Vray proxy and PFlow

[sine_mare]

I've asked similar question last week and ther were no reply... so maybe i just didn't put it right.

I'm working on a project which involves rendering of big forrest. From threads on this forum I've managed to work things out regarding onyx /vray proxy / memory question. However few things still gives me a headache:

- the ony way i've managed to achieve vray proxy scattering is via Advanced painter script. Both Pflow and 3dsmax's scatter tool makes actual boxes instead vray proxy geometry while duplicating it (instances). Obviously i'm doing something wrong since lot of you people use pflow as emitter for trees when working on large number of instances.

- second question goes to "randomize material" script from soulburnscripts.com. When Randommaterial modifier is applied on vray proxy, it instantly stops showing geometry behind it and starts showing plain box - again. As i've noticed, any modifier applied on top of vray proxy modifier stack does the same...

Thanks for answer.

Sinisa

[vlado]

Particle Flow and the Scatter compound will only take the viewport preview of the VRayProxy object (typically a box or whatever); they will not duplicate the proxy object as such.

The second problem is because of the same issue - if you apply to the proxy any modifiers that operate on meshes, they will just take the viewport preview of the proxy. The proxy geometry itself is not modifiable in any way by the normal 3ds Max modifiers.

On the other hand, since V-Ray 1.5, there is the new Automatic geometry type option, which is the default, and it will correctly recognize object instances. So you can still use the Advanced painter script, or Peter Watje's Scatter utility, on regular 3ds Max mesh instances, and this will work properly with modifiers. In many cases, this option makes it possible to render without resorting to proxy objects - especially if you instance only a few generic objects.

Best regards,
Vlado

[pixelstudio]

indeed Peter Watjes plugin is Very good in doing this. i used it yesterday to plant a thousand bushes

what i do is create a few proxy's, use soulbourn script to set the pivot to middle,zero.
then using watj'es plugin it's very easy to distribute them!

[sine_mare]

Vlado, thank you for answer.

However this still doesn't work as expected. When using VrayProxy, advanced painter works like charm - it's fast, distributes objects really quick and rendering time is low. However, when i use object instances, even when "display as box" is enabled, everything slows down and scatter reports "out of memory" even for 100 instances of objects and advanced painter is painfuly slow when painting instances on mesh.

Is this automatic geometry type in system rollout "default geometry"? If yes, then this is set to auto...

well to cut long story short, i'm pretty satisfied with adv.painter / proxy combination. Just to find the way to randomize material on the instances and i'm on my way

Btw, Machine specs:

thanks

AMD X2 64 3800
3 gb ram
nvidia 7600
Windows XP SP3
Max 2008
Vray 1.5 SP1

Sinisa

[dlparisi]

Perhaps this can help... http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...+trees+scatter

[sine_mare]

thanks dlaprisi... did that and tried everything by-the-book as described in that topic. However still can't get pflow to distribute proxies - only boxes.

I'm beggining to think there is something wrong with my PC... can't get Peter Watje's script to work either...

gremlins..?

Sinisa

[update] Peter Watje's script working... at last... i messed something with parameters... However Pflow issue is still actual...

[vlado]

Like I said, Particle Flow will simply not work with proxies right away. However ideally one can write a script to instance proxies where the particles are...

Best regards,
Vlado

[sine_mare]

i got it... then i must assume that sjmoir and other who used that method has some script or trick in a sleeve

sticking with scatter.

Thank you...

Sinisa

[samuel_bubat]

Well I used a bit more complicated method in the past. But if anything else fails.. this might work for you.
I used pflow to scatter objects (usually boxes), where I want trees to be located.
Than I used a mesher object on the pflow system to make a large mesh of it.
The mesher usually doesnt appear in the correct location, so it needs to be adjusted
to fit the location of the initial pflow system.
You should now have one mesh composed of hundreds or thousands of boxes.
Now convert the mesher object to an "editable mesh"
(not poly). Go to sub-object level "polygon" and select all polys.
Use the "explode" function with a value of 180 to split the mesh to individual
boxes. Use "affect pivot only" / "center to object" to reset the pivot of each box.
I than used the "object replacer script" (Soulburn Scripts)
http://neilblevins.com/soulburnscrip...urnscripts.htm
to replace the dummy boxes with a vray proxy.

http://sorceress.netfrag.org/optix/Deep_Forest.jpg

this picture was made with that method.

cheers,

sam

[sine_mare]

Samuel, thanks a lot! now this was realy quick solution... it worked like a charm!

Sinisa

[re:FORM]

Vlado, I'm curious as to why pflow hasn't been updated to allow the use of vray proxies for particles. Is there a programmatic reason why this could never be implimented, or is it just that autodesk haven't seen it as worthwhile thing to add?

I have a scene that with pflow shape instances requires over 10gb ram to render... after converting to vray proxies using Bobo's pflow to proxy script the memory usage is amazing at under 3.5Gb. The downside is that converting 150k particles to vray instanced proxies using that script takes many hours.

I wonder if soulburn's object replacer script is any faster...

[joconnell]

Cos autodesk are eejits and let the programmer of pflow go, hence why its core hasn't updated since max 5. He's writing the pflow boxes instead which in some ways is a good thing since he can make what he sees fit for pflow and generally has a better idea of what's needed than what he might be told to do via autodesk.

[re:FORM]

To true.
I've suggested the idea to Oleg (pflow guru) and he suggested he would look into developing vray-proxy compatibility for the next release of box-3...

Something that would suddenly give him many more customers I think!

[joconnell]

Indeed. Oleg is the original pflow programmer and a lovely guy.