Advice on large development?

[dlparisi]

I have to prepare a proposal for a very large housing development where I have several (4-5) different buildings repeated about 4-5 times each (total of about 25 buildings). Anyone have advice on the best way to build up the scene? In the past I've xref'd buildings as objects (i.e., "xref objects" not "xref scene") and it worked OK, although keeping track of all of the materials on each building and updating seemed to be a PITA. I couldn't add to the buildings once they were xref'd because I had moved the buildings into different positions.

Proxies sound like an option but the thought of proxying an entire building and having to reproxy it each time I make an update sounds like a nightmare as well. A multi-sub for the entire housing block sounds awful too.

For the moment let's assume memory is not a problem (x64 with 6gb ram but twice that is possible). Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[peakyfreak80]

I've worked on some big developments as well, and I think what you're doing is just about right. I have been thinking about doing something that might help you out. Keeping track of materials can be a pain in the ass, but if you notice, with Xref objects, you get an Xref material. You could try having a separate scene that includes only dummy objects (non-renderable) with your materials on them. When you Xref-objects those into your scene, you can apply the materials to your buildings. Then, whenever you change materials in your dummy scene, they will update on all other scenes containing those materials.

As for the buildings, I haven't figured out any easy way to do it. My method right now is to have a file with each building type in it. If there's multiples of a building, I'll just make sure they're instanced between each other. I've found the same problem as you with Xref objects and buildings. Adding something here or there can screw up your whole scene.

Hope that helps!

peakyfreak

[dlparisi]

Thanks. I just noticed that you can xref whole scenes and if you bind it to another object you can move it around. I think I'm going to try this and see if it works.

[Neilg]

Xref scenes bound to dummies are the way to go, aside from that I dont think there is a better way to do it at that scale. Large sites will never be easy or straightforward if you need to put any amount of detail in/make amends.

[m_hinks]

I've worked on some big developments as well, and I think what you're doing is just about right. I have been thinking about doing something that might help you out. Keeping track of materials can be a pain in the ass, but if you notice, with Xref objects, you get an Xref material. You could try having a separate scene that includes only dummy objects (non-renderable) with your materials on them. When you Xref-objects those into your scene, you can apply the materials to your buildings. Then, whenever you change materials in your dummy scene, they will update on all other scenes containing those materials.

As for the buildings, I haven't figured out any easy way to do it. My method right now is to have a file with each building type in it. If there's multiples of a building, I'll just make sure they're instanced between each other. I've found the same problem as you with Xref objects and buildings. Adding something here or there can screw up your whole scene.

Hope that helps!

peakyfreak

Ive been using Xref Materials for about a year now and its very useful. The method I have used is having a scene with spheres in. Each sphere is named the same as the material applied to it. Then in your model scene, use the xref mat, and select the sphere scene, and choose the object named as the material you want. Job done! If the materials need changing, just go in to the sphere scene do do it once.

In the past I have put a cam and light setup in the sphere scene so I can render tests in it, so not having to go back and forth through files.

Id agree, use xref scene and bind to dummys. Works great also.

Good luck.

[dlparisi]

Great stuff. The xref scene bound to a dummy does seem to be the best way to go. It's a little cumbersome because I can't instance the xref (can I?) and have to have a separate xref entry for each building. Still, it's pretty straightforward and acts just like I'd expect. And that xref Material is going to work out great - I was worried I'd have to update each xref file with any material changes but using this it seems I just have to update that material scene file and it gets updated throughout all of the xrefs. Brilliant!

Thanks.

[peakyfreak80]

Woah! Nice spot on the Bind Xref. I hadn't seen that one before. Yeah...that is definitely better than doing the Xref Objects method. Thanks!

peakyfreak

[CCS]

A different big development

I'm doing a development similar to the ones mentioned. There are 4 unique house models. I have arranged these in 4 unique blocks. Each block contains 8 homes. The development is a grid like a typical downtown village in the US, made of a number of blocks for a total of nearly 300 homes.

We have created 4 MAX scenes, each with a single unique house. We have used 'XREF scene' bound to a dummy to bring a mix of homes into a MAX scene for each block. We then used the same process to populate the development with blocks. Therefore, each house in the master scene of the whole development is an XREF of an XREF. Make sense so far?

Each house has its own unique vegetation. So... in each house scene, we have created mulch beds and are ready to place 3D models of vegetation. If we place vrayproxy instances for all plants, that is just ducky for that house. But when I open the master file - if I understand correctly - the plants will be nested XREFs just like the houses, and therefore OakTree23 in house plan A will not be the same instance as OakTree47 in house plan C. They will all reference the same vrmesh file - but will this file structure require more resources than if they were all instances of the same vrayproxy in one scene?

Hopefully you can read thru my confusing explanation. If you need any more info, let me know.

Thanks
Scott

[Jacob Hutson]

good workflow with xrefs scene

yup we are the same, cameras and lights only in main file, xref everything else
another neat thing with xref scene is you can change your bldg model and just restart a backburner job to render it.
so you can have bldg test scene saved into the backburner job queue and just restart each time you update the base xrefs. saves heaps of time loading a big file full of xrefs and test rendering each time.

we use xref scenes alot, just watch nesting xrefs and using overlay too much, max can at anypoint just pick and choose when it works with those options which can be very painful

Also, weve been having some fun with biped motion files in xrefs not working realiably, so well be trying point clouds next.

[duke2]

xref vegetation fucked up for me. In this recent and ongoing project in Dubai, I have:

-Scene for each unique building
-Master scene (site, with each building as xref from above)
-Scene for each camera, with Master as xref scene

In the scene with the unique building, I did any of the landscaping that was attached to it (like roof gardens, hedges, etc.), then any general landscaping (street trees, etc.) in the master plan scene. Max decided to get confused about what foliage was what, and zeroed off most of it. I went into each scene and renamed the foliage (all xrefd) to from (example):

Foliage_Tree1_01
to
Foliage_Building4_Tree1_01

and

Foliage_Master_Tree1_01

..but it still got confused, so I merged the foliage from the building4, etc. xrefs to the master scene, which kept them xref'd, but not nested, and that solved it. I would have much preferred I could keep it like I had it, but I guess xref's still do have a few quirks.

I have to say the part I like least about xrefs is you cant really tweak materials in anything but that referenced scene, unless you have a complicated setup of loading and saving libraries, it's a bit of a pain. Recently to get around this, i've been merging the camera and any lights from my seperate shot scenes into the master scene, so that master scene duplicates the seperate shot scene, where I can then tweak the materials from the same point of view.

I hope i've made a bit of sense.

[CCS]

Yep. I follow. I like the concept of XREFing (from the old ACAD days - yikes!) but have heard too many horror stories and limitations.

Still no answer though to my vrayproxy question. In short - if I have "treeXYZ" instanced 10 times in the scene for a unique building, then xref that scene into my MASTER 200 times, is that better/worse/same compared to having "treeXYZ" instanced in 2000 times in the MASTER scene itself???

I have a suspicion that the way I'd prefer to set it up will cause a huge memory hit. I haven't tested it, but I'm thinking that MAX will load the same vrmesh file for each XREF file that references it. To avoid this, I'm leaning toward placing dummy placeholders in each file, allowing the XREF structure to take care of placement on all 270 sites, then binding and extracting them in a master file, and replacing them with an instance of the appropriate vrayproxy.

Any thoughts??