VRay Proxy

[richard_rosenman]

So I'm following the instructions in the latest manual for setting up a VRay proxy and I'm having some trouble.

I have a vehicle which I am applying a meshsmooth of say 4 iterations to every piece (which 1.09 wasn't able to render). I set the meshsmooth to 4 iterations ON RENDER ONLY. I then export the mesh (in individual objects) and make automatic proxys out of them.

I then render the scene but it renders the vehicle without the meshsmooths. (Basically renders the proxy object).

Do I have to have the meshsmooths turned on in the viewport before I export them in order to render the car with them? If so, how can I do this because turning the meshsmooths that high in MAX was what was causing MAX to run out of memory in the first place.

Can someone shed some light on this for me?

Thanks,
-Richard

[Biohazard]

Hi,

I guess that's the same "problem" that when using vrayDisplacement on such objects. You can't add a modifier on the proxies afterwards.

But, fortunnately, those proxies will avoid your max to use so much memory. The proper use of them would be to tesselate your meshes once, then export them into vray proxies.

...And forget about them.

[plastic_]

i have some trouble with proxies...the reflections look different than before, somehow.
i dont have time to analyse it right now. have to use good old xrefs i guess.

[richard_rosenman]

I'm not adding any modifiers to the proxy - I simply want to apply a high enough level of meshsmooth to the object and then export the proxy. However, I can't add it in MAX because the memory runs out, unless I tell meshsmooth to tasselate on rendertime only, but then the proxy doesn't understand this.

-Richard

[Biohazard]

Ok, so you can't even do this when editing your mesh in max ? Wow.
This looks like a dumb question but do you need such a tesselation in all the cases ? ("whole shots" vs "close-ups").

Else, a good way to spare memory and have longer render times would be :

Lower your raycaster tree depth (in vray's system rollup) to 25/35
Lower the dynamic memory allocated (if you're using the iNT build) to 300 or 200.
Lower the size of textures (consider the texel vs pixel ratio)

Check your memory consumption, it shouldn't go up to around 2.6Gb (with the 3Gb option) or it will crash at render time.

Is it for an anim or a still ? If so, you maybe can get rid of the framebuffer too if your pic is very large...

[richard_rosenman]

My understanding of VRay Proxy was that it was meant specifically for these sorts of things - render extremely large polygon models.

The question though, is how does one apply such a high level of meshsmooth within MAX without running out of ram so that it can be rendered?

-Richard

[natty]

I also want to know how to add textures. i have 100's of desk's in a building that amount to over 7 million Polys... but each and every compeint has either textures or vray mats aplied. when you bring the Proxy in your scene again it come's in as all one colour? so how do i overcome that?

[richard_rosenman]

Natty;

If you export as individual objects they retain their textures - if you export as one mesh, you need to make a multi-sub material for it.
(At least that's my understanding of it....)

-Richard

[plastic_]

the original maps are conserved if you automatically place the proxy when exporting.
and activate "multiple objects".
it doesn't work with single objects.

[natty]

Thanks Plastic

[richard_rosenman]

So does anyone have anymore insight/solution to this meshsmooth problem?

-Richard

[dbuchhofer]

Offhand i can't peek, since i haven't got max at home... but is there any maxscript access to writing out a proxy object? If so could you mabye use the 'disablesceneredraw' to shave off a spot of the memory consumption from the applying of the meshsmooth? Assuming that the hugh hit is in trying to display this iteration value not in just applying it.

A thought..

[RErender]

Maybe try displaying the object as a box prior to tesselation

[richard_rosenman]

Hey RErender - displaying the object as a box and applying meshsmooth still increases the ram usage as it would normally. I thought it might work too...

Dave - Yes, you do output the mesh via a maxscript command (doVrayMesh()) or something along those lines but again, if I output a mesh with meshmooth not on for the viewport, but on for the render, the proxy object will only have the "meshsmooth in the viewport" settings which is set to 0 (or something minimal to prevent MAX from running out of ram.)

So it seems that proxy objects will be created with only modifiers that are active in the viewport, not those that can become active at rendertime like meshsmooth. That's the problem.

-Richard

[dbuchhofer]

DisableSceneRedraw()

Set your iterations to whatever you want..

DoVrayMeshExport()

the viewport iterations don't take effect (in ram) until you go back and type

EnableSceneRedraw()