Proxy optimization

[ben_hamburg]

Hey guys,

I`m looking to optimize a environment scene for rendering and I?m wondering how I should deal with the proxies I?m using.
I made a bunch of hipoly proxies (around 1-3 mill polys each, turbosmooth with standard displacement) and then collapsed them and made proxies out of them. But the proxies now seem to slow down the rendering significantly.
So I?m wondering if a better approach would be to make lowpoly meshes instead and put the displacement in the material (even though I hate the material displacement for the lack of negative displacement).
Would that maybe speed up the rendering? I?m just wondering since most proxies are at elast 100MB big and all saved on a network path, if whats slowing the rendering down is simply loading and unloading the proxies into memory...

[vlado]

It would help if, when you create the proxies, you turn on the option "One voxel per mesh" - in that case the entire proxy will be loaded at once, and raytracing it will be slightly faster.

If you don't have the original meshes anymore, I made a small script to convert the scene proxies to use one voxel per mesh here:
https://github.com/vkoylazov/maxscripts

Best regards,
Vlado

[ben_hamburg]

Ah, thanks for the tip. I want to reexport the proxies anyways, since I realized that there is a new preview method (refined clustering), that would help a lot with object painting the proxies by hand (face skipping just doesn?t provide enough visual feedback with my hi poly meshes).

So you don?t think using lowpoly meshes with Material displacement instead of hipoly meshes would help with speed? Since I wanna redo the proxies anyways, I could also switch them out, if it makes sense.

[vlado]

So you don?t think using lowpoly meshes with Material displacement instead of hipoly meshes would help with speed?

You'll actually have to try that, as I'm not quite sure which will be faster.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ben_hamburg]

Well, Material displacement isn?t really an option, since I?m using a Vrayblendmaterial and figuring out the displacement values to get the same result is just too much of a hassle...

I did a quick test with the "one voxel per mesh" option and it seemed to have cut my render times in half, so thats pretty neat already! Gonna convert reexport all my other proxies now and see where that gets me. Thanks again!

[davision]

Vlado,

What is the disadvantage to using One Voxel per Mesh? If it speeds up rendering, why not use it every time?

Is it a big memory hit?

[ben_hamburg]

From what I?m experiencing it doesn?t seem to make that big of a difference, although it is noticable.

I have another issue now, but I?m guessing that is a 3ds Max issue rather than a Vray problem:
I?m on Max 2017 and as soon as I have painted a couple of hundred of Vrayproxies in my scene, saving becomes excruciatingly slow, even though the final file isn?t even 100 MB big.
Any idea if that is max or vray related?

[vlado]

I'm not sure why it would be so slow to save. If you can get me some more specific reproduction steps it would be helpful.

Best regards,
Vlado