]

Well yea. I mainly use it for things like huge forests, scattered ground objects and similar. Otherwise it would be no different from the things we've already mentioned in this thread
My point though was that having a huge amount of instanced proxies is much easier to handle (at least on my computer) then a huge amount of regular instances.

[DaForce]

Yeah definitly.

My uber sphere which had 11billion polys, had to be all instance proxies, as if i just instance spheres it would bog down in about half the time.

It still did become a chore moving around the proxies after awhile. viewport updates were at about 2 mins near the end of it all.

[bernhard]

woww...

That's pretty interesting now.

So, please let me know, if I did understand you.

If I use a lot of instances (no matter if you use proxies or a standard mesh) just instances, then I should use the DYNAMIC option.
That will help me saving memory.

Hmm, is this correct now - or did I missunderstand ?

Thx for all your help,
I really appreciate that much,
bernhard

[vlado]

Using the Dynamic option will save memory, yes.

Best regards,
Vlado

[bernhard]

thank you

Thank you vlado, you made my day !
I'd like to thank you all - really great forum - great people

appreciate that,
bernhard

[paulison]

just another thing you can do even with the instanced proxies is that you can apply a different multi-sub material to each instance. the materials dont instance like the geometry does (so if you change one, it doesnt effect all)

For example, a recent job with about 140 houses, there was 3 types of geometry and 12 colourschemes. So basically 1 proxy type can be broken into many different colour schemes. I dont know how much more memory that uses though

your proxies may have dissapeared if you didnt select instance because you need to relink the external file if you clone and select Copy - this also crashes when you try to render!

[vaslavo]

Hi everyone, i have a question, if my scene is a building with a lot of trees (about 300 proxys, 20 types of vegetation instanced) and 17 3d cars also proxys and still doesnt render eve if i try to use backburner with stripes, it always crash, would it be a solution to use dynamic and how to use it?

[DaForce]

If proxy doesnt work is unlikely dynamic will as it uses more memory. Still less than static tho.
So your trees and vegation are all instances of a few key types of trees and plants?

You could certainly try dynamic, its in the Vray:system rollout switch the memory type to dynamic and set the dynamic memory amount to around 3/4 of your ram to start with.

[vaslavo]

The plants are evermotion trees and bushes, the cars are dosh cars, but ive tried to instance everithing and always crash

[DaForce]

I still dont know how you have set them up as proxies.

For the trees are you just using a couple of tree variations? and then scattering them around?
If so then you should only proxy 1 type of each tree then instance that around your scene. Same with the bushes as well.

The cars however, probabaly need to be unique, so you can certainly proxy each car to get the memory usage down.

Is this what you have done so far?

[vlado]

So I've implemented the "Automatic" geometry type option and it seems to work nicely for the case of very heavy meshes and/or lots of instancing. As mentioned above, this is not a replacement for the proxy, but it does allow for heavier scenes to render without much hassle.

Currently the method for deciding if an object should be created as static or dynamic geometry is if the total number of faces summed for all instances of an object is larger than a certain number; not sure if it can be made better, but it sort of works. This automatic mode is now the default for newer builds.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ene.xis]

lookin forward!